week 2

The week 2 of the 'Webskills' course started on Monday April 8th 2013 at 8 am Pacific Time. For week 2, the focus is on web searching tools and creating behavioral learning objectives. 

We have learned a lot of things with the readings especially how to write learning objectives, following the ABCD method. The letters stand for: A (audience, meaning who are your learners?); B (behavior, meaning what do you expect them to be able to do?); C (condition, how to do it?) and D (degree, meaning how well will the behavior be performed?).  Experts' views about learning objectives are highlighted in the documents. One of them was Bloom with his very interesting taxonomy that helps to classify objectives. The pedagogical implications are to help us to state explicitly what we want our students to gain from a specific lesson. If the statements are explicit the teacher indeed knows what to accomplish and how to do it.

From the readings, we have also had guidelines for creating further searching. Google has so far been the sole searching tool used by many people. Now it's obvious that depending on our needs we have a variety of tools for better searches. Among those I had never discovered before we have: Intute, Surfwax, iseek Education to name a few. 

Insights into these documents have made possible very fruitful discussions through Nicenet. The first is about Web searching and the other about the ABCD objective. We were asked to apply what we have read and to give our impression.  Regarding the ABCD method I have particularly learned to be more precise and concise when planning a lesson. The best thing I like in it is the evaluation level of this method and the fact that the learner is at the center of the lesson.

In addition, we have made in this second week the first steps of our project task. We have to bring into our class 'a technology inspired change'. In fact, we experiment in our classroom a new technology that we have never used before. I tried it last Friday and it was wonderful. This is a good way to enhance learners' motivation and consequently to make the teaching/learning process more effective. 

To sum up, it is not an exaggeration to say that I have been learning how to teach by principles. The knowledge is very sophisticated creating a positive shift. Week 2 has been very practical. The instructor is intervening less and less, letting the participants actively working themselves. We are indeed enjoying both theory and practice and an interesting interactivity.