About me

Hello, welcome to my space!

My name is Beyza Yılmaz and I work as an EFL instructor at Ozyegin University School of Language Instruction. I worked as an EFL instructor at Bahceşehir University and a materials developer for some language courses previously. I did my master’s degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at Middle East Technical University and wrote my thesis on Online Communities of Practice. I also have a CELTA and an ICT certificate from Trinity College, London.  I have been a member ofWebheads in Action for seven years and I am an ITDI mentor. In addition, I am a teacher trainer. I have co-moderated some Electronic Village Online sessions and done workshops and talks in nationaland international conferences. I  work as a teacher trainer at Pilgrims Teacher Training  and deliver courses on using educational technology in ELT and contribute to the development process of other educational technology courses.

I have always considered learning as a neverending journey and believed that in order to cope with the increasing amount of information and to keep up to date, we need to look for alternative  ways of professional development. Therefore, I look for different options and try to turn the challenges into opportunities both in classroom teaching and professional development.  I believe that utilizing the Internet for both of these purposes is extremely important for lifelong learning and equipping learners and teachers with the twenty first century skills sets.I do consider research very important part of this teacher development process. My research interests cover teacher development, multiliteracies,  use of Web 2.0 tools in language teaching and professional development, online communities of practice, learner autonomy and mobile learning.