Web searching has always been an issue for teachers and students as well. The never-ending problem is digging and digging through layers of links that seem to be leading nowhere, and the ultimate objective of one's search is not met easily. However, having especialized portals, such as http://www.noodletools.com/ is definitely a way to ease our pains in the process of getting the information needed for our planning of lessons or for some kind of academic research.
As part of an academic institution whose teaching philosophy is linked to TBLT (Task-Based Language Teaching also known as TBI 'Task-Based Instruction') and that is intending to move to b-learning models of education, the writing of objectives has always been an issue among teacher mentors, teachers, and curricular developers. But through the experience of having to sit down and write lesson learning objectives based on the ABCD criteria (Audience, Behavior, Condition, Degree, http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/), one comes the realization that TBLT learning objectives for ELT programs can be written without much trouble.
After sharing my experience of writing objectives and web searching tips with my colleagues, over here in Costa Rica, I got to the conclusion, in terms of TBLT, that things are not as difficult as they used to be. After analyzing the information on http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/classifications.html one comes to the realization that the condition proposed on the ABCD criteria is somehow the schema activation students need and a bit of a pre-task commonly used in the task cycle of TBLT. The outcome of the objective, being this our observable behavior, can be assessed with more accuracy than it used to be before. The assessment of the ulterior/ultimate objective will depend on the expertise that students are meant to have in a given level in a English learning program. "Wow!," I did tell my parents, "you know what? I just discovered the 'hot water.' Now we can write learning objectives clearer than we used to, and we can desert our all ways of thinking of languague functions but integrate all skills to achieve an objective in class."
Yes! Writing objectives using the ABCD criteria allows teachers to integrate skills. Now we can replicate what ETS (Educational Language Services) has done with the TOEFL iBT and the TOEIC test to help our students in their language development bearing in mind the CEF (Common European Framework). (Visit http://www.alte.org/cando/index.php for more information on the CEF cando tables.)
Besides the "epiphany" on learning objectives, learning how to use especialized portals and similarly-designed webpages, teachers, and students, can benefit from the experience of doing more intelligent searches and getting great information to better achivve learning goals with students.
To conclude, let me share with you some interesting links that can be benefitial for teachers and students when working on research projects:
http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill1.htm
http://whs.d214.org/results/whslibspecial/researchhelps/bigsixlist.html
(Thank you both, Deborah Healey and Sandra Jeffs! Thanks for your thoughtful guidance in the E-teacher course at University of Oregon.)
Friday, January 22, 2010
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