Tasks for Week V

Hi everyone,

As you know you have two essays for this week. The first one is about the Second Life and you will determine 3 categories about why people are using SL. After that you will write an essay about it and your second task is related to Essay Punch and you will go to page www.meritonlinelearning.com and login in with your username and password. After that you will start writing your essay. It will guide you with some questions while you are writing.

I know you complain about the tasks and writing essay(s) each week; however, you will be asked to write essays in your exams for the other courses. If you do not write as much as possible, you will have difficulty in your courses.

As for the final remark, if you have any problems with Merit Online Learning site, please contact Res. Assist. Sinem Sonsaat via this e-mail address (sonsaat@metu.edu.tr). She will help you about that task.

Best wishes,

Sedat Akayoglu

Tasks for Week IV

Greetings all,

First of all, excuse me for the late announcement. I had some problems with my computer and I had to format it. As I announced your tasks very late, the deadline for your tasks will also be later than usual. You will have time till Sunday night.

As for the tasks, you will write an essay (Compare and Contrast Essay) on the following topic and then you will comment on one of the essays your friends have written. While commenting on the essay, take the types of compare and contrast essays into consideration. You can find those types below.

Topic:

There are two sections for a class and you should choose one of them. In section 1, teacher is using technology very often and you will be in a computer lab; but in section 2, teacher is against using technology and prefer pen and paper. Which one would you prefer? What are the advantages and disadvantages of both classes?



Types of Compare and Contrast Essay:

1. First compare (find similarities), then contrast (find differences)
2. Point by point (compare and contrast by category – one category/topic per paragraph)
3. Only compare (only write about similarities)
4. Only contrast (only write about differences
5. Whole-to-whole (Write about all the details of one subject and then write about the details of the other.)

Tasks for the Week III

Hi all,

Sorry for the late announcement for the Week III tasks; but, do not worry about it. The deadline for the tasks will be extended as well. You are responsible for the following tasks this week.

1. Write an essay on one of the topics below (Deadline is Saturday, 1 p.m. – This deadline is important because the second task is related to the first one)

a. If you could change three important things about the department, what would you change? Use reasons and specific examples to support your answer.

b. If you had the opportunity to visit a foreign country for two weeks, which country would you choose? Why?

c. Some people trust their first impressions about a person’s character because they believe these judgments are generally correct. What do you think about the first impression?

2. Comment on at least one of your friends’ essay in terms of organization of his/her essay on the following topics:

a. How is the introduction? Is it well organized? Is thesis statement clear and well developed?

b. Do the topic sentences support the thesis statement? Do you think there is an order among the topic sentences of each body paragraph?

c. Evaluate the essay in terms of unity and coherence.

d. What do you think about the conclusion? Did s/he summarize the whole essay, or paraphrase the thesis statement? Is it well organized?

Good luck with the tasks of the third week. By the way, most probably, we will have the Internet connection in our classroom this week. We may start using Second Life and the other tools in the classroom. Thus, please come to class having completed your membership procedures for all tools we will use.

See you on Monday.

Best wishes,

Sedat Akayoglu

Database for our Yahoogroup…

Hi all,

As you might remember, you should have add your information to the database of our Yahoo Group; however, there are some students who haven’t completed this task. While you are filling out the form there, please keep in mind that your blog address should be working. On the right side of this page, you can see the names of your friends and I use that list to check your assignments. If your name is not there, or it is not working, please let me know about it.

By the way, I have found a nice tool for blogging, which is Windows Live Writer. I use that tool for sending these entries. I think, you can use this user-friendly tool for your assignments.

If you still have some problems, please just send me an e-mail message about it. I will try to do my best to help you.

See you online,

Sedat Akayoglu

Tasks for Week I

Hi all,

I mentioned the tasks for the first week of this semester and they are also available on our group page at Tapped In (http://tappedin.org); however, I wanted to write your tasks here as well.

1. Join our Yahoo group (You will find an icon and a link to join our group in previous post)
2. Create a blog address with your name and surname
3. Add your blog address to the links
4. Add a photo to the group
5. Add record to the database
6. Choose a topic from the list (http://fle136.pbwiki.com)
7. Sign up for free membership at Tapped In and add SedatA as your buddy
8. Join TI session (We should decide the time for an online meeting asap)
9. Get Second Life account (You should also add this to the database)

Good luck with the first week's tasks. I hope you enjoy playing with different Web 2.0 tools.

Welcome to our Class Blog

Hi all,

I hope you enjoyed your holiday and ready to start Spring term. Last semester, we used Web 2.0 tools like Nicenet, Blogger and PBwiki for your midterm and final projects and this term I am planning to add more tools like Second Life, Yahoo Groups (I am still thinking why I didn't use it in the Fall term), Blogger, PBwiki and Tapped In.

We are going to have our classes in a computer lab (Z-25) in our Foreign Language Education Department building, not at Faculty of Education and the according to the schedule the course will be at 8.40 on Mondays.

In the first weeks of this course, I am planning to show you how to use these tools. Some of your friends have used Blogger and PBwiki before; therefore, they will help you about the tools. However, they don't know Tapped In, Second Life, either.

The syllabus will be online on Tapped In page (http://tappedin.org/) and you can follow our course topics and tasks from that page. You will receive e-mail messages about the tasks of the week as well; but there is a task that should be completed each and every week and there is no need to receive a reminder message about it. You will write a blog entry every week and write two comments to your friends' blogs.

As for the first week, please join our Yahoo Groups and complete the form found on database page. In order to join our group, please click on the following icon.



Click to join fle136

That's enough for now.

Best wishes,

Sedat Akayoglu

http://www.ibu.edu.tr/akademik/sakayoglu