Showing posts with label Star. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star. Show all posts

Tuesday, 6 May 2014

STARS' WORK: Changes in The Spanish Educational System. THE GAME!

Hi everyone! We are Mariano and Irene and we have been the stars in this practice.

 This week we have had a hard activity to do which included much responsibility on it. We have done a quiz that was based on the game Ladders and Snakes and all the groups have competed for an important prize to get the maximum reward.

 The objective of the game was to learn, understand and have an idea of our Spanish Educational System, so before starting to play the game, we have had our holidays to read and learn the main differences between LOE and LOMCE.

 The day of the game we were so nervous, we didn’t know the rules, and we couldn’t communicate with the other classmates of our group so we worked under pressure. But, finally the game was as we expected.

 Although we didn’t win the game, we have learnt all the information that included LOE and LOMCE; but the most important thing is that we have spent a wonderful time all together preparing the game step by step with conceptual maps, unifying our maps with the others of different groups who had the same topic, building and reviewing the questions for the game…

To conclude, we would like to say that this group experience has been very satisfying for us because though we didn't win the main prize, we won points for being the best group who had built the questions for the game thanks to the votes of our classmates.


Here you can see some of the photos that we took before starting the game! #selfiegiveme7

 
 
 



STARS: Mariano Castillo & Irene Martínez
 

Thursday, 10 April 2014

STAR: 32 Questions About Topic no. 5 for "The Game"

Greetings!


These are the 32 questions about topic no. 5 for "Changes in The Spanish Educational System Overview: The Game". Our peers from C´mon Tutankamon! rewieved the cards, and our group supervised them. We think they have done a great job.



Give Me 7

-The subject “Conocimiento del medio”, how does it change with new law, LOMCE?

-The head teacher of a school has retired and another must be appointed. There is a teacher at school with 4 years experience and he has the training course on the development of the management function. Could he be a candidate?

-The parent of a student assaults a teacher in a public school. What might be the implications according to LOMCE?

- If a child, who studied the subject of Religion for several years, changes school and wants to continue studying this subject, but the new have to study Civic and Social Values or has the school to offer the subject of Religion?


Brainstorming

-Regarding to the secondary education private centres, who is responsible to promote the curricular specialisation?

-Why are educational centres losing their democratic management with the LOMCE?

-What are the student´s rights as defined at LOMCE?

- In relation to interim staff, who is responsible for the management of their contracts? What is the criteria to contract/maintain interim staff and requisites for their selection?


T8T

-If you happens to be an interim teacher in a School and your time there is over… Is there any possibility that you stay at that school?

-What does it mean “curricular specialization”? Is it going to be run in Primary schools?

-If you were an interim teacher who is part of the general list, what  would be the limitations that LOMCE introduces to choose a school to work in?

-What does “the school development plan include” Name at least 4 items.


The Little Ants

- If you were teacher of the educational institution, could you summarize the school development plan?

-What does the school development plan of the educational institution includes and what are the values in which it is based?

-As for funding of Educational Authorities we can say that they may be bigger in specific case, what case is it?

-What the educational administration do at the beginning of each course?


Step by Step

- In the pedagogical and curricular organization education has to be supported by…

-Can a school choose all the materials and resources they want?

-What is the aim of having coordination between the primary education curriculum and the secondary education curriculum?

-What are the divisions of the sections in the educational framework?


Hide and Seek

-In relation with the economic management made by public educational institution, have they complete autonomy to manage?

-The school has set of rules, which are they?

-What competences related to the educational is assumed by the municipalities?

-In what three areas is where the educational institutions enjoy a wide degree of autonomy?


The Teachleaders

-What are some of the School board´s functions?

-What are the bodies that promote the participation of the students in the university life?

-Which areas can we distinguish in educational institution?

-What are some of the functions of the municipalities in the administration and governance at local level?


Educational Rush Hour

- Which are the main items of the educational project and where are included?

-Which is the annual general procedure of each school according to organizational management?

- The main changes from LOE to LOMCE in each section are…

-Which are the different section of Administration and Governance at Local and/or Institutional Level I and what they talk about?


C´mon Tutankamon!

- What are the three main aspects of the management resources? Can a school get additional resources when it need? How?

-An educational institution is going to prepare its school development plan. What section must be included in? Are there any differences among the actual and the previous law?
 Explain them.

