“Objectives are not
fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do
not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies
of the business for the making of the future.”
Peter F. Drucker
The second week is almost over. I have one night and one day
to post my reflections.
This week I found out about new effective search engines,
such as I Seek Education, Social Issues, Twurdy, Noodle, Jurn, Academicinfo,
Intute, and many others, thanks to our instructor, Courtney, and to my
colleagues. So I came to the conclusion that Google, Yahoo, and Yandex are not
the only one in the universe, not a bad discovery! I have shared this news with
my students. I didn’t expect to surprise them, but I did!
The second thing I studied was the ABCD – method, from now
on I will use it to write the objectives. I was delighted to find out that Bloom’s
Taxonomy was revised in 2001, and now it is digital. Analyzing our course from
Bloom’s Taxonomy perspective I see that our individual work implies “Googling”,
which will be a science in future according to the article "The Future of Search", I liked it, a very
optimistic article. I hope that we will be doing Advanced and Boolean Searching,
the understanding at the higher level. Starting with our second week I can put
tags/links. This is an important achievement for me, because I always thought
tagging can be done only by professional programmers, thanks God I was
mistaken. Besides we continue blogging our reflections weekly!
We also got ready to start our final project by describing
our class. Many participants of our course described the general educational system
of their country. It was a good idea. I decided to present my students the way
I felt it was better. I hope my colleagues liked it.
Finally I’d like to share with you something I use with my
students. I love discussing local, national, and international news at the
beginning of our lessons. The website I always advise first of all is simpleenglishnews.com I ask them to get ready at home and retell a piece of
news from this site in the class. They can listen to the record of news in
English as many times as they need, new words are explained below the text.
Thus they listen to a native speaker, enrich their vocabulary with new words and
present the news in the class. After listening to each other’s news they have
to say what they found out from their group mates. So they repeat the most
interesting news. This exercise improves students’ listening and speaking
skills. By the way, I found out that there is such a newspaper in the USA.
The second week was very productive. Looking forward to
starting the third!
Ina
Hi, Ina.
ReplyDeleteI like that you start each class by sharing world news. I think that most students of this age really do not care about world events. As they learn English, it is up to them to become global citizens and to learn more about the world they live in. I am doing a presentation next week on globalization and being an international citizen and I am including information such as you suggested, to stay up to date on current events.
I enjoy reading your blogs and your Nicenet postings. This class has a lot of work and assignments, but it seems we are trying our best to learn from each other!
Good luck, Ina!
Evelyn
Hi Evelyn,
ReplyDeleteOur global community consists of 7 billion people. I think it is something normal to be interested in the world events, that is why I try to explain the importance of reading the news and of being in touch with the whole world. We share the same environment, the same air, and the same planet. We are one humanity.
Ina
I agree with you when you say that "we share the same environment, the same air, and the same planet. We are one humanity." i have gone through simpleenglishnews.com and have it quite enriching (form myself as well as for my students. I am already having ideas of inserting this part in my future lessons of 2013. Thanks for the sharing Ina.
ReplyDeleteRegards, Deep
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Deep,
DeleteI am glad that you liked it. http://www.simpleenglishnews.com/ has a good structure with different categories, such as business, entertainment, travel, grammar, quizzes, etc. So teachers who have different disciplines can easily find necessary directions. Besides, there is such a category as Simple English news-video.
Best wishes,
Ina