So here you go, this is my last post. I can’t believe how fast this semester has gone, and looking back at my first post I realise how much we have gone through.

In my very first blog post I mentioned that I am not a very wordy person and find writing on a blog extremely hard. To my surprise, however, over the course of this module I have written over 15,000 words! I truly found the topic of material design fascinating and as a result found the writing on this matter a lot easier than I thought at first.

I met so many amazing and talented people on this module. I remember being slightly annoyed that the class has 21 students as opposed to an average of 7-8 people that are doing a Dip course. But I was wrong. The mixture of teachers of different nationalities from  teaching contexts made this class very special. I enjoyed  networking with my colleagues,  working on various tasks, and reading and commenting on their blogs. This is exactly the kind of knowledge sharing I was advocating in my first blog. It is a pity, however, that some colleagues didn’t open their blogs and didn’t get involved in the discussions.

I also looked at the notes I made at the beginning regarding my expectations of this module. This is what I wrote:

1.To gain a deeper understanding of materials and materials design
2. To get better at evaluating and choosing ELT materials
3. To get better at catering for needs of students and teachers
4. To explore the future of ELT materials
5. To create my own education product
6. To get involved in EdTech

Did I achieve any of them? I’d say so!  I have definitely got a much better understanding of materials and materials design. To illustrate, I have learnt how to analyse a coursebook and its tasks, created and evaluated my own materials, and worked with images and video in a completely different way than before. I have got a much better understanding of the world of ELT materials and its future trends. I am particularly thankful to Paul Slater for the talk delivered by Paul Driver who inspirited me to use augmented reality in my material design.  Finally, as I wished, I developed my own materials: augmented reality jigsaw puzzle and the vocabulary app exPLAYn. Both of them based on the use technology and I feel these materials are my little step towards getting involved in the Ed Tech revolution. I am also giving a talk about recent developments in educational technology which is organised by Sussex DoSA on 20^th July.

But most importantly, this module has taught me who am I as a teacher. In fact for the entire nine months I have been discovering, changing and rediscovering my role.  Regarding this module, I realised I am not a material writer. I don’t have a talent and frankly desire to do so. I am, however, pretty good at selecting materials and incorporating technology into the process of material design. And this is where I see myself heading in the future.