-A new teacher has arrived to a school legislated by the LOMCE, the current law. Is he or she involved in the organizational management of the school? Justify your answer and say how his involvement is.


-What a school development plan is formed by? What does it promote?

STAR: Javier Marín Garcerán

Tuesday, 1 April 2014

Natalia starring in: "Changes in the Spanish Educational System"

I am the star this week, so I have to include some evidence of our work in the blog.

This week we have worked in a new activity which relies on a document that explains the Organization of the Spanish Educational System (for references, see the Curator-Farmer post).

Here, we have learned five topics but my group and me only had to work in two topics, the first one  is called "The Primary School" and the second one "Administration and Governance at Local and/or Institutional Level I".

In the first topic, "The Primary School", we find four diferent parts:

• Aim and General Objectives 
• Schools providing Primary Education 
• Education Policy 
• Legislative References

And in the second topic called "Administration and Governance at Local and/or Institutional Level I" we find a subtopic "Administration at educational institutions level" where we have worked on "Non-university institutions" which has three sections:

Pedagogical and Curricular Organisation 
•Organisational Management 
•Management of Resources


We have made a conceptual map of each one (with Canva software), where we included the changes, modification and extra informacion from LOE to LOMCE.

We prepared both conceptual maps for Monday, but in the class, the teacher distributed all the maps with the same content between different groups.

My group had to work on the topic "The Primary School", along with the supervisors (THE LITTLE ANTS, which helped with the ratings of our Cmap and those from the other groups). At this time, we had to collect all maps, that is, maps of my classmates (T8T and Brainstorming) about the same topic and our own map, in order to improve the content of our conceptual map. We, as a group, believe that we can always enhance our work and learn from our peers, so we never think that our work is superior to the rest of our classmates.
So we review the subject from other groups and compare it with our map. Thus, we corrected our mistakes as we redrafted the map.

This is the result:




But firstly, we want you to know some informations to understand the our C-Maps:

On the map we find different colors: 

ORANGE represents the different sections 
YELLOW means permanence, that is, what maintains the LOGSE from the LOE
RED means change, extension or modification, that is, what the LOGSE has changed from the LOE
GRAY is supplementing information.


Secondly, I am going to explain each part of "The Primary School" mindmap.


1. In the first point called "Aim and general objectives", we find two diferents articles which have some distinct things, Articles 16 and 17.

In the Art.16."General principles"  there are three sections, but only the second part has been modified:

b) The purpose of primary education is provide students the  learning of speaking, listening, reading, writing, numeracy, acquisition of basic notions of culture and habit of living as well as those of study and work, artistry, creativity and emotions, in order to ensure  comprehensive training that contributes to the full development of the personality of the students and also prepararing children from high school.


In the Art. 17, "Objectives of primary education", there are different sections (from a to n), but only three are modified:

b) To develop individual and team work, effort and responsibility for the study, as well as attitudes of self-confidence, critical sense, personal initiative, curiosity, creativity and interest in learning, and entrepreneur spirit. 

h) Learning the fundamentals of Natural Science, Social Science , Geography, History and Culture. 

j) Use representation and artistic expression and start the construction of visual and audiovisual proposals.

In the second point, called "Schools providing Primary Education", we find Art. 111, 114, and 116.

In the Article 111 called "Designation of Public Schools," a new Art.111 bis  is added, "Information and Communication Technologies".

The Art. 114 "Private Centers-Denomination" is equal in LOGSE.

In the Art. 116.8, "Charter schools", we can see a difference: The educational authorities may call for public tenders construction and management of private schools over public land.


On the third point, "Education Policy" , we found some articles that have changed: Art. 20, 21, 59 and 122.


Article 20, "Evaluation During the stage":

The Art 20.4 LOGSE is about: Special attention to the students, the realization of early diagnosis tests  and the establishment of mechanisms to reinforcement school success.

In the Art. 20.3 sets:  Assessment to all student at the end of the third year of primary education, for checking the adquisition of basic skills (lenguage and mathematical). If failed, teaching team will take appropiate actions, as repetition of 3rd year.


Article 21, "Final evaluation of Primary education". Here the Art. 21.1. stablishes: Assessment to all student at the end of the third year of primary education, for checking the adquisition of basic skills. If failed, it will have no academics effects. It´s only informative and for guidance.


