Well... This is awkward.
I had actually intended my last post to be my... well, last post but I just learn that my last post is supposed to be my last post... postception. Anyway, so hi again everyone. In this final post, I will be talking about this term and all of the tasks I completed. Now, I will be keeping this post brief as I have already mentioned my opinions in a detailed manner in the respective posts of the tasks.
This term was interesting. We studied and learned from our computers, so for most courses, this wasn't all that productive but this course, Material Design, is a technology integrated course, so one could say that having the course during the pandemic turned out to be much more productive than it would've been in a classroom, then again that's only my opinion and I don't actually have an idea as to how this course would be conducted in a classroom setting. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this course, as much as the previous Educational Technologies course. My main reason is that this course, in fact these courses, are highly product-centred. Other courses are more subject-centred and this causes them to be nothing but a list of items to memorise for the midterms and finals, but Material Design has taught me valuable items that I can, and will actively use in a classroom environmentö which brings me to my next point of discussion.
My absolute favourite task was the Augmented Reality task. Such a simple process, only adding a picture or a QR code for learners to scan and suddenly the entire task takes a whole new level, with different ways of approaching it. Students can travel around a bit first before answering the questions, do some research about the land or the building, talk with their friends, etc. The communicative aspect of the task, which I greatly value, increases by an immeasurable amount with this simple method. Flipped Classroom is also a very interesting method, one I would like to try and experiment with, as it allows to use the valuable class time with correcting mistakes and errors and focus on communication. In light of these tasks, my least favourite would be the Language Awareness Task, or the Corpus Task, as I like to call it. Maybe I couldn't use it to its full potential but the whole idea seems far-fetched to me and I don't think many students will effectively use the corpus for its intended purposes or they simply won't understand it as a concept.
それでも, both the term and the course turned out as good as I expected them to be. My experiences from the Educational Technologies course last semester really helped me out (I mean, I re-learned Photoshop and learned Audacity, pretty useful stuff). As a special thanks, I would like to thank my friend Cansu Yılmaz again for her support and partnership and my lecturer for both Material Design and Educational Technologies courses Dr Gökçe Kurt Tiftik, without whose instruction and feedback we wouldn't be able to complete these tasks and know these instructional strategies of the modern age.
Thank you for reading, stay safe!
