Here comes the second part of my modest advices for a 2.0 career :

* Some videos to see: There are some videos that you come across everyday, on different online platforms if you are interested in searching about Web 2.0. Here are my ‘must’ suggestions for a healthy 2.0 career.

Did you know 3.0?:This widely viewed video by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod focuses on the incredible changes in technological world and how the digital generation react to this.

The Machine is Us/ing Us: This less than 5 minutes video tells us the evolotuion of the Web.

History of the Internet:This video is an animated documentary that explains the history of internet from the very beginning.

A Vision of Students of Today:This video summarizes the characteristic of 21st century students and enlightens us about how they learn, what they hope and wigh for. You can also watch A Vision of K-12 Students of Today.

What if?:Another video ogf Karl Fisch.It’s a look at the past and it argues the resistance to change in education.

A Brave New World-Wide Web:This video focuses on a teacher’s journey on the way of becoming a Web, connected and a collaborative teacher. 

* Read the followings : You can read the following articles to have a better idea of how to become 21st century teacher and how to deal with digital native students.

 Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants is Marc Prensky’s classics and a must-read article. It tells the things that we don’t know about our new students,Digital Natives; and about ourselves as Digital Immigrants. Here is the second part of it.  

 Moving Towards Web 2.0 in K-12 Education blog post discusses the impact of Web 2.0 in education.

 You can also find so many other articles and blog entries of other educators from all over the world here.

* Start micro-blogging: Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that lets its users send brief and short updates to be viewed by other people and the most famous micro-blogging tool is Twitter. It’s a social networking and a micro-blogging site that allows its users to read each other’s 140 characters text-based posts; called tweets. I think, trying to express yourself using 140 letters is the fun way of using it.

You can send posts as often and as much as you want. You don’t have to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’, you can post about anything. You can introduce a new blog or a new blog post, share information, ask questions, share links and express your opinion, get instant feedback, track a conference or a seminar.The only thing you do is to get an account and start following people and learn from their tweets. Some great twitterers to follow: @NikPeachy, @SueWaters, @LarryFerlazzo, @Cogdog, @TomBarrett, @CoolCatTeacher, @C4lpt, @MissShonah, @ktenkely, @TamasLorincz and more you will find once you start using Twitter.

* Use social bookmarking to keep track: Once you dive into Web, you will find new links to discover, new blogs to read and share everyday. To keep track of what you are reading or searching, to store, manage, organize and even share your bookmarks of webpages, you should start using social bookmarking which means saving your favorite websites on internet by tagging (giving keywords) to them. Here are some of the social bookmarking sites that you can start saving your favourites and share with world : Digg, Delicious, Technorati , Blinklist,Diigo.

* Start your own blog: Now, it’s time to start your own blog to express your experience about teaching and learning, share knowledge and skills with others, influence other people the way they think. You can start your own blog using one of these sites Edublogs, Blogspot, Wordpress. Happy Blogging!!

What I believe is that ‘Web’ has the potential to change people’s life, the way they look around. It’s just a small window to the whole world and it’s free, available 24/7 and it’s the best self-improvement tool around.

Next? * Integrate technology into your teaching. Engage your students: This is not only knowing and applying these tools but also improving a deeper understanding of the pedagogy when we engage ourselves and our students in using these tools.

We are just one click away from the limitless possibilities and information that internet has offered us. For many of us today, the Web has become number #1 source to look for information because it contains a trillion of links, billions of web pages being created everyday, one billion people connected to Web and each other. There is no doubt that ‘Web’ has changed the whole society, it has changed the way we live, the way we communicate, collaborate and interact. We are all online and connected as we never used to be. (You can watch World Wide Web in Plain English)

It’s 100% true that all emerging technologies and the new face of Web has already impacted the way we teach and the way the students learn. Many of us, as teachers, have already become familiar using ‘Web’ in our teaching and in the way of becoming life-long learners and it is obvious that developing a ‘Teacher 2.0′ career will become more important and popular in the following years as our students are engaging themselves more in technology everyday.

Developing ’Web Literacy’ is sure to increase the success in teaching and learning. It will sparkle our imagination, increase our creativity and collaboration.

Here are my tips for newcomers where and how to start + how to become more comfortable with Web:

* Explore some wonderful blogs to get acquainted with Web: There are so many fabulous bloggers around on Web that I’m addicted to read their blogs. I learn a lot of stuff everyday and I’m amazed at their enthusiasm and their ideas and creativity. Here are some of my favourites. (Unfortunately not all)

Nik Peachy ’s Quick Shout : You can find so many links and opinions on how to use these links in education. Nik has a wonderfully rich blog that will keep you engaged for a long, long time. 

