Reflections for Week 2: Using Search Engines and Setting Objectives

Joining the Webskills Online Course has been a great leap of faith for me. Getting the confidence to join it and even participate in it has been a great joy and pleasure. It felt wonderful to learn for others and exchanging ideas and comments with great educators from around the world. Having weak and most of the time no internet connection creates some difficulty for me to have excess to online materials. Having to drive 45 to 60 minutes to the nearest town to have strong internet connection does have its perks like time to reflect, getting to buy rations for the week and once in a while have long conversations with people who join in the car ride together.

This week I got the chance to examine so many different search engines that I did not know exists. What I normally use for my web browsing are just Google and Youtube. One new search engine that I particularly like is http://education.iseek.com/iseek/home.page where I could search on one topic and so many results. And the best part is that it helps you to sort out and narrow the different results based on the different topics such as topics, sources, subjects and etc. It helps so much when you are rushing for time and need to filter and search more information.


Nowadays students are very tech-savvy and teachers need to keep up with them. Without technology in the classroom teaching we can not bring the world into the classroom. Students are very much visual learners. They able to see thing helps them to understand concepts and ideas better. Teachers need to utilize technology into teaching. Combining both worlds helps us to create an interactive and interesting learning experience for our students. I myself am a visual learner. I love reading but  I still need pictures and videos to help me understand concepts. Having students who are weak in English, this ability helps me to understand how my students learn and able myself to get pictures or videos that are suitable for them to learn.

This week in the Webskill Course we got to use the ACBD Behavioural Objectives. Using this method it helped me set clear objectives for my teaching. Getting to identify the audience (A) for my lesson and what they would be able to do at the end of the lesson (B) How they would learn (C) and finally the degree of accuracy (D). I have found that using this method, I do not have to waste my time going around my head trying to figure out what went wrong with the lesson (why the students could not understand the lesson). But rather I could set the final outcome or result that I wish the students to achieve. Setting clear objectives helps me to reach the goal.

Some websites on the ABCD Behavioural Learning Objectives I went through:-

1. http://www.beyondblue.org.au/docs/default-source/senseability/a-b-c-d-model-essential-example.pdf?sfvrsn=2
2. http://teacherworld.com/abcdobjectives.html
3. http://www.joe.org/joe/2005october/tt3.php
4. www.mdfaconline.org/presentations/ABCDmodel.doc