Planning a lesson in whichnew technologies are integratedneeds more careful and skillfulpreparationthanordinarylessons. Theteachershouldtakeadditionalmeasuresconcerninghistechnologicalskills , thoseofhisstudents , the hardware , the software , and the applications and thetoolstobeused in thelesson . UsingtheABCD formula , an ICTlesson plan shouldconsiderthefollowing points:
A = Audience :Theteachershouldbeawareofthedifferences in masteringtechnologicalskillsamongstudents . Thoughthey are all digital natives , someofthem are more advancedthanothers in usingthe computer and the internet . In somecountriessuch as Morocco , it'slikelytocomeacrossdigitallyilliteratestudents in theclassroom . A factwhich must beconsidered in assigningtasks and makingstudentswork in teams and groups .
B- Behavior : In planning an ICTbasedlesson , theteachershouldgiveclearinstructionstostudents and bespecific about thetasksthe are askedto do .
C- Codition :The conditions of an ICTclassroomshouldconsiderthefollowingconstituents :
The hardware : Theteachershould check theavailabilityofthetoolstobeused in thelessonsuch as thecomputers , thebeamer , the interactive whiteboard , thenetworkpasswords and thecompatibilityoftherunningsystemswiththeintended software tobeused .
The software : Theteachershould have an acceptable masteryofthe software or the application tobeused in theclassroom . Heshouldconsiderthe copyright issue atthe use of a digital resource . Whentheresourcetobeusedis a website , websiteevaluationshouldprecedeintroducingittostudents . In the case of forums , studentsshouldbewarnedofthenetiquettebeforetheystartpostingpublically .
The content ofthe digital resourceshouldbepedagogicallyappropriate and gradedtomeetthe objectives ofthelesson .
D- Degree : Theteachershouldinclude in hislesson plan thewayheintendstoevaluatehisstudents performance such as a welldefinedgridspecifyingthedifferentlevelsof performance thesuitable grades eachwillget .
A lesson plan which respects theABCDforfulaislikelytobesuccessful as ittakesintoconsiderationthetechnologicalskillsofthestudents , thepreparationofthe hardware and software , the digital content and thewayofevaluation .
The news which spread last December that Delicious was to be closed made Delicious fans panic and stampede for alternatives for their favorite social bookmarking service.Though Yahoo declared later that Delicious was to be sold not shut down , lots of Delicious users remained suspicious and continued to look for the best alternative to Delicious and the way to safeguard their bookmarks to it . The outstanding alternative to Delicious , at least in my view , is diigo I was using Delicious as my default bookmarking service . But when I started using Diigo , I discovered how more advanced and more interactive it is . Here are some features Diigo has in addition to the basic features of social bookmarking it shares with Delicious : Highlighting and annotation : In Diigo , you can highlight parts of the webpage you bookmark and send the provided annotation link to share it with others . Sticky notes : What makes Diigo interactive is the feature to add sticky notes to your bookmarks and share them with others who may add their comment to the sticky notes . Saving to groups : In addition to the possibility to save your bookmarks to your library , you can share them with the Diigo groups you belong to . Bookmark images and notes : With Diigo, you can bookmark images and notes and save them to your image and notes rubrics in your library . Sending to blogs : In addition to the possibility to send your bookmarks to your social networks such as Facebook , Twitter , linkedin , Diigo allows you to send them to your blogs and a different social bookmarking service such as Delicious . For these dynamic features , I think Diigo is the most outstanding alternative to Delicious .
To take part in the discussion on search engines going on on nicenet , I 'd like to present this search tool I found interesting . Mashpedia allows you to explore topics in real time , aggregating results from different social media content services such as twitter , facebook , blogs , videos , books , slides and others . The results are presented in website interface which allows you to surf from one result to another . If you are interested in video only , you go to the video page and if you are looking for pictures only , the right page to see that of images . I hope my classmates in webskills course would find it interesting
What makes google my favorite search engine is its ability to bring me a big amount of results in a lapse of time . However these results though rich and various , remain not well classified and I sometimes stumble upon undesirable things in them .When I use google to look for a document for instance , google is likely to bring me results which contain many things other than what I am looking for and I will need to filter these results so as to select the ones I need .This fact makes using specialized search engines very advisable . For this reason I made a compilation of the best 10 document search engines I was able to find online and shared it on my blog allsharing The list contains the following document search engines : http://www.pdfsearchengine.org/ http://www.osun.org/ http://brupt.com/ http://www.09h15.com/ http://www.docjax.com/ http://searchdocs.net/ http://www.findapdf.com/ http://www.pdfind.com/ http://www.typepdf.com/ I hope you would find them interesting
To tell you the truth , I have always avoided creating a blog to talk about myself or what I do !The blogs I had created were about some activities or materials for my students or resources to share with my colleagues . I sometimes claim that talking about myself would make me big headed . But the truth is that I am not skillful enough to do it well . As far as I remember , I 'have always been a terrible story teller and reporter even in my mother tongue !!! Now with Webskills e-Teacher course where creating a reflecting blog is a part of the assignments , I have no choice but to take this adventure and to talk about what I do in the course every week . What motivates me more is that I learned that blogging on my reflections will be very useful and beneficial to me as it will encourage me to look back through my practices in the course and scan them for my strengths which I will have to reinforce and my drawbacks which I will have to avoid . Please don't worry , I will do my best to do the task appropriately . Perhaps this course will turn me into a skillful blogger . Who knows ? :-)