Saturday, January 21, 2012

Week 2 tasks.


Our tasks this week were to explore different web search engines, describe the class for the project, and elaborate an ABCD objective.
I have to admit that I took web searching for granted. I thought I knew everything I needed to know but I realize now that there are some many search engines out there. I learned a lot this week about different search engines that are specialized in specific subject areas. There are some for kids, for example AskKids, KidsClick, and Twurdy. Some academic like INFOMINE and Intute. I find this information to be very useful for my students and myself.
The second task was a little difficult for me because I did not know what kind of project I wanted to carry out. Therefore I did not know which class to choose. After some thought and planning I decided to use voicethread.com, which is a site that allows everybody to collaborate by recording a voice message, a written comment, a video recording about  a picture, video or slide. I finally decided on the class that is going to take part of the project.
About the third task, writing an ABCD objective, I also have to say that is the first time that I learned about ABCD objectives. I studied Bloom's Taxonomy, but I never actually used it. I think ABCD objectives are very useful in order to focus your scope and measure observable behaviors. Sometimes some behaviors are very subjective if you do not have a clear and specific objective. I have to say that I was difficult to elaborate the ABCD objective. I elaborated one but I still haven't gotten any feedback yet. I definitely need more practice, but it's great to learn how to elaborate ABCD objectives.
In conclusion, week 2 has been a great one. Learning about web search engines, ABCD objectives and planning my project are enriching experiences.These experiences can only broaden my horizon and I consider myself a lifelong learner. Now,  I can't wait to start week 3.

4 comments:

Rade Petricevic said...

Hi Fernando,
The second week was so excited because we had many threads to complete. All topics are so great and very useful ones. I don't know what to say about each thread because every word is redundant. The search topic was an interesting. We found out about many new search engines which can help us about finding all relevant material. The second thread, the ABCD model, is so, so good one. This topic can help us to write better and more precise objectives for our lessons. All in all, everything is so fantastic about this course and I am happy to be a part of this.
Best regards...

Fernando Beconi PLN said...

Hi Rade,
Thanks for your comments. I couldn't agree with you more. All tasks were so interesting. I also read your post and I feel the same.
Regards
Nando

Anna said...

Hey! First of all, you blog is very stylish and I can tell that you have lots of experience teaching with web tools. I am intrigued by the tool you mentioned, voicethread.com. Can you tell me more about how you are going to use it? What are the objectives of your course? What theme? And how old are your students?

I would like to work with someone on the projects and do some commenting from across the world. The students would have some pressure to create something special for there foreign peers and they would learn about another culture and get to practice constructive criticism when commenting each others' work. Check out my project idea here: http://bloggingenglishteacher.blogspot.com/2012/01/reflections-week-two.html

Talk to you soon!

Fernando Beconi PLN said...

Hi Anna,
First I'd like to apologize for not answering to you sooner, but I work full time so I barely complete all the assignments. Basically what I'll do with voicethread.com is to make my intermediate level students describe some pictures that I uploaded on the site. I saw some of your projects you did with your students and I think their great. On the other hand I don't think my students have easy access to the internet. If you have something in mind just let me though. I'm always interested in working on new projects.
Regards
Nando