TRANSLATOR OF THE WEEK: Changes in the Spanish Educational System Overview: "The Game"

Those are the 5 terms we used and learned this week:

Directive Board: serving or intended to guide, govern, or influence at schools.

Resources: A resource is a source or supply from which benefit is produced. Typically resources are materials, services, staff, or other assets that are transformed to produce benefit and in the process may be consumed or made unavailable. Benefits of resource utilization may include increased wealth, meeting needs or wants, proper functioning of a system, or enhanced well being. At schools we will find educational, human and material resources.

Educational Administration: it is a branch of university or college employees responsible for the maintenance and supervision of the institution and separate from the faculty or academics, although some personnel may have joint responsibilities. Some type of separate administrative structure exists at almost all academic institutions, as fewer and fewer schools are governed by employees who are also involved in academic or scholarly work. Many senior administrators are academics who have advanced degrees and no longer teach or conduct research actively.

Evaluation: it is a systematic determination of a subject's merit, worth and significance, using criteria governed by a set of standards. It can assist an organization, program, project or any other intervention or initiative to assess any aim, realisable concept/proposal, or any alternative, to help in decision-making; or to ascertain the degree of achievement or value in regard to the aim and objectives and results of any such action that has been completed. The primary purpose of evaluation, in addition to gaining insight into prior or existing initiatives, is to enable reflection and assist in the identification of future change.

School success: the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors; the accomplishment of one's goals. So probably at school a success for the students is to pass with good grades all the course.

The translator of the week: Ana de Lara Torrente

Translator's Work This Week - Build the questions for being included in the game

CO-EDUCATION : coeducation refers to the system of education where both men and women attend the same institution. Coeducation deals with institutions like schools and colleges which are usually attended by both genders.

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: the body of law derived from a country's written constitution. It lays down and guides the duties and powers of the government, and the duties and rights of its citizens and residents.

SECTORIAL CONFERENCE OF EDUCATION: an authority of cooperation between the State and autonomous communities with an educational level.

CURRICULUM: The term curriculum refers to the lessons and academic content taught in a school or in a specific course or program. In dictionaries, curriculum is often defined as the courses offered by a school, but it is rarely used in such a general sense in schools. Depending on how broadly educators define or employ the term, curriculum typically refers to the knowledge and skills students are expected to learn, which includes the learning standards or learning objectives they are expected to meet; the units and lessons that teachers teach; the assignments and projects given to students; and many other things.

SPANISH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM: Is the set of educational authorities, education professionals and other agents, public and private, to develop regulatory functions, funding or providing services for the exercise of the right to education in Spain, and holders this law, as well as a set of relationships, structures, measures and actions implemented to lend.


TRANSLATOR: Irene Martínez Bermúdez

I'm the translator this week.

Our words or terms to define this week and which we have used the most to do the weekly practice are:

1.- Law: It's a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to the correct govern behaviour. The two laws we have worked this week are LOE, which is the old one and LOMCE which is the one we have now and which changed last year in order to improve the educative system.

2.- Article: An article is each of the points a law have and which can be changed or modified. What we have done this week is to compare the changes in both laws, LOE and LOMCE in relation to primary school and then  to reflect it in a conceptual map in order to help the people understand it without knowing anything about the topic.

3.- Conceptual map: A conceptual map is something which we make in order to sumarize clearer an specific topic. In this case we have done a conceptual map with the changes between both laws, LOE and LOMCE. We have reflected the changes and also the things that were the same and didn't change at all.

4.- LOE: LOE is the 'Ley Orgánica de Educación' from 3rd May, 2006. which rules the educative learning in Spain between the ages of school until university publised in the year 2006/2007. This law now, in 2013 have changed to LOMCE because they were necesary some changes on it and do it better.

5.- LOMCE: LOMCE is the 'Ley Orgánica para la Mejora de la Calidad Educativa' which modifies the LOE in some aspects and articles in order to have a better education. It was publised 9th December 2013. It is the one that rules education now and which has improved the system.


These both laws are the ones which we have been analyzing and studying during this week and when we analyzed them we did a conceptual map in which we showed the modifications between them when LOE changed to LOMCE.

Translator: María José Herrero Atiénzar.

