Telecollaboration: I've Experienced Virtual Exchange!

     Hi, everybody! I hope everything is going okay with you! I'm all steamed up over sharing one of my unique experiences with you!

      Before starting,, I would like talk a bit about the notion lays behind the telecollaboration. I can say that it is an approach that aims to simplify the process of language learners. In other words, it fundamentally tries to connect these language learners to collaborate within a computer-mediated scope to enable them to improve their language skills.

    In this context, in our Material Design in English Teaching course, we were given such a great chance! Everyone was divided into groups, and each group comprised of 6 students. We were matched with 4 Spanish students who study in Complutence University.

    At the first sight, when I took their e-mail for getting started this telecollaboration process, I was full of the joys of the spring and quickly provided a response to them.

    We had 4 Zoom sessions, all of which was more effective and enjoyable than the others. In the first session, we got to know each other and it was marvellous to know their different life styles, perspectives, beliefs and so on.

    In the second session, we had a discussion topic in order to collect some ideas to create an inter-cultural picture book. We both fundamentally talked about our current education system, the role of English language in the school curriculum, the situation of children who are with diverse languages and diverse learning needs, the qualifications of teachers, the problems that students were facing during pandemic, and so on.

   In the third session, we both read some picture book that reflected our cultural values, and discussed some topics for the picture book we were going to create. 

Finally, we, as Turkish students from Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa, created a intercultural picture book and presented it. After our presentation, we did receive excellent comments on our picture book from Spanish students. 

   This Virtual Exchange project has been the most favorite activity that I've ever experienced by far! I didn't only get the chance to improve my English skills which include speaking spontaneously, listening, commenting and discussing at the same time, creating ideas, gaining confidence in speaking fluently but also made us knowing a different culture, getting some ideas about their daily life styles, respecting each others' beliefs, and taking new friends into my life which accordingly results in socializing to a great extent!

Here is the link of our picture book; Picture Book.pdf