Osman Solmaz (Ph.D), Dicle University, Turkey (Project Coordinator)
Dr. Osman Solmaz is the project coordinator, who received his Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from an interdisciplinary graduate program at the University of Arizona (USA). Since his return to Turkey, he has been working at his alma-mater, Dicle University at the Department of English Language Teaching where he engaged in a number of academic and community service projects. Recently, he directed several projects including “English Language Teaching through Linguistic Landscapes”, which run between 2019 and 2020, and “Virtual Professional Learning Network for EFL Professionals”, which run between 2021 and 2022. Such experiences assisted him in building a strong and dynamic profile featuring dedicated commitment, organizational and leadership skills, and a career merging academic research and teaching, which will be contributing to the realization of the current project.
Vedat KIZIL, English Teacher, Diyarbakır, Turkey (Communications Assistant)
Vedat Kızıl graduated from the Department of English Language Teaching at Dicle University. Having worked as a freelance teacher in Diyarbakır in the past, he has worked in many language centres and schools as an English Language Teacher professionally in the years between 2016-2019 and 2020. As an English Language teacher, he was the active part of New Generation of Teachers’ Club in Dicle University in the years between 2016-2019. He is currently working as an English Language Teacher in Diyarbakır at the Ministry of Education. He has previously taken part as an active organizing member of VIPLEARN project, which was supported by US Embassy Grant between 2021-2022.
Kardelen ASLAN, English Teacher, Diyarbakır, Turkey (Digital Media Specialist)
Kardelen Aslan has recently graduated from the Department of English Language Teaching at Dicle University. She attended various webinars and workshops, including the ones conducted by Dicle University and Texas Christian University, on Linguistic Landscapes in addition to the symposium on Linguistic Landscapes with a presentation titled "Airport Signs As A Valuable English Language Teaching Material" in December 2020. In addition, she was a participant in Dialogic Teaching in English Language Teaching course with the collaboration of TUBITAK and Van Yüzüncü Yıl University in April 2021. Besides, in the 7th Annual ELT Undergraduate Students Conference conducted by Sakarya University, she was one of the speakers with a presentation on The Developing English Language Teachers. Being a student in the course of Teaching Grammar Communicatively conducted by the US Embassy and World Learning SIT Graduate Institute as an Online Professional English Network course, she presented her postcourse presentation titled with Dialogic Teaching and Teaching Grammar Communicatively in June 2021. She has previously taken part as an active organizing member of VIPLEARN project, which was supported by US Embassy Grant between 2021-2022.
Jonathon REINHARDT, Professor of English and Applied Linguistics, University of Arizona, Arizona, USA (Project Consultant)
Dr. Reinhardt teaches courses for English undergraduate, MATESL graduate, and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) PhD graduate students, primarily focused on teaching languages with technology, sociolinguistics, and teaching English as a foreign language at the University of Arizona. His research interests lie in the relationship between technological change and the theory and practice of technology-enhanced second and foreign language pedagogy, especially with emergent technologies like social media and digital gaming. He sits on the editorial boards of CALICO Journal and Language Learning and Technology, for which he serves also as Associate Editor. He served as President of the Computer Assisted Language Instructional Consortium (CALICO) 2019-2020 and will serve again next year.