In the Art. 59.1. Basic Intermediate and Advanced Levels correspond with Levels A, B and C (subdivided into A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2.)


The Art. 122 "Resources" adds a new Art. bis, called "Actions to promote the quality of schools" which stablishes the use of ICT.



In the last point "Legislative references" we selected the references:


a) BOE, no. 295. December 10th 2013.

b) BOE, no. 52. March 1st 2014.



On the other hand, we also do the concept map of the topic"Administration and Governance at Local and/or Institutional Level I" . On this map we can also see the color pattern, which have the same meaning as the previous conceptual map (and the design plays with the Spanish flag colors).



We hope the maps are clear and easy to understand and learn from them! 

STAR: Natalia Martínez Alcázar

PD: A huge THANK YOU to the other groups, especially THE LITTLE ANTS.



Monday, 24 March 2014

The Stars this week.

This past week, Maria José and Mariano, were the Stars.

The activity consisted in summarizing all the contents we have learnt until now, all the practices we've done so far, using Moovly, a fantastic tool to make videos.

First we learnt how to use this creative software and then we decided how to organize the information we wanted to show and explain to the whole class. We decided to do it in a dynamic and funny way and also we tried to tell each other what we wanted to say, in order to make it clearer for all our schoolfellows.

We explained the five topics we had to talk about in this order: first we talked about Ilustrating Words, then about TPACK, create a Treasure Hunt, using Free Resources and Tips for Presentations, and finally about the Dark Side of Textbooks.

What we wanted to say in our video is what we have learnt in this first part of Scholar Organization and Educational Resources and our conclusions about each practice we have done these last weeks. You can see the video through our youtube account. Please have a look at it.

Stars: Mariano Castillo Escudero and Mª José Herrero Atiénzar

Tuesday, 18 March 2014

★ Star ★ : "The Dark Side of Textbooks"

We decided to do an infographic, since is a powerful visual format that involves great creativity and is strongly related to ICTs.

Besides, there are a lot of benefits of using this scheme:

• 90% of information that comes to the brains is visual.
• 40% of people will respond better to visual information than plan text.

Related to our infographic, I would like to remark that we use an original design, inspired by one of the most famous album covers of Pink Floyd: "The Dark Side of the Moon".


You can appreciate the similarity between them:




All the data is collected from ANELE (Asociación Nacional de Editores de Libros y Material de Enseñanza).We put all the disadvantages commonly known classified in fields:

Economical:
Textbooks have been considerated for so many years as a necessary and essential tool for teachers, and editorials have obseved that, so that's the reason why textbook have become in a real huge business.
In fact, every year since economic crisit started, editorials have earned more than 800 millions of Euros in our country.

The most obvious problem is the expenditure for the families. In Spain, a family has to pay more than 100€ per child and year, just in textbooks, and not all can afford them. Another problem is Editorials prevent families from reuse textbooks.

Ideological:
Most of the best known editorials are owned by the Catholic Church, and normally goes according to the political party that governs in that moment, so it is obvious that textbooks have an ideological content. The problem with this is that children will be strong affected by this and won't let them to think by themselves, indoctrinating them in some way, without any possibility of know different points of view or contrast information, in order to have an own conclusion or opinion.

Educational:
It's common to see how textbooks present the content in a decontextualized and isolated way.
Many of the practices of teaching/learning which imposes the use of textbooks are very outdated and systematical: It consists in an exposition of the unit, comprehension, exercises and memorization.

Another problem related to textbooks is that they don't take into account the student diversity in the classroom.

Epistemological:
The textbook is the only source of true knowledge and, therefore, does not contribute to develop the real knowlede that must have a child; it doesn't allow children to look for another resources or alternatives.
Children read those books as they were a bible, doing that we are transmitting them, the feeling that they must believe everything that they read.
Textbooks don't offer the opportunity to create knowledge, while it would be better for them to search information and know how to discriminate it.

De-professionalization:
Editorials decide the content of the books, making curricular concretions, choose certain pedagogical theories and didactics, motivating most of them for business and influenced in the government learning politics. So actually, teachers don't choose the contents that transmit to their pupils.
According to this: the editorials are who really decide learning on the children. then, why are we sutdying a degree to become teachers? It would be enough just knowing to read.


