Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow...

 

Hello, my lovely audience!

Today, I am greeting you for the last time… at least for a while.

As you may have noticed, summer is here and we have come to the end of the term. And that means our ICT & Material Design course - which I opened this blog for - is also coming to an end. In this last post, I will wrap up my thoughts and reflections, and talk about my experiences in this course.

Well, I was never much of a tech girlie, to be honest. And before taking this course, I had some fears that I wasn’t going to do well. But after taking it, I realized instructional technologies are actually fun and nothing to be scared of. They’re quite easy to learn! Maybe that’s also because we had a wonderful professor, I don’t know. 😏😏

Anyways, this course really opened new perspectives for me and made me realize that if I want to use technology in my classroom one day, the knowledge I currently have is not enough, and probably never will be! There are always new things, tools, and sites to learn and explore. Also, with the help of this course, I realized that simply knowing about certain technologies is not enough to integrate them into a classroom. There are some steps, frameworks, etc., and you have to be careful with what you choose. There are a lot of things to consider, and being aware of this is important.

It wasn’t always rainbows and butterflies, of course. Sometimes I struggled during the course, but it only made me want to learn more! And in the end, realizing that I was actually perfectly capable of completing the tasks was what made me truly happy. Before the course, I didn’t even know what an infographic was, how podcasts were made, or what a digital story was... Let alone reading/writing a blog, I wasn’t even totally aware they still actively exist. I thought they were too old-fashioned. But after the course, I created every single one of them myself, and my views totally changed!

Surprisingly, the most enjoyable task for me was definitely the blog process throughout the course. I loved expressing my opinions on what we did in a non-formal, more “me” kind of way. I am seriously thinking about starting my own blog or continuing to use this one for different topics someday, and that’s all thanks to this course!

I wouldn’t change a single thing about the course. I really enjoyed every single task, and I am sure everything I learned here will help make me a better teacher in the future. Now that I know how to use and manage different types of technologies and AI, I’m confident that I can make good use of them. I think all pre-service teachers should attend a course like this, especially considering the century we live in.

Well, thank you all for being with me during this tiring but fun journey! Yes, this whole thing was for a task, but I was always writing to an audience at the end of the day, and that really motivated me and made me happy.

Now, I know this is goodbye, but I also know it’s not a permanent one. So, take care and stay tuned, you guys! Who knows, maybe I’ll make your screens pop again someday!

Lots of love.

Your homegirl, 

Sıla 💖