Week 2 Exploration

“I like my job because it involves learning. I like being around smart people who are trying to figure out new things. I like the fact that if people really try they can figure out how to invent things that actually have an impact.” Bill Gates, Microsoft founder

I began my new post with the quote, because it really captures the essense of the work that we, teachers, do (although the job referred to in the quote doesn't have anyhting to do with teaching). Along with teaching goes learning. And it sounds like a great job to me! 

Week 2 is drawing to an end and I begin to feel more and more confident in using the Internet facilities as a teacher. I found out that it really offers an infinite amount of possibilities. One of them are numerous search engines, which turn out to be a good starting point if you have to find something specific. From now on Bing, Academicinfo, Intute and many others will be my *favourites*. In my opinion, it is very important to know where to start and what to write when you are looking for something. I have to say, that information at http://www.uoregon.edu/~dhealey/techtips/june2009.html was very helpful . I learnt how to write the right query to make the search successful and many other useful things.
This week we all had to describe our class and to write an ABCD objective.  To tell the truth, at first I didn't understand the meaning of the abbreviation. But after reading some materials, offered by the main website, it became clear to me. In fact, it turned out, that I've been using the ABCD system since my school practice. Because it's impossible to write a learning objective without mentioning the Audience, Behavior, Condition or Degree of mastery.  I should say that writing a clear objective helps you to plan a lesson the best way, so that you could reach the goal! The objective I posted on Nicenet.org turned out to have some uncertainty. But with the help of Janine, who left useful commentaries, I managed to accomplish this task. Reading other teacher's objectives and commentaries, I got a lot of information as well. Now I know what difficulties may arise when writing an objective and how to minimise inaccuracy.
Undoubtedly, I am going to apply everything I learnt this week in my teaching.  The search engines I discovered due to this course will be an unlimited source of information for me. And the ABCD style of writing learning objectives will be a starting point for planning a lesson, since they show what I expect from my students and help to define what I need to do to reach the goal.