Week 2: The ABCD Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Web Searches

Pheww! It has been a very hectic and at the same time tech-y week for me. The week started off with a 3 days visit to two schools in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor area. As soon as I got back in Mersing, piles of exam papers were already waiting to be marked as students just had their second test. At the same time, I had readings and one post due Wednesday on Nicenet. Friday and half day of Saturday were spent on a Microsoft Access short course in school. Then only I have time to sit back, do my other assignments and keep up with household chores. Challenges of being a teacher and a student at the same time, huh? But I'm glad nevertheless. I learnt A LOT this week!

The topic this week is The ABCD Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Web Searches. What is The ABCD Learning Objectives Framework? Having read through the readings, basically it's a framework for teachers to set students' learning objectives i.e. what students can expect to do and gain from a lesson. Having done my degree in education, I have read about learning objectives before but this framework is somewhat new to me. The framework is really easy to understand and helps us as a teacher to set our learning objectives as well. Let's now look at the framework in summary:

Audience (A) – Who? Who are your learners?

Behavior (B) – What? What do you expect them to be able to do? This should be an overt, observable behavior, even if the actual behavior is covert or mental in nature. If you can't see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or smell it, you can't be sure your audience really learned it.

Condition (C) – How? Under what circumstances or context will the learning occur? What will the student be given or already be expected to know to accomplish the learning?

Degree (D) – How much? How much will be accomplished, how well will the behavior need to be performed, and to what level? Do you want total mastery (100%), do you want them to respond correctly 80% of the time, etc. A common (and totally non-scientific) setting is 80% of the time.

Source: http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/

Another thing I learnt this week is Effective Web Searches. Before this, I had the idea of Google being the best search engine. However, from this week's assignments, I got to know a whole lot of other search engines. I learnt that different search engine caters to different audience, functions and interest. For example, if we want to do academic research, Intute or INFOMINE may be a better option. Other than that, there are also several web searching tips that can help us to get results that we want faster and more efficiently such as using +, ~, and " " in our searches.

Last but not least, the greatest findings from Week 2's assignments, the all time favourite Bloom's Taxonomy! But behold, it is not the usual Bloom's Taxonomy we know because it is now Bloom's DIGITAL Taxonomy! Yes you read it correct - DIGITAL. Let's look at the diagram from  Educational Origami:

This taxonomy reminds me of how we all need to keep up with the technology so that we can deliver a good lesson to our students. Therefore dear friends, it is now legit for us to put these verbs into our lesson plans, okay? :)