Let's Discover RSS Feed!

     

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Hi everyone! This week I'll talk about the RSS Feed. It is very simple and benefical tool for following blogs or sites which are about our personal interests, jobs, experiences. You just download it and add your favourite blogs. Whenever they post, it comes to your feedreader.

What is RSS Feed?

RSS(Really Simple Syndication) is a web page notifier that is used by new providers, blogs and podcasts to make it easy to track new added content. It is an easy tool between publishers and readers. RSS feeds don't waste your time, you won't lose time checking or visiting the sites. When the new content is published, you'll be notified about it. And also you can categorize them considering your interests. 

There are lots of RSS options, you can download to your computer, or just simply use it online by signing in with your Facebook or Google account. I am using Feedreader. It is simple and you can choose some different groupings like according to their sources, topics etc.

Here is my feedreader's screenshot! I follow different types of blogs. Some of them Elt blogs, others like travel blogs, food blogs etc. The number of new shared posts is listed next to blogs. As you see, my favourite one is FilmEnglish.

FilmEnglish is authorised by Kieran Donaghy who is a university teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer with over 25 years experience in English Language Teaching. It consists of lots of lesson plan themes for different age groups. It is very helpful and enjoyable for teachers. And posts include a video and a theme, everything is explained step by step, and also at the end of lesson plans a homework is given. As a teacher if you want to make your lessons based on films you can follow this site. 

I hope this post will be beneficial for you. See you next week 😊

Time To Be An Evaluator!

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Hello everyone!

This week, I am gonna talk about websites. Websites are extremely useful and benecial tools for almost all areas but especially it is used in education. Today, almost every teacher use some web tools like websites, podcasts etc. Because it is an visual and concrete way to help the students to understand the lesson's aims.

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For this week's task I'll evaluate a website which is used by ELT teachers and designed for ELT teachers as well. It is Designerlessons and it is all about lesson plans categorized for each stage of learners. (pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper intermediate, advanced)

The authors of this website are George Clinton and Neil McMillian. They are both english teachers and teaching trainers. According to them lessons should be fun and inspiring, useful and relevant, spontaneous and intelligent, unplugged and sometimes surprising. And they shouldn't follow the rules. Every lesson plan has its own aims, stages, focused skills. Stages are mostly like discussion, video comprehension (optional), questions, activities.

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The purpose of the website is to engage and promote conversation in a semi-controlled way. The teacher is responsible for guiding and correcting the language production in class.

We can't say this website is up-to-date as the last post that has been posted is on April 20,2016. It is the negative point of this website. Because for the education, it should be live and timely in order to make it more valuable.

Posts are appropriate for the target audience, this site may not seem colorful but plans are supported with appealing visual aids and pictures. And there is no broken links.

Teachers can use plans directly or they can change them a bit according to the their tasks.

In my opinion, it is a good example of ELT websites so I would highly recommend it. As it is full of fun and successful mainly because it really does serve its aims. Furthermore both students and teachers have fun while learning.

Hope you like my website evaluation. Now I am waiting for the comments :)