This is it.
As New Year getting closer and closer, I think it’s good time to summarize. It’s been short but wonderful and enlightening time for me. Never would have thought that blogging is actually difficult. You need work constantly on it and thoughts are sometimes just not easy to put in words. You need to be creative, always thinking about new styles and approaches. But I guess it happens with many things, seeing and actually doing something are two completely different things. Glad I wasn’t doing it alone. That’s why now I want to share my favorite blogs created by my fellow groupmates:

https://dumlog4dummies.blogspot.com/ This is the meme masterpiece of blogging. And while browsing through these memes you can also learn something. The perfect example of metamodern culture.

https://holisticlinguistic.blogspot.com/ This is all you can expect from a good blog; simple, but stylish design with comfy overall atmosphere and deep analysis of any topics presented.

https://simplierbetter4you.blogspot.com/?m=1 This here is another perfect blog example. If you want clean and mature view of any issues look no further.

With all that I would like to wish you luck and I hope we will see each other in 2020.

Hello once again! This time we have not one but four topics of discussion. They are: MALL, QR-Codes, Quizlet and AR.
Let’s start with MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning). Its’ main principles are:
-main focus should be not on the device but on the mobility of the user
-we can learn in different environment, social groups, etc.
-learning should be transferred from area to area seamlessly
Mobile device is a great place to study as you always have it with you, so reminders and notifications are used frequently. Mobile platform also is well suited for gamification of education, as games makes us more engaged in a learning activity by user scores for more competitive people and constant feel of progression for everyone.

Next up is QR-Codes.
QR-Codes (Quick Response Codes) is coded link that can be deciphered with your smartphone. And it has great versatility for all kinds of purposes in education, as it is much more convenient that regular links. You can download books or any other information, access tasks and tests or make students use them for quick access to their homework. Honestly, imagination is your limit here.

Moving on to Quizlet.
Quizlet is a great tool for education. With the help of it you can memorize words or any other information and test your knowledge. For example, I used it to memorize hiragana.
https://quizlet.com/_7oyq01?x=1qqt&i=20ayy4

And finally, AR (Augmented Reality). AR is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. In education this technology can really change the approach to different subjects, as it allow as to see and interact with many things you cannot bring to a class.

Hello there! Today I want to talk about MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses). MOOC is an online course with technically unlimited number of participants that includes various materials, programs, services and interactive forums. MOOCs provide participants with course materials that are normally used in a conventional education setting - lectures, videos, study materials, problem sets and so on. So, what are advantages of MOOC? They are:
-Courses are mostly free
-Courses are offered by professionals
-Ease of access
-Learner’s performance is easily monitored
-Flexibility for learner
As for disadvantages, they are:
-Absence of personalized approach
-Language barrier sometimes can be a problem
-High abandon ratio, as flexibility may not be stimulating enough

Now if you are short on time, have a difficult-to-build-around-schedule or simply cannot find any other way to learn some field that is interesting for you, this is a very nice opportunity. And if you are to take it, I think it would be best to know what are some of the most popular platforms:

1) Canvas
Canvas puts a great emphasis on openness and accessibility of their courses:
-Open entry and open access. Open entry for learners around the globe and continual access to course content after the course end date.
-Open content. Open licensing options and content sharing to Canvas Commons where other instructors reuse, revise, remix, retain, and redistribute content.
-Open platform and ecosystem. Open platform to integrate and innovate with third-party tools.
-Open data. Open, de-identified Canvas Network data for researchers to analyze and synthesize.
-Platform neutrality.

2) Coursera
Coursera is one of the biggest MOOCs out there. It has over 3900 courses while edX has 2800 and this advantage is massive. The quality of education is also top notch, it is hard to complain when the content is produced by certified professionals on the topic. The flexibility for student here is also a very good feature. And, of course, I should mention that Coursera offers courses in which you can achieve a degree. While some of courses are free, the pricing on others there is really inconsistent, ranging from 40 to 90 dollars per month.

3) edX
Edx deals with professional education courses, has exclusive services for high-schools, is partnered with some huge corporations (i.e. Microsoft) and is focused on allowing people to learn “anytime, anywhere”. While the overall quality of courses is extremely good you should still check if the course is verified, as it may be a bit on a lower side of quality otherwise. There are also reports of some platform crashes, so you should be aware of that. As for pricing, most of the courses are free with certificate available for purchase after the course for 50-300 dollars.