Alternative to the textbooks:

Nowadays we live in a technological society and we think it is important to develop these skills in the classroom so, the teacher would have to get involved into teaching children how to get on that kind of world. They must learn to look for information and know how to contrast sources.

As an alternative tool we suggest ICTs, in order to use the imagination, and their experience to get children have curiosity, and motivate them. It's also important the possibility that the teacher could decide which are the correct method and manner for the teaching/learning process.

For that reason, we can metion another kind of alternatives, where teachers upload their own notes or units, and can actualize it as long as they desire, because of they are not static:

-Teacher's notes
-Blogs
-Sites
-Digital platforms
-Digital portfolios


Despite all of that, I would want to remark that we are not against textbooks: they are neither good nor bad, it's just the way we use it. Textbooks can help to the creation and learning but can also become a tool that completely degrades and distorts the teaching.
We could combine a good textbook, using it in a good way, with another kind of material or resources, previously mentioned. One of the most important things for an effective education is to know what knowledge the pupils start with. From there, the teacher can adequate the contens to the children or even modify it if it's necessary.

Finally, I would like you to take into account the effort that entails this kind of work. We tried to make it, as professional and original as we could, and it took a long time, becuase we started from scratch. (even the graphics were created by ourselves!)


Star: Alicia del Carmen Lova Ortiz

Monday, 3 March 2014

Star´s work of this week "TELLING STORIES: Free Resources and Visual Presentations"



The topic that we chose for our oral presentation was "The Food Chain...with Dinosaurs" so we made a funny presentation with a slideshow for supporting it and try to explain it as good as possible.
With this practice we have realized the importance of make a good work using only free resources for developing them and using material with licence under a CC Licence.

Our slideshow for the presentation and exposition of our topic was made of thirteen slides and a complement ( the glasses ) for a better understanding.

As I imagine that not all of you could attend our great explanation, here's a video that shows our work  so you would have the chance to learn with us about the food chain in a fun way!

Hope you enjoy it !


Tuesday, 25 February 2014

STAR'S WORK: TREASURE HUNT. Cartographic Projections


 
PRACTICE 3TREASURE HUNT. CARTOGRAPHIC PROJECTIONS


  First of all I would like to say that our group have chosen Australia and United Kingdom to do this activity because there are many differences between them such as one is the northern hemisphere (Australia) and the other is in the southern hemisphere (United Kingdom); their size is different; and the United Kingdom was and still is, one of the world's most powerful nations.







  Map Projections (RobinsonMercator and Azimuthal).

-       What is a mapmap is a representation of all or part of the Earth drawn on a flat surface at a specific scale. Maps were devised because they are much easier to use, store, and transport than globes, and they facilitated the development of much larger scaled representations than was the case with a globe.


-     What is a map projection?  map projection is a method used to transfer the features of a globe, such as the lines of latitude and longitude and the outlines of continents, onto the flat surface of a map. This was originally done with the use of a light to project the shadow of a wire-skeleton globe onto a flat surface―hence the term “projection.” The three major types of projections developed from this method are the cylindricalplanar, and conic.


 Before starting explaining the differences between the three maps, I would like to say that in all of them appears a distortion, so they are not exactly as the reality.



  Mercator Projection  by Gerardus Mercator (1563 - 1569):

      - PROS: The Mercator projection is one of the most common systems in use today and it was specifically designed for nautical navigation. Being a cylindrical projection, Mercator shows a great deal of the globe and is thus very good for world maps. 


           - CONS: The Mercator projection is very accurate in equatorial areas but at high and middle latitudes begins to appear a distortion. You can see for example this distortion on the poles. One of the worst characteristics of Mercator is that it severely distorts area. If you see the size of Greenland and South America, they are almost identical, so if you only studied the Mercator, and haven’t looked at a globe, you would come to the conclusion that Greenland is larger than South America, and South America is actually 8 times the size of Greenland. This is because the countries in the northern hemisphere appear with a larger size than they really haveand the countries of the southern hemisphereappear smaller than they actually are.




  Robinson Projection by Professor Arthur E. Robinson(1963):

     - PROS: The Robinson projection was developed to show the entire Earth with less distortion of the area. It looks more beautiful than the others.

     - CONS: In this projection the world appears like an oval; however, the poles appear as lines rather than as points.


