THE END OF OCA'S GAME

Today has been the last day of the game and there are the winners:

ALL THE GROUPS had performed well, and all the groups became winners in the category of HOW TO LEARN WHILE HAVING A GOOD TIME 

Second price in the category of BEST QUESTION: Never Too Late

First price in the category of BEST QUESTION: Chameleon Ladies

Second price for the category of GAME WINNER: Hakuna Matata

First price for the category of GAME WINNER: Never Too Late

Congratulations to all the winners!  

 

We started with Paloma’s turn and we hadn’t good luck. But on my turn, all the bad luck that we had had disappeared. It was as a mathematic problem: when you multiply two numbers with minus sign you have as a result a positive one.  It was incredible, we were on square 89 and there were two more snakes to rich the square 100. Then I threw the dices and I got an eleven. It was exactly what we needed to finish the game. We were very excited. We didn’t expect to win the game, only to learn and to finish with the game, because we were very nervous. But definitely we are very, very happy because of the joker that we win for the final exam.  We have the option to use it, but not the duty. So we’ll give the best of us, and we won’t relax, but if we are not in our best moment on the exam, we’ll use it.

The extra point that we win is as goos as the other price, because be have all the task on time in our blog, but there are many things to do for the final e-Portfolio, so if we can't get on time with all the task, or they aren't so good as we want, we´ll have the joker.

Another day of Oca's game

This morning we continue playing Ocas’ game or Snake and ladders’ game, in the same place where we lifted on Friday. But nothing changed. Our bad luck, and particularly my bad luck was present in every single moment of the game. It was so bad that it would be better if I had given wrong answer. The snake had bitten us two more times.

We are on the third turn, so all questions have been answered at least 2-3 times and there are less wrong answers, but the big problem is our pronunciation. We have to work more on it, in order to pronounce clearly and correctly. On Friday we are going to continue playing. It’s seems that Snake and ladders’ game will never finish. The truth is that we are little bit tired because it’s only question of hazard and not of knowledge and three days playing the same game or doing the same activity it’s boring. Two days were more than enough to select the winner, but now there are more possibility to win the game. Despite everything my group is very optimistic, because we started the game on the 59 and we finished on 89, so we moved forward. 

Analist's reflection

This week, as you already know, we have played “The Oca’s game” or one of its versions called “Snakes and ladder”. This activity has been a very good way for us to study and understand deeply about the current Spanish educational system. We have done a great effort but at the same time we have enjoyed a lot thinking about real life and different cases to write the questions and also to play and get the answers of our classmates. The worst part of this activity is the responsibility of failing in the game, because it can work against our group mates.

The best moment of the work of the group was when we selected and discussed about our questions. It was very funny how some of us realized about different things of Spanish educational system which we have never thought about before, and also how we reflected about them. The worst moment in the work of the group was when we had to select the eight questions for each topic because we have two topics and although we knew what they meant J it was difficult to select them in a right way. It was very stressful.

We have learnt lots of things about how is organized and how the educational system works. I am sure that we are going to remember them longer because of the methodology used. We had never thought about some of the things that we have learnt and that is nice. As a group, all of us are very hard workers and we have improved a lot our communication but we have to improve more. I have detected that some of us are getting used that others assume different roles in the group and this is not good. For example, when I have some problems with the computer I always ask Dinka for help, if the group has to speak in English we look at Laura. In my case for example, I tend to do it for both convenience and lack of time. Although we are learning a lot and we are grateful, we are very tired because we have a lot of work to do and also most of us have personal responsibilities apart from university and we are nervous and we can influence badly to our group mates. We would like to have more time to enjoy searching information, reading about education, chatting with our classmates…

Still playing

On Friday we started playing the Oca’s game. I had never played it before, but I supposed that it included at least one oca. I was wrong; there were many snakes and any oca. It was nice board, but the sweetest thing were the magnets from The Wizard of Oz, from Linda's private collection.

 

 

When the game started, we were more nervous than for an exam. We started to play but soon we had to sit down and try to calm down. 

 We started well with Laura’s turn. Ana and Paloma had done it as good as Laura, but I had bad luck: a snake bit me and I had to retreat. I suddenly remembered why I had ever hated play games. Later Pilar had to answer to a difficult question, but she did it well. On the second turn the same snake bit us again, and we fall down. So although we knew the answers of the questions, we couldn’t progress in the game. It was very frustrating.