Translator : What Have We Learned?

The activity of this week entails the use of new tools and resources, so for us, as a group, I think that the task in general has been very useful; we have discovered new ways of create and present our work as well as familiarize with editing tools.

Web 2.0 tools: Social media provides a variety of tools, commonly referred as Web 2.0, that educators can use to engage students and enhance essential skills (communication, collaboration, creativity, media literacy, technological proficiency, global awareness...) Other tools can be leveraged to become more efficient and effective at what we do in education.
In this field we can remark MOOVLY, as a tool 2.0 that we can use to create animated videos, banner adds or interactive presentations in an easy way. We used it for create a video summarizing what we have learned during all these previous weeks.

Thanks to this activity, using this kind of tool, we have been able to encourage:

Creativity: We have developed our imagination, to can get a visual, attractive presentation
 that awake the interest of the rest of our partners.

Teamwork: Because of Moovly  is a collaborative tool, there is the possibility that several students edit the video at the same time, which means a groupal work, where everyone participates and is necessary to reach a common understanding to work in the same direction.

Summarise: Our last task consisted of, in a short period of time, being able to synthetise the key concepts we have learnt. With Moovly, we had to create brief and dinamic animations, so the collected messages and ideas must be expressed in a clear, visual way.

Online Tutorial: To can work efficiently, firstly we had to search for information about how to create an animated video using Moovly.com editing tools. For this, we had  to watched several online tutorials, in Moovly's own webpage, and also in Youtube.


Translator: Alicia del Carmen Lova Ortiz

I Am The Translator In "The Dark Side of Textbooks"

This week I am the translator, so I have collected the five most important terms that has been learnt on the week, and also I have to include the definition of each concept.

The five terms that I have selected are the following:

1.Textbook or course book : Manual of instructions presents in all fields of study. Its production depends on the demands of educational institutions. Textbooks can appreciate them in printed format and even today there are eBooks (electronic books). It is a teaching tools, in many cases the content of the textbook is based on the notes of a course.

2.Information graphics or infographics: Graphic visual representations. These may be related to information, data or knowledge. It aims to present complex information quickly and clearly. The use of graphics is useful for better vision system. This may be related to data visualization, information design, or information architecture.

3.Editorial: A type of company that is responsible for the publication and distribution of writings. The edition of the book does not include the activity of circulating the information available to the general public (distribution). In some cases, authors may be their own publishers.

4. De-professionalization: It is a process in which the range and professional competence are disqualified. It aims to gradually reduce and eliminate the quality and qualities that characterize a professional training and career university. De-professionalization provokes teachers to lose autonomy and creativity. In addition, this leads to a didactic immobility.

5. Epistemology: It is the branch of philosophy whose object of study is knowledge. As a theory of knowledge, it is concerned with issues such as the historical, psychological and sociological circumstances that lead to the attainment of knowledge. This also meant a clear and precise definition of the epistemic (for example truth, objectivity, reality concepts or justification.)

We have made ​​an infographic related to textbook. In this graph we have included some points which I have selected the most difficult to understand (editorial, de-professionalization, epistemology) .I hope that these terms will be helpful to everyone, because they are necessary to understand our work of this week. 

Natalia Martinez Alcázar

Two Translators Telling (old?) Stories

This week the practice was to learn how to do a nice and useful presentation using free resources, so we have chosen 5 concepts that, if used sequentially, can help us to create and develop an outstanding presentation, flowing like if were telling a story.

• Storyboard: a series of illustrations displayed in sequence for the purpose of serving as a guide to developing a story, previewing an animation or following the structure of a film.  Storyboards are an essential tool for making and developing a good presentation, as they allows a visual and mental guideline to follow.

• (Free) Resources: materials (documents, pictures, drawings, music…) that we can use for our work and can be copied, edited, altered, redistributed...always with permission of the owner. Usually those materials should not be used with commercial purposes. Within this concept we can find Creative Commons and many tools and websites (Flickr, Jamendo..) for using resources rationally and legally.

• Creative Commons licenses: is public copyright licenses for the free distribution of a creator´s work. Authors give the right to share or use upon their artistic production. There are four kinds of licenses for protection and flexibility of owners: Attribution (BY), Share-alike (SA), Non-commercial (NC) and Non-derivative (ND). GiveMe7´s blog is under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) since it´s beggining.