Welcome back! Have you ever heard of wikis? I think chances are pretty high, for Wikipedia at least. Wikipedia is just one of the thousands sites based on wiki. What’s wiki you ask? It is a technology for collaborative publishing on the interned. Basically, that means that you and any other student may edit any page of the wiki or add videos and pictures there to improve(?) the information that is already given there. As you have probably guessed wikis are well suited for education as the information on pages can be literally anything. As a result, you can organize group work, do research projects, etc… or you can just browse wikis on your favourite series and learn a ton of new information about it instead, that works too.

I can also use Wikiversity as another great example of wikis.  It is a project of Wikimedia Foundation designed to support cooperated learning experience. You can find all sorts of information there and share your own researches. They have two main purposes:

-Create and host a range of free-content, multilingual learning materials/resources, for all age groups in all languages.
-Host scholarly/learning projects and communities that support these materials.
Wikiversity resources include teaching aids, lesson plans, curricula, links to off-site resources, course notes, example and problem sets, computer simulations, reading lists, and other as devised by participants – but do not include final polished textbooks. It also supports many different languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish and others are in beta. And what’s best for us is their motto: “set learning free”.

The topic at hand today is services for surveys. Surveys are vital in education, whether you are a student and want to see how far you’ve come or a teacher and want to check your students’ knowledge. So these services are designed to help you automize the process of creating tests. I was presented with 4 services and I’m going to share my thoughts on them with you.

1)MyTestXPro
Yes, this is a program, not a service. No fancy cloud stuff for you today. While the program itself looks a little old, it has a great amount of functionality: 10 types of tasks which can be used in the same test, managing time on each question and on test overall, send test results on your email and so on. As a result, I can say that the program isn’t bad, but lack of online and mobile version is a major issue.

2)Twitter
It could be told about any social media, in fact. They are not designed for education and not suited for it. They are best suited for something like mass polls.

3)Socrative
It is very similar to MyTestXPro in functionality, but it is better in everything else. Interface is much more pleasant to look at, it can be accessed from browser or mobile app and there is no need to store information on just one device.

4)Google Forms
One of the most popular choices for quizzes and for a reason. And that reason is simply accessability. There is no need to download or register even. You simply log in with your google account and that’s it. As for functionality there is not much: you can select one or multiple answers, add images and videos and that’s pretty much it. It is a nice platform, but if you really want to put your students’ knowledge to a test you better use something like Socrative.

Hello again! Don’t you think this is the perfect moment to discuss how we can use google services in education? Well, I’m going to anyway. Google has many services for all kinds of need and the best part is, most of them are a part of the same ecosystem. So, let’s start right away:

1) Google Docs
Google Docs is a very popular service among many and not without reason. It helps to share information instantly among students and may even allow them to change that information. And, of course, it has many little features for your convenience, like cloud saves and offline work. So, with such functionality it can be used almost for anything from simple sheets of students’ marks to group seminar preparation and in-site chat makes it even better.

2) Google Slides
Should I even mention the importance of presentations in modern education? They are everywhere and the ability to view and change them from any device without necessity to carry storage for them is a lifesaver.

3) Google Drive
This is very simple, but effective tool to exchange and store files in the cloud.

4)Google Drawing
With the help of this tool you can draw beautiful, stylish and unique diagrams and charts. Talking about breaking the expectations. Anyway, Google Drawing allow you to create some nice diagrams in a matter of minutes.

5)Google Forms
This one is created to help you create surveys, tests, questionnaires and so on. Just like any other tool you can use it anywhere anytime, which is quite handy and can serve many purposes, like in-class test or simple homework.

Today's discussion topic is bookmarks. Today there are thousands and thousands cites in the web. All of them are useful in one way or another and it is only natural to want to save them all somewhere. Bookmarks seem to be a perfect solution, although your standart browser may lack tool to manage all of your bookmarks. Thats where bookmarking services come in play.

1)Raindrop.io

Raindrop is a very versatile tool. You can access it literally from any device in any form, be it browser, browser extention or mobile app. You can create different folders, create categories and tags to apply them to your bookmarks. Also, you can save not only links, videos and pictures too. I should also mention the interface. I think the main feature here is that it can be customized to suit your needs. The only minuses that I've found are minor: there are no cloud backup and you can only store 60 Mbs of pictures on free account.

2)GetPocket.com

Pocket is very similar to Raindrop in terms of features, but there is more. It is integrated with many popular apps and cites, so saving would be even easier now. And, of course, there is a premium. So, without premium you can't:
-search by the content of the bookmark
-use some of the premium fonts
-do as many notes as you want
As a result I would say that it is a very good service and premium isn't necessary at all.

3)Flipboard
While two previous services focuses on user-friendiness Flipboard offers something a little different. While it still a great tool for managing your Bookmarks, it also provides a social interactivity. And with social features comes one minus: there is no tags and foulders which can be crucial to some of you.