Journalist for The Game. The Important Thing is to Learn.

Hi! 

This week we played the "Snakes and Ladders" game for testing our knolewdge about the LOMCE. Our stars, Irene and Mariano, studied deeply the question cards, and with the help of all our group clarified and review the contents and implications of the law. Through this practice, we have learnt that the approval of the LOMCE and the many changes that will bring about the LOE creates a display in which the educational sector are facing one of the biggest challenges in its history. I think that from the educational point of view is complex and can be very frightening for us as future teachers. 

Altought we did not win the game, we as a group are very proud of our stars, and as I say in the title, the important thing is to learn.

Just like our educational system...

Related to the ICT subject and the Lomce, you can read this interesting document to help you understand better the changes:

http://issuu.com/bealg/docs/analysis_of_the_loe_and_lomce_in_re

Now, onto our final exams...good luck to everyone!

Journalist: Javier Marín Garcerán.

The Journalists Of This Week: "The Game"

This week we have been working on the masnificent game with the questions about the laws and the different topics about Scholar Organization.

This task seemed easier but at the end it wasn´t as easy as we thought. We have been working a couple of weeks on different topics of Organization of the Spanish Educational System, especially topic 2 ( The Primary School) and topic 5 (Administration at Educational Institutions Level), but this week we had to review all the topics and asked four questions each with their respective answers . At all times we have tried to give our best ideas when we were formulating these questions and get them to be as creative and complete as possible to learn all the contents.

For this, it was necessary to read and search for information and documentation about LOE and LOMCE some web links that wee were working on last week: the European document that explains the Spanish Educational System, the LOE (the previous educational law), the new LOMCE and a document from CCOO that makes a comparison between both laws, among others.

When we were trying to formulate the questions we had a look at the forum of the subject on the University webpage to guide us with the different conceptual maps that we had made with the other groups and we made in class last week and picked up the principal changes introduced by LOMCE.

https://aulavirtual.um.es/portal/site/1134_G_2013_N_N/page/49481f2e-8ce6-4421-a9b2-8b31c737787f

Here you have some pictures of our hard days of work, but as you can see we never miss our coffee in the canteen!

Finally we want to share with you this wonderful blog that is helpful for both teachers and students or future teachers:

http://edutech4teachers.edublogs.org/

Journalists of this week: Mariano Castillo and Ana de Lara

My Reporting of "THE GAME"... I Feel Like Lois Lane

Hello everyone!

This last week we started with the second part of the subject: Scholar organization.

For this new part, the method of work is going to be more or less the same as before, but it consists on a big activity, that is going to be divided in smaller tasks (all of them related to the changes in the Spanish Educational System).

Each group had allocated two topics that explain the Organization of the Spanish Educational System, which in our case were these ones:

- The Primary School  

      ·Aim and general objectives

      ·Schools providing Primary Education

      ·Education Policy

      ·Legislative references

- Administration and Governance at Local and/or institutional Level I    

      ·Administration at educational institutions level

      ·Non-university institutions

      ·Pedagogical and curricular organisation

      ·Organisational management

      ·Management of resources

Due to there were 2 topics on which we had to focus, we decided to made two groups in order to distribute better the workload of this activity.

So, in this way, each group focused on a topic of the law, and after having deeply studied, each group continued to make concept maps.

For this, it was necessary a lot of documentation, such as web links, the European document that explains the Spanish Educationl System, the LOE (the previous educational law), the new LOMCE and a document from CCOO that makes a comparison between both laws, among others.

Referring to the mind maps, we were looking for a good internet Cmapping tool. Finally, we decided to use CANVA, and amazingly simple graphic design that I recommend to other students. We think that the result was professional and we tried to do it as clear as we could.

This week, the different groups had to group and discuss about the CMaps; in our case we worked with our fantastic classmates from The Little Ants, and among all we unified all the information in a final mindmap.

You can look at the final results in the post of my partner Natalia:

http://giveme7blog.blogspot.com.es/2014/04/i-am-star-this-week.html

Finally, I would like to talk about others classmates' blogs:

I recomend you to visit the fantastic blog of our classmates C'mon Tutankamon. They have a very good CMap, good content and good design too. It's clear that this group have been working hard this week. 

Congratulations girls!

It's also interesting the way that our classmates of Education Rush Hour.have made their weekly post. 

Instead of write in their blog, they decided to innovate and record theirselves talking about their roles. 

Great idea!

Another interesting web that I've found recently is EducationWorld: The Educator's best friend

It's a website founded in 1996 with the aim of create a place where teachers could gather and share ideas. This place provide us with original content, including lesson plans, practical information for educators, information on how to integrate technology in the classroom, and articles written by education experts.

If you have time, please, have a look at it.

Journalist: Alicia del Carmen Lova Ortiz

I Am the Journalist this Week!