• Tips (for developing a presentation): advices that could be followed for designing, preparing and delivering an effective exposition, e.g. know your audience as well as possible, choose fonts well or make good eye contact, in order to get people engaged by your subject matter and presentation skills.

• Slideshow:  a presentation of a series of still images on a projection screen (or on an electronic display device), typically in a planned sequences. Well-formulated slideshows allows speakers to match illustrated images to a verbal exposition. The development of a storyboard as a first step is key for a clear and organized slideshow, and as with any public speaking, some rehearsal is required to make an engaging and useful presentation.

Related to educational competencies, presentation skills become very useful as the teacher can effectively display information to groups, transforms himself/herself into a good communicator, learn how to use a variety of presentation methods to maintain group focus and how to change tactics midstream if something isn’t working. And all of this using resources with the permission of the legal owners, thereby instilling a fairer use of assets, especially digital ones.

Translators: Javier Marín Garcerán and Mariano Castillo Escudero.

Translator´s TREASURE HUNT: Cartographic Projections

This fantastic week, I would like to highlight some words that I, the translator of this week, considered the most important ones used to carry out our practice.

The practice of this week was about Treasure Hunt: cartographic projection but it consisting of three different parts: the first one about map projections; the second one about media and the third part about a different example of treasure hunt, so finally I would like to emphasize the following words/concepts:

· Geography: The study of the earth and its features and of the distribution of life on the earth, including human life and the effects of human activity. It includes maps which are a representation, usually on a plane surface, of a region of the earth. 

· Projection: It is a representation of the globe or celestial sphere or part of it on a flat map, using a grid of lines of latitude and longitude. On this practice we have investigated how different projections of the earth can distorsioned the reality. 

· Distortion: Map distortion is something that happens when you try to represent the globe on a flat surface. There are different types of maps, each has a different distorsion based on its shape. 

· Media: The main means of mass communication (television, radio and newspapers) regarded collectively. The problem is that society is exposed to media everyday and also media can sometimes distort reality and alter society’s behaviour. 

· Scavenger Hunt: A scavenger hunt is a game in which the organizers prepare a list defining specific items, which the participants – individuals or teams – seek to gather all items on the list – usually without purchasing them – or perform tasks or take photographs of the items, as specified. 

I hope this synthesis has been useful for a better understanding of Treasure Hunt and cartographic projections because we really enjoyed researching about this topic and I think that is necessary to know it if you want to be a great teacher! 

Thanks for reading us, 

The translator of this week: Ana de Lara Torrente

Translator. 2 Practices: Illustrating Words & Exploring TPACK

This week, I would like to highlight some words which are the most important ones that have been used to develop our practices.

 

On one hand, in our first practice I would like to emphasise the world “BELLIGERENT” because the group who had to guess the meaning of our picture had some problems and they put “INDIGNATLY” instead of “BELLIGERENT”.

• Belligerent: Person or a country engaged in fighting or war.

On the other hand, in our second practice I would like to emphasize the following words:

• TPACK: Conceptual model that provides teachers a mental framework for thinking about the different areas of knowledge related to effective teaching and the interaction of knowledge and skills which are necessary for the effective integration of technology.
TPACK framework is composed of three primary forms of knowledge: TK- Technological Knowledge, PK- Pedagogical Knowledge andCK- Content Knowledge. They are essential to good teaching and learning and they are also essential for the successful use of technology in the classroom.

• Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) is a comprehension of how teaching and learning can change when we use technological tools. This includes knowledge of the advantages and limitations of such tools to promote or restrict certain kind of pedagogical designs and strategies.

 

• Technological Content Knowledge (TCK) is an understanding of the mode in which Technology and Content influence are hold back one to another. Teachers need to become an expert of the subject and also they need to have an appropriate comprehension of the mode in which the subject material can be changed by the application of technologies.

• Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) includes the essential part of the activity of teaching, learning, curriculum, evaluation and reporting, such as the conditions that promote learning and the links between curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy.

TRANSLATOR:  Irene Martínez Bermúdez