WEEK 2: Search Engines/ABCD Objectives

First of all, I would like to say that this week was beyond of my initial expectations. At the beginning of the second week, when I read the title “search engines” I thought that this week there would not be so many things to cover. Soon I understood that it was just because of my “ignorance” about the search engines. I have just known “google”. What I have read this week (both the required readings and the participants’ posts on Nicenet) have contributed to my understanding a lot. I realized that I am not good even at google though it is the unique engine I have been using. I learned many useful tips for searching through google. I learned about using + sign to combine the words I search for; using – sign to exclude the words that you do not want to appear in the results. I also learned about tilde for the synonyms. Now I want to add one more thing. When you want to search for specific file types, you can use “filetype:pdf” just after the query. To illustrate, you can write your query like "vocabulary practice for clothing fletype:ppt" This one may have been told in the posts or you may already have known it. I just want to share it just in case. The most important outcome for me about the search engines is the doaj.org and openj-gate.com. I admired both of them and I think that I will frequently make use of them from now on. Through the posts sent by the course participants I got aware of the search engines to be used for powerpoint files (mentioned by Mbarek ) for educational purposes (mentioned by Ali).
With regard to ABCD objectives, I realized the significance of setting objectives beforehand once more. I certainly appreciate that we should have a clear mind about what our students are, what we expect them to do after every lesson. Writing objectives down will definitely contribute to have a clear mind. But the thing is that I have too many different classes here filled with students at various levels. And it is not so easy for me to write down the objectives before every class. It seems that I will use what I have learned from this topic for certain classes but not all of them.
And finally, I want to comment on the final project step 1. I chose one of my classes to work with for the final project. I really want to introduce a change to the students in that class in order to make the instruction more effective. Now, I am not certain about what to do. I am just interested in Course Management Systems which I think can bring about a change in the way I desire. I would be happy to hear your suggestions about what to do with such a class.