Digital Teacher Identity

 OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING

In the second part of our course, we have covered Blending Language Instruction, Online Feedback Practice, Online Formative Assessment, Innovative Digital Tools for Four Language Skills (LSWR & Vocabulary) topics.

Q1.How did the course, weekly readings and discussions contribute to your digital teacher identity?

First of all, I think technology has a very important role in the developing world and education system. For this reason, as teachers, adapting technology to our lessons in the classroom will increase the learning rate of students. Digitalism provides many opportunities for teachers. At this point, it is necessary to understand technology, to be relevant and to be digital competence. Thanks to our weekly discussions, I improved myself on education, especially distance education, sharing the information I learned theoretically and getting ideas from another teacher friend of mine. I gained more detailed information while reading articles about the debates or doing research. My knowledge of digital tools that can be used especially in distance education has enhanced. In my opinion, thanks to this course, my digital teacher identity will match with the students I will meet in the future. Thanks to my digitality, I will be able to get rid of the limits in teaching and design my own lessons more innovatively and adapt the topics I mentioned in the discussions to my lessons. By changing the attitudes of students towards online education, I will be able to offer them education opportunities in any environment. In addition to these, I will give quick and effective feedback to my students thanks to the information and technological tools I have learned. I would like to share an experience that we talked about innovative digital tools for four language skills in week 11-12-13. As I mentioned in my discussion video, I tried to use these applications in my classroom where I teach. As a result, I got positive feedback from students. For example, I created word maps with a student who had difficulty in learning different words at the same time, using the Wordle application, and this enabled me to create a more effective learning environment by attracting my student's attention. Thanks to the articles I read, my prejudices about distance education were destroyed and my interest in the subject increased. In addition, I had the opportunity to develop my digital identity by researching other articles on the same subject. On the other hand, my research on technology and digitality throughout the course contributed to my creativity as a teacher because I can design worksheets / games that I can prepare for my students to make their knowledge more permanent thanks to some applications or websites I discovered. I think in the future most schools will switch to technological learning and this will increase the need for teachers with technology competence. The information I learned in this course helped me to prepare for my future online trainings in advance. In addition, this information has guided me to manage and handle my classroom more easily when distance education is compulsory, such as virus situations like now. I also learned more effective methods of assessing students. For example, by using tools such as kahoot, quizlet, etc., I can test students quickly and easily during the learning process. In this way, I can save time and provide my students more interactive classroom environment. As I mentioned in week 9-10, thanks to the digital applications I use in my lessons, the students attended the lesson more enthusiastically and I created a competitive environment in the classroom. As a result, this course, weekly reading and discussions contributed to my self-efficacy as a teacher. It also guided me to be an innovative teacher and enhanced my professionalism. Learning about technological tools and researching and discussing about them helped me to teach student-centered because all digital tools create environments where students participate and have a role. The information in this whole process will positively affect my interaction and communication with my students in my teaching life. Moreover, in line with the information I have learned, the students' perspective on foreign language will change and my self-confidence and well-being as a teacher will increase.

Q2. How did you (if you did) connect these to your practicum experience? and/or How do you plan to connect these to your future teaching experiences?

It has become a necessity to use digital tools in the distance education process we are currently experiencing. The more digital there is, the more student development there is. In this regard, I would like to share my practicum and the experiences I have gained in my teaching process in the institutions I work. First of all, using digital materials in the lessons I taught in the internship courses made the students more active and fun, and my lessons became more understandable because I created an environment where students could present what they learned. In this way, I increased the participation of the students in the lesson and as a teacher; I helped students feel in the classroom environment, even if it was distance education, so that students learned more effectively. On the other hand, in the face-to-face lessons I teach, I used digital tools that could attract the attention of the students, enabling them to participate more willingly. For example, I have noticed that students in the practicum process have difficulties with reading. Also, there were pronunciation mistakes while speaking. Moreover, they were bored with long reading texts. For this reason, I used the Pixton application in one of my lessons, and I made a lesson that could be read in the form of a more illustrated comic book, and they were very interested. Each of them wanted to read by asking the right to speak. Also, I used the Voscreen application for pronunciation practice. All these digital tools allowed the students and me to be more productive in the lesson. In my future teaching experiences, I want to change the foreign language perspective of my students by using technology. I want to impose the language in the easiest and fastest way by using interactive course materials that will enable my students to have more fun and be active in the lesson. What I am planning for my future students right now is to prepare my own worksheets and games that I can use in the lessons using teaching tools in digital environment. I will plan my lesson plans especially on the development of four language skills (LSWR & Vocabulary), so that students can receive education in a technological environment in all aspects. On the other hand, thanks to the assessment tools I learned, I can evaluate students' learning in a more comfortable environment without the pressure of exams. I am sure that children who grow up in digital will learn languages more easily if they receive education in a classroom environment with technology and digital-oriented entertaining materials.