Nik Peachy’s Daily English Activities: You can find simple online activities that you can do each day to help to improve English and the digital literacy. I consider this blog as an amazing online resource.

Larry Ferlazzo’s Blog: I consider Larry as an internet phenomenon. On his website+blog, he has thousands of links with all the applications, pros and cons. I admire all his work.

 Free Tech 4 Teachers: You can find so many ideas for applying technology in education and so many links with all reviews.

C4Lpt: Jane Hart provides us with a range of free resources about learning tools and emerging technologies.

NCS-Tech: Kevin Jarrett has been blogging since 2003 and you can find shares his valuable ideas and I consider his blog as a wonderful source to learn and improve.

The English Teacher Online:  Another wonderful blog; full of inspiring ideas, thousands of followers and a lot to learn from.

* Become a member of a social network: Social networking means building and maintaining online communities of people that share the same interests and activities and maintain this network for mutual benefit using web-based applications. They have encouraged people to communicate to a wider audience and share and spread their ideas.

When you belong to a social network, you can benefit from ideas of other people who share the same interest with you on particular topics easily, it can also be a good way to improve yourself and listen up other ideas. Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Youtube, GoogleDocs, Flickr, wikispaces, ning etc. are some examples of social networks. Here comes Social Networking in Plain English to find out why social networks are so popular and some networks to join:

Classroom 2.0: is a social network for those who are interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education. A lot to benefit from.

EFL Classroom : is another social network where you can meet and collaborate with teachers all over the world and learn a lot about emerging technologies.

i-Earn : is a social network that enables teachers use the Internet and the other technologies to collaborate and enhance the learning.

Webheads in Action:  is a ning where you can learn about events, trends and many more about teaching and technologies.

The second step should be to create your own social network with other teachers.  At my school, we have been using this wiki for more than three years, we keep on posting links, updating portfolios, keeping people informed about the events and the news on ELT and technology. We have learnt a lot from each other.

* Sign up for online courses & conferences & workshops: Thanks to internet, it’s easier and cheaper for all of us to improve ourselves and reach the information anymore. There are many online courses and discussions, webinars, virtual workshops around web about technology and new emerging tools that we can benefit from . Here are my suggestions for where to start:

The Electronic Village Online Sessions:It’s a professional development project and a virtual extension of TESOL Convention. . It offers language teachers world-wide the opportunity to be part of this sessions. The six week of online sessions take place in January-February. You can sign up for sessions and you attend collaborative online discussion sessions and  hands-on virtual workshops. I learnt everything about Web form those sessions. Thanks to the lovely and helpful moderators. You can have a look at the previous years sessions here.

K-12 Online Conference: This is a conference by educators to educators about integrating emerging technologies into teaching and classroom practice. This year’s conference theme will be ‘Bridging the Divide’. I can’t wait for that. You can also see the last year’s archives on the same page.

More will be on my next post…

Daisy & Drago and the Magic Wand from ozge karaoglu on Vimeo.

I have been writing my own stories for my kids as it is so difficult to find the best EFL story that match with our monthly themes.It’s wonderful to see that they enjoy them and retell the story and talk about the characters and dramatize it.I have had a few attempts to publish my stories and I hope it’s going to come true soon.
As I was looking for someone to illustrate the story, I met one of my best friends,Havva. She is the teacher who teaches how to do animation in our school to different level of students. We decided to turn one of my stories into a cartoon. Havva illustrated the story and 6 year old students animated the pictures and we recorded their voices both in English and Turkish.The first film became second in the 6th Children International Film Festival and shown in many cinemas all over the world. What a proud!! And above is the second story that we did this year. My story, our kids and the film. I hope to win another prize with it, wish me luck:)

Here is a site that includes 80+ videos for technology and media literacy. Some, I’ve watched before, but it’s nice to discover some I haven’t seen before and what a nice idea to collect all the videos that you can use for the future presentations. Here are my favourites from that list:
* Did you know 3.0? millions of times viewed the classic of Karl Fisher and Scott McLeod
* Mr. Winkle Wakes : I loved it, it tells us the story of Rip Wan Winkle after when he wakes up after a hundred years of snooze.
* The Machine is Us/ing Us: My second favourite!! I love the music.
* A Vision of Students of Today: Digital Natives tell their own stories without talking. I had used this video in a workshop, it was pretty impressive.
* A Brave New World-Wide Web..
and many more…
The website has a wonderful compilation of all of these!