  Azimuthal Projection
-    PROS: These maps are useful for navigation; distances from or through the map centre are true and also the directions from the map centre to any other point.

-    CONS: These maps cannot show the whole earth. Typically these projections show about half of the earth; so they are not good for world maps.


  
 





  What could be the best projection for being used in a classroom?

We discussed about this question, and we finally decided that Mercator projection is better for children who live in Europe because as I said before, it is very accurate in equatorial areas; and also Europe appears in the “centre” of the map, therefore it will be easier for European children to learn and orientate themselves. But Robinson projection could be better for children who lives e.g. in India. In any case we think that for little kids will be suitable starting with Mercator projections, and gradually learn more complex maps.


  Search another example of one specific media:
Media (news, movies, TV...) can sometimes distort reality and alter society's behaviour: 
            Our example

-       VIDEO GAMESspecifically CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE SERIES
Video games industry is the biggest entertainment industry in the world (bigger than cinema, music, dvd’s, etc). The worldwide videogame market is worth $93 Billion in 2013. But war videogames (first-person shooters mostly) can desensitize and trivialize war. E.g. the Call of Duty Series, one of the most famous and best-selling videogames of all times, gives children a very pro-Western and black-and-white vision of reality. The heroes of the story are mainly North-American or European (Anglo-Saxons mainly), and the terrorist villains are mostly Russian or Middle Eastern countries related.


E.g. in CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE 2 “NO RUSSIAN” STAGE, players assume control, joining a group of Russian ultranationalist terrorists enacting an airport massacre. You can shoot innocent people just for fun:
PLAY THE BEGINNING OF VIDEO: CALL OF DUTY MW2 “NO RUSSIAN”
How can we mitigate its effects: teaching children war is not a game, and pain and suffering is real. We can show them more friendly videogames, talk about how bad wars are, show them documentaries, tell stories about war (but nothing too bloody, of course). And mostly, children AND parents must respect the ESRB Ratings Guide.

 
  Find on the web another good example of a treasure hunt.
 
-We find on the web another good example of a treasure hunt which name is “Animals of the wold”. This treasure hunt is prepared to do in a primary school with children who are 11-12 years old, in about 1.30h. 

-They have to do teams of 3 or 4 students each one and they have to use computers to do it; so the only inconvenient is that schools have to have an area with computers.
 
-In this activity children have to look for information about these animals that appeared in this URL web sides and they have to answer the following question: “Where are they in the world?” 
 
-At the end of this activity, students learn how to obtain and use information from the web, while improving their comprehension and reading skills among others.


 
STAR: Irene Martinez Bermúdez
 
 
 
 

Two useful videos related to Education

I have just found some interesting videos which are related to education. Please have a look at:


  • Better learning, better life

  • ChronoZoom curriculum and technology


I am (always) a STAR: Exposing TPACK to our classmates.

As this week´s star, this morning I have explained our TPACK diagram to our classmates (about 10 groups in total , my throat hurts from too much talking!). I have illustrated each group about the significance of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) as a conceptual framework for teaching-learning processes and the acquisition of skills for an effective integration of technology . I have also explained the meaning of the traditionally so-called main fields of knowledge (Content, Technological, Pedagogical) and the "subfields" that arise from the interaction of those three main fields (TCK , PCK , TPK) . Another part of my explanation has been to explain why we have chosen to represent each concept with a symbol ( as a continuation of the practice "Illustrating Words") . So every field of development and each subject in this first course in Primary Education is represented by a symbol which makes their identification easier . To the left of our poster (in order to not saturate the central drawings) ,and under a short description of each field of development, we have placed the symbol of the subject that we believed identified more accurately with each field.


It has been a very satisfying experience. useful to overcome stage fright and acquire greater fluency when speaking a foreign language. On the other hand , after several groups I could feel the fatigue of my colleagues and my own´s too . Also I have not had enough time to explain a practical case of using TPACK in the real world: for example, how we can use technological and other resources when we are teaching English language in a primary school (using podcast for listening , ebooks for reading .. etc).
As a final word, I'd like to emphasize that all our drawings and icons on the poster were digitally drawn using Photoshop (and that's a lot of work!), inspired somehow by the idea of ​​creating a concept map that looked like those street-maps for big cities.