This week I am the journalist, so I am going to tell the history of the group and the dynamic of the weekly work. Also, I have to collect some pictures of the processes.

In addition I have to explore and comment blogs from outside the class and from our own class.

1. I am going to start with the first part of my work, telling the dynamics of the Week.

The practice of this week, called "What have we learned?”, consists of recopy everything we have learned in the course and with this information, we have to make an animated video, “Moovly”. So, we have carried out five practices throughout the course and in this way, the aim of this video is to set out what we have learned in each of them in a summary form.

Before starting work, we established that each member of the group should know the "Moovly"´s program and know how to use it.

First, my teammates and I tried to divide the work. We think that to start our Moovly, we should do a sketch which contain the phrases that the stars were going to say and also a series of slides to structure the video.

In this way, we already had the theory. The second step was to go to practice.

So, secondarily, some members of the group were responsible for making the sketch: thinking animations of each practice. Other members of the group should think appropriate phrases which stars would record. And finally, other should make "Moovly base" which would be modified by all.

Thirdly, once this part of the process was ready, everyone had to log in "Moovly" to modify and add icons, images and phrases in the video. So, little by little, the video was taking shape until it was finally finished, just missing the voice audio. Thus, the audio of the stars was added to video. This was a bit complicated because the voice must be consistent with the slides. It was a hard work but we could do it!

2. The second part of my job is to comment on some blogs, so here I leave the links where I have added my comments:

Comment from a blog outside of class: http://t-applicada.blogspot.com.es/2013/11/moovly-presentaciones-animadas-para.html

This blog is about Moovly program that shows animated presentations for teachers. I think it is very interesting and useful because we are future teachers and we should know this information.

Comment from a blog within the class:

http://hideandandseek.blogspot.com.es/2014/03/we-are-so-proud-of-our-work-that-we.html?showComment=1396090434882#c4536908269157393949

3. The third part of my work is to collect pictures:

 

Here we can see GIVEME7 working hard in the practice: "What have we learned?"

In this picture, our Moovly is being presented!! 

In this last image, we can see the final results after the collective vote of the Moovly. We are in third place!!

Natalia Martinez Alcazar: Journalist

Journalist's work this week.

This week we've been working about the bad side of text books in schools. What we have done is firtsly to study some of the editorials here in Spain in order to see  how do they work and then we analyze how do teachers use them, which is the real main objective of this. Secondly we decided what about work was going to talk about, I mean, the parts it is going to have. And lastly we decided how will we present it, this time, in an infographic.

We decided what type of infographic we were going to present to our classmates in class so that they could understand our point of view about the bad side of text books.

This is some photos of us working hard in this practice which we've enjoyed a lot.

And this is our star this week, Alicia, exposing this mornig.

This week I've comented in Education Rush hour's blog because I liked so much their presentation:  http://educationalrushhour.blogspot.com.es/  

Also I have discovered a very interesting blog about education which I loved: 

http://english4childrentoday.blogspot.com.es/

Journalist's Work This Week "TELLING STORIES: Free Resources and Visual Presentations"

This week we have been working in our practice called “Telling Stories: Free Resources and Visual Presentations”. This activity is composed of two different parts although we have divided into three ones; we have made three groups to distribute our work.

The first group had to create a topic to any content on Primary School and the start had to prepare an oral presentation about it with a slide show for supporting and she had to present it for us, our classmates and to our teacher on Monday morning. Those who were responsible for making this activity were Javier Marín, Mariano Castillo and Ana de Lara (the start of this week). They searched for information on the Internet and they also looked up information in some books to create this part; and all the drawings have been made by Mariano Castillo.

The second and third group had to upload a show presentation to slide share with 30 slides on it. In this presentation you can see 10 slides which explain what the Creative Commons Licences are and another 20 slides which show the 20 basic tips for developing a good presentation. The second group was composed of Alicia Lova and Natalia Martínez; and the third by María José Herrero and Irene Martínez. We have searched for information on the Internet (websites, blogs, …) about our different parts and also we have chosen some different photos which all of them have Creative Commons Licences.

Before starting with our practice, Javier Marín offered himself to take the responsibility to draw the storyboard with our opinions and with our contribution of our different ideas.

When the parts were done, every pair had to explain to the star and to other components of the group what had worked and learned so that everyone knew correctly the development and purpose of the practice.

We believe that this practice is a useful dynamic activity because the work have been distributed more easily and each one of us work specific contents instead of a range of concepts and also, because the rest of the contents have been explained to you by your peers, and vice versa which give you an improvement in your skills and capabilities.

Here you can see our star of this week, Ana de Lara, explaining our topic "The Food Chain...with Dinosaurs" to our classmates and our teacher.

