Sunday´s work

Today is Sunday and the girls and I have met to work on our task for this week. As it is Sunday and it is a little bit harder to work I´m trying, as a facilitator, to encourage them and make this day a little bit sweeter.

Besides everybody knows that sugar and chololate give energy to our brain!

Analist's reflexion

This week we have had lectures and not a lot of activities but the truth is that the lectures have not been as we are used them to be. Why? There was a teacher using the slides and not a teacher depending on the slides. The slides were very simple and schematic. It was a teacher who came with slides but not slides who came with a teacher. 

 

The amount of examples that we have heard in class this week have helped a lot for understanding the topics. For me, and I think that maybe for the rest of my group, it has been a week in which we have discovered a new (or different) way of teaching. 

Perhaps the worse moment during the lectures was when everything was going into our minds and we had to order the chaos.

 It could be said that the best moments of the week while we were working were those in which we were laughing because a simple or stupid thing had occurred. 

The worse moment of the week was maybe when we were feeling overwhelmed by all the tasks we had to do and each member of the group was thinking about the solution without breathing and counting to 100 before. 

From my point of view we have learnt this week a lot of things. But maybe we could say that the most important has been the fact that nobody see the world the same way. While we were talking about curriculum we discovered that there is not only one way to plan.  If you do it coherently, you can start planning in the part of the curriculum you want. One important thing is taking everything in account. We have realised too that we need to think what we are going to say in order to use the words that make it easy to understand for other people. Sometimes we want to say something that we see as a simple thing in our mind but when we transmit that thing to the people they do not understand it at all.

 I think that one of the most important things that a group has to have in order to work without having a lot of problems is patience. Until now we have had a lot of it with our group mates and  as is very difficult sometimes to understand a different point of view or simply don't panic when we have a lot of work to do I find it indispensable. 

As a group we have to improve a lot of things. Working in group is really difficult and that is what makes us need to improve such amount of things. From my point of view we have to learn to organise better because when we have a new task to do we start thinking that it is impossible for us to do all of that. The truth is that at the end we have everything done but we are nervous all the time until it is finished. Maybe we have also to start seeing things in an easier way. Not everything is so complicated and even the most complicated things can be simpler if we try to think in them in a simple way. I think this could save us a lot of time. Doing things complicated not always means doing them perfect. We also have to remember that perfect things doesn't exist so we have to do our best but not dying looking for perfection.

MEDIA FOR TEACHING AND CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION (SECOND PART)

In today's class Linda has finished the explanation about media for teaching and curriculum implementation and in the end of class she has explained our weekly task.

We have discussed the second variable which influences the curriculum implementation: the design. About the design, it was very interesting the explanation talking about the fact that there is not a compulsory part you have to start working from. For example, you can start to design from the assessment and then you can put the other things around it, but always taking into account every element: teacher, student, time ... The basis point to implement something is to coherence between the different elements. For example, it does not have any sense to evaluate using a test if you have based your design on processes. In our case, Linda says that she normally plans around activities and then she puts the other things around it. Also she said that she gives us difference roles to make sure that all of us have responsibilities.

Finally, she talked about the last variable that you have to take into account to implement curriculum: media technologies. This is the final part of the process. First of all you have to think in subjects, institutions and design. You could think in the use of media- technologies only when the other elements are clear. Even sometimes it is more important not to follow the design of the curriculum and trying to solve the situation of students and the institutions. This is happening nowadays in Valencia. When you are going to work with media technologies there are some characteristics that need to be analyzed to use one or another.

- Efficiency: means achieving your goals with the least possible effort. You must think not only about the cost but the time needed for learning to use them, if they are easy to handle, your students, the class... For example: blogs are very efficient because they can be used for different things.

- Affordances: technology has its own affordances. For example: the big affordance of a blog is the chronological thing.

- Flexibility: depends on the topic, on the age of students... Sometimes you can’t be flexible. For example, when you are teaching how to read and first you have to explain vowels and then some consonants.

