29/06/2012
An English teacher from İstanbul has been congratulated by experts at Cambridge for her innovative use of blended learning in the classroom.
İlkem Kayican - who teaches at İstanbul Bilgi University in Istanbul - has won first prize in the annual Laureate International Universities Teaching Competition 2012 Sponsored by Cambridge ESOL, Cambridge University Press and Bell.
At the end of last year, the competition was launched in search of the most effective integration of technology and face to face classes, known as blended learning. İlkem submitted, Academic Writing and Researching Through Blended Learning - a project to encourage new media literacy in the classroom by using various social media resources. Feedback from her own students has shown their satisfaction with the project.
"We're delighted that İIlkem has won top prize," said Cambridge ESOL's Simon Wright - who was on the judging panel. He continued: "The standard of entries was really high this year but Ilkem's classroom approach combined relevant online learning for academic purposes with more traditional teaching methods to great success."
As part of her prize, İIlkem will travel to Cambridge this summer to take part in a two-week teacher development course at Bell. There were also two runners up as follows: Jonathan Acuña from the Universidad Latina de Costa Rica won IATFL Membership for one year and Elisabeth Una Mary Edwards from İstanbul Bilgi University won TESOL Membership for one year.