The FINAL Final Post

 Hello once more!

It's time for me to say goodbye... again. Going through this course, even for a second time, has genuinely been such an improvement for myself. Before I leave, let me give you a quick recap of my time with this course, Q&A style:

1. What are the strengths and weakness of the course? 
    Every part of every task I've done has made me appreciate teaching on a deeper level. An improvement over last year, I never felt overwhelmed as a result of this course this time! I will echo my words from last year, "I can confidently say that I have become a better teacher because of this course."

2. What did you find easy or difficult about the course?
    Similarly, deciding on what to do was always the hardest part for me. I've spent a decent amount of time being completely non-productive just to decide what to do. However, the hardships I faced are nothing compared to the immense benefit of our instructor providing the greatest, most constructive and helpful feedback a human being could provide. Couldn't have done this without you.

3. What was your most and least favourite task? Explain your choices. 
   I've said this so many times already, doing the Flipped Classroom video was truly a highlight. My love for the approach aside, it was just a really fun process with my friends. For my least favorite, once again I'll have to give it to the corpus-based material. While this time around I knew what to do, it was just kind of boring to make it. Doesn't mean I didn't like it at all, it was definitely more enjoyable this time.

4. What would be your suggestion to improve it?
    Looking back, if I had spent more time with corpus tools prior to the task, it might not have been my least favorite, so I'll take the blame on this one.

5. What would you tell to the students who would take this course next year?
    Pay attention in class, every word coming out of your instructor mouth will be useful to you. Find a group that you synergize well with, cooperation in these group tasks are key.

6. How would this course contribute to your professional development?
    Incredibly. I imagine I will be thinking about everything I've done and learned in this course all throughout my teaching career.

This is all from me for now, thank you so very much for sticking around all this time. Farewell.

Pol

Conversations with the Cloud: Practicing Speaking with Artificial Intelligence

 Well, look how much difference a year can make.

I named this assignment my least favorite last year. One important factor in that was due to the painful moments of me any my friends sitting down, thinking to yourselves "How can we reasonably make students use AI for this assignment?". With only a year of progress in AI technology, the challenge this time was deciding between the myriad of ways we could've effectively used AI. While I wouldn't call last year's assignment my best work, this time it's truly something special.

Welcome back dear reader! Here I am, with my final assignment of the semester. Once again, I worked with my friends Bilge, Nisa, and Yağmur for this task. Make sure to check their blogs out as well! 

We decided to create a speaking activity about planning a vacation abroad. Using Google's AI assistant Gemini, more specifically its "live" mode which allows you to directly have a one-on-one audio conversation with it. We wanted the students to use Gemini in a variety of ways; to gain information, to practice a one-on-one conversation, and to receive feedback on their own speech. 

So the structure of the activities go like this: firstly the students describes the kind of vacation they'd like to have, for which they will receive suggestions for different countries from Gemini. Then, they will decide on one country and use Gemini once again to learn about that country, especially how it is like to have a vacation in that country. Once they've gathered the information, they will prepare a speech as if they've visited the country, describe to Gemini their imaginary vacation, and ask for feedback on their about their speech. That ends their work with the AI, as the last portion of the activity is to reflect on the feedback they receive and recording their experience and thoughts about the whole exercise. 

As we do most times, we used Canva to design the material itself. You can take a look at it here.
You can also check out our ASSURE plan here.

Thanks for keeping up with me for another semester. Right after this one goes up, I'll post my (for the time being) goodbye post, so make sure to check that out as well!

See you.