- Availability: it is essential. If most of your students don’t have certain means it does not make sense to work with them. For example, we can not ask our students to perform the classes using computers if they don’t have them.

- Code and cognitive strategies. For example, if I usually use slides in my class I can not ask my students in the evaluation to do a practical exercise if they have not done it before.

- Motivation (Novelty Factor): the final thing you must take into account is motivation. Clarks, in 1983 proved by experiments that the novelty factor is a good factor of motivation. There is a graphic which shows how motivation changes when I introduce something new in a class. First, it increases; then, it decreases below its original; and then it establishes. The research about “the white horse” of the teacher Antonio Bartolomé shows as well the influence of novelty factor.

Task

The weekly task consists on finding information online about the work done by teachers who are innovating in the field of education. These works must be analyzed from the two perspectives from which technologies can be included in our classes: TPACK and Curriculum implementation. Then we have to make an oral presentation in class. On Monday Linda will explain how to make a good oral presentation because making an oral presentation is easy but it is not so easy to do a good one. Besides, she has uploaded some videos in the virtual classroom to introduce us to this topic. On Monday, after this explanation we will begin to work and will prepare a pechakucha of 20 slides of 20 seconds each one. The pechakucha will be explained by the star of the previous and the following week. The presentation will be broadcast live. There were eight projects to choose from and we chose the SOS Gymkhana de animales en peligro de extinción, about which we started looking for information that same day when classes end. First, we briefly review the objectives of the task and you can see our faces in the image.

We finally decided that each one will search information individually. On Monday we will talk about it and start to work after Linda’s explanation. We will see how next week goes.

MEDIA FOR TEACHING AND CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION

This week has begun quietly on Monday as Linda was explaining in general the media use in the educational process. With no explanation of the subject completed, we have not yet been assigned the task, but all of us suspect that on Friday we will have a wide surprise judging by all the videos and materials left in the virtual classroom.

The contents that were discussed during the class were several. First we talked about the definition of "media for teaching" as curricular elements that help the understanding of information by students and that are developed in one context and at any given time. She continued talking about the main features that should have a good media for teaching, which should be: to integrate the curriculum, aim to improve student learning (developing skills and facilitate learning) and dependent and influence the context in which it develops. There was talk of the context as not neutral but who decides what type of media needs to be used and at the same time the communication process depends on the context. There were also examples to differentiate the two main parts of a media: physical instrumental part (hardware) and the code structure information. As an example, spoke of a possible explanation in class with the use of projections in which the physics would be the computer, projector, screen ... while the projections would be coded as such. Another example that was brought up was that of an explanation by the teacher without relying on any materials where the physical part would be the body of the teacher and the symbolic would be the voice or language.

Later we continue to review the concept of curriculum and its three main approaches:- All the guidelines included in the law: contents, basic competent, maximum of student per class…- It is everything that happens in the classroom. All types of relationships established between individuals involved in the educational process.- It is everything that influences the educational process: law, rules in my school, the different levels of relationship.

According to this last approach, when we want to implement a media in the curriculum, everything needs to be taken into account (technology, pedagogy and content knowledge). Thus we review TPAK theory that we had studied last week.

At the end of the class it was explained which are the 3 main categories that can be included in the curriculum elements (people and institutions, design and media technologies) and what we find in each of them. We only had time to talk about the first category, people and Institutions, on which it was said that in class must be taken into account evolutionary variables, being the mental and chronological age the main things that are going to define individuals.

In addition, we must also take into account the psychological variables and possible disabilities, as well as cultural variables and socio-economic characteristics of each individual. In terms of educational institutions we should take into account the infrastructure, teaching training, teacher and students attitude...


To be continued…

New roles

Hi there!
This week I´m going to be the facilitator and my first task is to inform about the new roles. Here they are:
Paloma: Analist
Pilar: Journalist
Ana: Star
Dinka: Helper
Laura: Facilitator

My best wishes to all these great girls! I hope we enjoy and learn a lot this week :)