 

COMMENTS ABOUT OTHERS CLASSMATES’ BLOGS:
 I have been watching our classmates’ blogs and give me 7 have decided that the best groups which have been working hard this week have been:

·       The Teachleaders. As we saw on Monday morning, their presentation was clear, with a lot of colour and so expressive. Any kind of children could understand the presentation easily. Congratulations!!
 

http://theteachleaderssoyer.blogspot.com.es/2014/02/star-i.html#comment-form

 

·        Hide and Seek. All their images were drawn by hand and slides did not contain too much information so people focused on listening to them instead of reading information, and also, as I said before with the other group, their presentation was easy to understand.

http://hideandandseek.blogspot.com.es/2014/02/hello-i-ammaria-jose-gomez-and-this.html#comment-form

OTHER BLOGS

I find a blog which is so interesting and I would like to recommend you. It is about teaching ideas using ICT. the main activity that you can see on this blog is called "Podcasting", a wonderful way of allowing children to share their work and experiences with people over the Internet. You can see "What is a podcast?", "How do you make a podcast?", "Examples of a podcast"; and many others wonderful things. Let's have a look!

 

 

http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/ict/podcasting.htm

JOURNALIST:  Irene Martínez Bermúdez

Journalist´s Journal: a journey around the jungle

As this week´s journalist I am going to tell the dynamic of our group for this work about a “Treasure Hunt”. This practice is divided into three main parts (Cartographic projections, Media distortions and find another Treasure Hunt), so, after several "general meetings" to discuss new ideas and focus content, we decided to distribute the work in pairs. When the parts were done, every pair had to explain to the star and to other colleagues what had worked and learned so that everyone knew correctly the development and purpose of the practice. For this practice, we believe that this is a useful dynamic for two reasons: first, the work is distributed more easily and each one of us work some contents; second, because the rest of the contents are explained to you by your peers, and vice versa. Therefore, your communication skills are improved.

The first part of this practice was an example of Treasure Hunt related to cartographic projections: we had to choose two different countries (one European and one non-european) and compare their representations in three different map projections (Mercator, Robinson and Azimuthal). So we had to search the web for information about this projections, their differences and conveniences. We chose United Kingdom and Australia, and the differences were pretty clear: a clear example of how media (in this case, maps) can influence the view of the world we have. Second part of this work was find a media that distorts or can distort children´s view about the world or reality. We chose videogames, especially Call of Duty Modern Warfare series, as an example. First-person shooters desensitise and trivialise war. We found a video about a particular stage of Call of Duty MW2, called “No Russian”, in which the main objective for you as player was to shoot indiscriminately at people in an airport, with no further explanation or sense. Last part of this practice was find another example of Treasure Hunt in the web. We found a Treasure Hunt about animals of the world (hence the "jungle" part of the title, bad joke, i know it!);  for this task we ask children to find in which country certain exotic animals live. For this purpose we provide kids with some zoo´s website addresses, where they can find information of such animals.

For all those tasks I searched our peers blogs and another websites, where i left comments. I found useful information for description of cartography maps, videogames and internet treasure hunts in (among others, please check out our pearltree): 

T8T Team's Blog

http://t8tteam.blogspot.com.es/2014/02/more-info-about-maps.html

Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM)

http://www.icsm.gov.au/mapping/map_projections.html

Mike Seccombe.(March 26 2003)."Propaganda games give a distorted view of reality".Sydney Morning Herald. 

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/25/1048354604340.html

and

Lexington County School District One

http://www.lexington1.net/technology/?page=instruct/hunts.htm

The final goal of this Treasure Hunt is we have to learn how to teach children search for information in the web for specific tasks, and through our cooperation and working methods I think we managed to achieve this purpose.

JOURNALIST OF THE WEEK: JAVIER MARÍN GARCERÁN

Mapmaker kits for children (and not-so-kiddies)

An interesting resource for use in school classroom (National Geographic mapmaker kits) related to the practice using maps we´re doing this week:

http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/program/nat-geo-mapmaker-kits/?ar_a=1

We are Journalists (1st Week)

This week we made ​​two different practices: a more extensive one and the other a little shorter. As to the first practice , "illustrating words" , our objective was to know how to illustrate the words that we have chosen. To represent them we draw different characteristic drawings, although in this case we could also have used some image based on Internet, we didn´t use them. As we will see, our first post on the blog was this first practice and a small conclusion about it.

In relation to the second practice (TPACK) we have carried out several procedures. to start with this practice as we had no idea what it was , each member of the group had to investigate, search information and learn about the topic treated, in this case about TPACK. When each member of the group knew what we were talking about, we started with our diagram.
We hadn´t any problem by  working in groups , and although at first we had some doubts as to represent our diagram , we get a solution as soon as possible to make a great job.

The presentation of our diagram was a pefect work and we are very happy with the result.

In short, this week despite being the first contact with the subject , we are very excited and eager to work and take a the day our blog and our twitter, the subject in general.

Ana de Lara and Mariano Castillo