Her main interests are in using blended learning and Web 2.0 tools to enhance the
learning environment and inspire creativity in the classroom. For this reason, she
has started a number of projects that involve her bringing guests into her classroom
using the internet telephony programme Skype (www.skype.com).
During the hands-on online workshop BaW in 2011, Ayat met and started a friendship
with a colleague, Maria Bossa from Argentina, and together, at the end of March 2011,
they came up with the idea of an intercultural project with their lower secondary
school learners. They decided to each be a guest in the other teacher’s class and
let the class interview them using Skype. In a podcast discussion about the project,
Ayat said they chose Skype ‘because it’s a synchronous web tool which allows
real-time live discussion and it extends the walls of the traditional classroom and
it engages students to communicate with an authentic audience, and having an
authentic atmosphere in class is something very important and it’s not always
there, we have to seek it’ (Bossa, Stevens and Tawel, 2012).