Online tools for my students

This is an arbitrary list. These are what I basically use/rely on and what I recommend when my students ask. I intend to develop the list and of course all recommendations and comments are welcome:)
1. A blogging software: Blogger or WordPress.com Nowadays, I prefer WordPress. Inbuilt statistics, better templates…
2. A Gmail account. Gmail. All Google Applications require a Gmail account. I wonder why you don’t have one already…
3. Google Docs. It is a great tool to produce collaborative work. It has also Forms to creating surveys..
4. Open Office. In case you are pissed off with Microsoft Office. You can download this Office software which is free. Not as good as Microsoft Office yet but it is still satisfactory. Well, I have written my dissertation by using Google Docs and Open Office programs…
5. Bibme. A free, simple place to create your bibliographies in several Biblio formats. Honestly, I used this to create my bibliography for my dissertation.
6. Paint.Net. A free image editor. That’s the one I use constantly. Some recommend GIMP but I haven’t tested that at all. Let me know if you recommend, too.
7. InfraRecorder. An open source cd burner. That’s what I use for my CDs I listen to when I drive:)
8. For file storage and sharing, in addition to Google Docs, I use Box.net. For a better sharing, I feel like Scribd becomes a better place though…
9. Google Reader. An excellent tool to follow blogs and sites through RSS feeds. I follow more than 400 at the moment and Reader is just great…
10. Tweet Deck. Saved my life. I could not figure out how to use Tweeter more effectively and now I am getting used to Twitter usage:)

the Euprera Social Media Awards 2010

Erkan is  jury member in this event:

Enter the Euprera Social Media Awards 2010

Are you a PR student, researcher or educator doing great things with social media?

Here’s your chance to have your achievements recognised, boost traffic, link to leading colleagues, present your work at one of Europe’s leading social media conferences  – and win 250€!

As part of its EuroBlog investigation into the impact of social media on public relations practice Euprera will make three awards at its February Symposium at Ghent, in Belgium, February 2010. Each winner will receive a prize of 250€.

Timetable

Shorlist announced: Sunday, January 24

Entries and nomonations open Sunday, October 11

Deadline for entries: Friday, January 1, 2010

Deadline for final blog postings to be considered by judges: Friday, January 8

A first in Erkan’s lecturing life

Photo by Şeyda Yiğit. From a lecture in 2008

In two hours, I will be lecturing on “Representation” to a group of Media and Communication Systems MA degree students. This is the first time I will be lecturing at MA level. For seven years, I taught at undergraduate levels and now here comes a first in my life and I am actually a little bit stressed:)

My new office, new officemate

post-service settlement -Part II

As of September 29, Prof. İsen and Dr. Saka become officemates. A power team emerges! 🙂

I had been a TA for Prof. İsen before and I owe him lots about socialhacks I have now and his great help in the last minutes of dissertation writings.

A day of recommendation letters and write-ups

I have spent most of my day preparing recommendation letters for my students who apply for Fullbright fellowships. Tomorrow is the deadline for yearbook write-up and right now at this mid-night I am thinking of producing two write-ups for two of my dear students…

Registration week begins…and Erkan offers some weblinks…

 

The busiest week begins at Bilgi. That is, the course registration week. I got up at 8 am and I have slept only three hours. It is always good to recognize how good the early morning is but then you got up late again whenever you find the opportunity… Anyway, this week i am all tied up to my office.

In the mean time, one of my most loyal readers, Christian Runkel decided to blog in English. His German blog was inaccessible. Google translation is helpful but still one needs to read immediately. Anyway, Christian, keep up the English blogging!

The great EU blogger Nosemonkey has some advices for new EU-focused bloggers here. 

The webmasters of Art Market Online requested me to announce the launch of their website a while ago. It looks interesting, have a look. 

An old friend of mine, Vanessa Able, a freelancer journalist, lives in Mexico City now and she has great photos in her newly designed home page.

Here is a great list of Open Source software for Windows. 

Bologna Process at Bilgi

What do we do in the campus now?

It is the semester break for students but we work on several bureacratic tasks. I change readings every semester so now i have to work on two syllabi for the courses I will be lecturing in the Spring semester. The classes will begin on 16 Feb. But next course registrations begin, which is a very busy week.

However, we all also work on the Bologna Process adaptation. It is officially announced. Higher Education Council expects a fast adaptation in all Turkish universities. Our syllabi and academic programs have to be in accordance with the Process: 

Acc. to wikipedia: 

The purpose of the Bologna process (or Bologna accords) is to create the European higher education area by making academic degree standards and quality assurance standards more comparable and compatible throughout Europe, in particular under the Lisbon Recognition Convention. It is named after the place it was proposed, the University of Bologna in the Italian city of Bologna, with the signing in 1999 of the Bologna declaration by Ministers of Education from 29 European countries. This was opened up to other countries signatory to the European Cultural Convention of the Council of Europe; further governmental meetings have been held in Prague (2001), Berlin (2003), Bergen (2005) and London in Spring 2007.

……….

