G O O D B Y E

 

When I look back on how I came in contact with English lessons in my school days, technology rarely played a role. At most, videos were played in English class, or a CD of the teacher's songs was used to introduce us to the new topic. Before this 'Educational Technologies' course, I had never recorded a podcast, created a storytelling video, let alone created an entire blog. I think at this time it is important to integrate technology in the classroom. Students of all ages are in constant contact with technology in their private lives, be it on their iPad, cell phone, or thanks to video games. So why not use their interest in technology in a simple and fun way for learning purposes? In many cases, I think access to technology learning is also hindered by parents and teachers. Especially at my old schools, before I went to university, the teachers were often a bit older and couldn't even get used to interactive whiteboards. They simply weren't ready to educate themselves technologically and pass on knowledge with the help of technology - there were always only worksheets and their information came from at least 10-year-old index cards that were almost falling apart.

I really enjoyed the course and even though we were given assignments it didn't feel like we were limited in any way in our creativity. I loved that the teacher introduced us to so many helpful websites from all different learning categories, as I didn't know many of them but found them very well constructed and even recommended them to my mother who teaches English at an elementary school in Germany.

My favorite assignments of the whole course were creating the movie poster and infographic. I can't really explain why, but I was able to let my creativity run free and were only bound by small guidelines when it came to the design or the information. The tasks I didn't like so much were the blog entry about 21st-century learning because it seemed a bit stiff and boring in contrast to the other tasks, and the storytelling task. Not because of the assignment itself, I thought that was great, but because I really haven't gotten a foothold in video editing yet and couldn't meet the time limit either.

As a small note to improve the course, I would only suggest that the students can decide for themselves whether they want to complete each task in groups or individually (except, of course, for tasks where group work is not possible). However, this is only a personal opinion, because I, unfortunately, do not like group work at all and have had only bad experiences for years. Otherwise, it was a very great course, without stress with a lot of fun and a great, friendly, and open-hearted teacher. 

Thank you for a great time!

See you soon,