With the Bologna process implementation, higher education systems in European countries are to be organized in such a way that:

• it is easy to move from one country to the other (within the European Higher Education Area) – for the purpose of further study or employment;
• the attractiveness of European higher education is increased so many people from non-European countries also come to study and/or work in Europe;
• the European Higher Education Area provides Europe with a broad, high quality and advanced knowledge base, and ensures the further development of Europe as a stable, peaceful and tolerant community benefiting from a cutting edge European Research Area;
• there will also be a greater convergence between the U.S. and Europe as European higher education adopts aspects of the American system.

 

Our system is already based on Western university structures.  However, it is hard to talk of a single European academic structure while American system is quite standardized. Ours is somewhere in between. I do not believe in the short run Bologna process will bring a leap for the European academia but in the long right, it will certainly help… In the mean time, we will have to figure out how to be more "student oriented" according to this logic.

From Black Friday to Good Friday

Erkan in a modest but excellent fish restaurant- another hidden secret of Istanbul- with his colleagues from Child Studies and Youth Studies units at Istanbul Bilgi University.

Last Friday was another down moment in Erkan’s life. It started with exchanging civilized words with a girl who first flirted with me and then backed down. Since I am experienced with that, this moment of seeing the girl wouldn’t upset me but it was the first small ring of a chain of events to come. Then came time for the lecture for my course on Intellectual Heritage- a history of thought course for PR students that covers from Enlightenment era to Semiology. It was a disaster. In my five years of teaching at Bilgi, I have the most indifferent audience. So I left the lecture with anger, coming back with making a quiz, intending to lower grades. A threatening tool I never used before and I don’t believe it will really work.
then came Beşiktaş game. Good play but we lost two valuable points at home against Sivasspor. It was a terrible moment of despair. And finally I got back home and saw that Blogger was banned.

By Sunday night these happened to make feel better:
Beşiktaş was still at the top of Super League. Galatasaray, Trabzonspor, Bursaspor and Gaziantepspor all lost points and we could still remain at the top.
I talked to Milliyet about Blogger ban. It was published on Monday. I would later be interviewed by CS Monitor correspondent Yigal Schleifer whose articles are frequently quoted in this blog. I am quoted in Turkey tightens controls on Internet speech. I might be the only one in Turkey who benefitted from this ban:)

 In the mean time, I had some correspondence with Carole, Rice Antro coordinator. It is now something even more tangible. My defense will be on 8 December. I bought my plane ticket. I will be hanging around in Houston between 1-22 December. I am still expecting to hear from my readers whose feedback will sweat me in the remaining days. But I can handle that.

Blogger ban lifted temporarily.

I had some good lectures during this week, did some work for the thesis and did lots of reading. I am expecting to have a Good Friday tomorrow.

Beşiktaş fans from a previous European Cup game. Source: Milliyet daily.

 

 

Erkan’s 10-day writing camp begins

After a few very angry and agitated days, I am alone and relaxed. Turkey has entered a 9-day official break. An ultimate statement of a lazy society. The occasion is Ramadan Bairam or Şeker (sugar) bayramı. Naming the bayram is an ideological act- oh i begin to be agitated again. For a person like me who fasted all Ramadan, all of the month, it feels like a Ramadan bayram. But sensibilities play a role. Our secularist citizens would prefer the latter. Attempting to ignore the religious connotations. Understandable at that level and I don’t care really. Nobody can ignore the other at this stage.

But whatever the case, Erkan has a plan. This is a 10 day writing camp for me. In the end, on the evening of October 6, I intend to submit the very first full draft of my dissertation! I now postpone all other anxieties, tasks, duties until Oct 6. I intend to forget huge credit card debts, failed relations, annoying people around me.

Last week was the first day in the classes.
I have met with my new first year students. We will be together all year. My first impression is positive. It wasn’t so last year. Among 18 students there is not a single Beşiktaş fan or Heavy Metal listener. This is not good but i can survive with that.
Because a huge break was about to start my Friday afternoon course was not very eventful. Half of the class did not show up and thus missed the beginning of my lecture on Enlightenment. I intend to lecture on Enlightenment for three more weeks though.

Just an hour later I passed through there:

Strong winds topple Istanbul minaret, 1 killed – International Herald Tribune

 

"We won’t be Bush’s dog" 

Turkish court acquits British artist over portraying PM as US poodle
A Turkish court acquitted Michael Dickinson of criminal charges despite citing "some insulting elements" in his depiction of Erdogan as a dog attached to a 

Radikal offers here a gallery of anti-Erdoğan cartoons. 

PM Erdoğan is frequently subject to pejorative cartoons. Still, his attempts to stop them was one of the biggest mistakes he made, I believe….

President Abdullah Gül was at Bilgi!

santralistanbul seems to be the headquarters of Istanbul 2010 organizations.  From L to R: Aydın Uğur (Rector), Kadir Topbaş (Mayor of Istanbul), Abdullah Gül (President), İhsan Bilgin (Vice Rector), Oğuz Özerden (chair, Board of Trustees). Mr. Gül chaired a meeting on Istanbul 2010 organizations at santralistanbul.