 

 Real life is frustrating too, so this situation is very realistic. You may find it hard to believe, but finally we pass a great time. The game hasn’t finished, therefore there is still hope. On Wednesday we’ll continue playing until there is one winner. And as the song say: “the winner takes all”. Because it’s only a game, but besides the prize we bet our self-esteem.

And if we don't do it as well as we want, we still have the good experience and the knowledge which we acquire by just playing a game.

 

Second week of Oca's game

Some of us don’t like playing games, so I don’t understand at all haw Linda could convince us to play Oca’s game. But I suppose that is because of the fact that we hate learn by heart. So, this is our fifth activity and it’s the fifth time that our colleges from the Spanish group said that we are lucky people. And our answer is that it’s true, but it’s also true that we had to work with great effort.

The activity of this two weeks takes us long time to prepare it, therefore we are so overwhelmed. The last week we had to read the paper of Eurobase and prepare 3 questions of each eight topics. This Monday our group had to organize two of the topics in order to select the best eight questions and we had some rules for the process. We had to make a kind of assessment to the format of the cards with the questions, said if the questions and answers are the required, pertinent, if they represent the topic, if they are a literally in the text or if they has a mistakes. It was really difficult task, because this is one of the few times when we see the assessment from two different points of view: the first is that we are the people who make the assessment and the second is that we make self-assessment too. The other cause to find the task difficult is that we have too little time to value the questions and we couldn’t do it as we wanted, because we couldn't change some mistakes in the questions and answers where they were. We met several times this week, in order to organize the questions, because some of them weren’t so clear. And we also used Google Docs to help as each other with the search of the answers and to communicate. 

This night I’ll dream about Eurobase, I’m sure.

New roles

The new roles for this week are:

Facilitator: Paloma.
Analist: Pilar.
Helper: Ana.
Journalist: Dinka.
Star: Laura.

 Soon we will tell you more about the game!

THE GAME. Questions

Today we haven't started yet to play but it's near. During the class today we've been reviewing every card with the questions, shared by topic. My group has been revising 2 topics out of 8, and they are:

·        1. Differences between public and private centers

·        2. Management

And now, here they are, separated by topic:

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CENTERS:

-          Have the private and the public sector got the same legislative framework? Say the law or laws that constitute this or these frameworks.

-          Unlike the public education, private institutions are free to establish their own…

-          If I receive “educational agreements” for financing, what kind of school am I?

-          In a public educational institution, where must they communicate the organization and use of their resources, material and human?

-          If I have passed a teaching degree but I have not passed the opposition and I am working in a school paid by public funds, in which type of school am I working?

-          Who authorizes and oversees that a private school has the necessary requirements for opening and management?

-          Can the private schools choose their own name?

-          What are the differences between the choice of the head teachers in public schools and in private school?

-          Reflection about three differences between private and public schools.

-          If you want to operate a private school what do you have to get?

-          What type or types of school can be if it has the following characteristics? Cost-free education, teachers, parents and pupils participation through the school council, the admission system, and the nonprofit nature of their extracurricular activities and services.

-          A private school can´t receive support from private institutions as religious orders. True or false.

-          If I have the option to enroll my child in a public school or colegio concertado, but I don’t want him to study religion, where can I apply?

-          What kinds of institutions are the centros concertados?

-          How is the head teacher of colegio concertado selected?

-          Is the same owner for a public school and private one? If it’s the same, say who is. If not, what is the different?

-          What school does this definition characterize? Governing bodies must comprise at least the head teacher, the school council and the teacher’s assembly. The head teacher represents the owner and is appointed by consensus reached between the owner and the school consensus. The head teacher’s duties are similar to those in public schools

-          Public school characteristics: Say which are true and which are false and correct the errors.

·         Free and secular Hay educación

·         The proximity criteria is used in the admission process in public school

·         The concertado schools must only respect certain rules of the Ministry as do public school

·         Public school have total autonomy in all aspects

MANAGEMENT (person and groups of management and government).

-          Which are the three elements used by the Educational Institutions to formulate their pedagogical and curricular organization?

-          Say the name of the governing body responsible for conducting the following functions: to approve and asses the proyecto educativo, the management project, the rules of organization and procedure and the programación general annual.

-          How long is the term of office of head teachers in public and private schools?

-          Which is the educational organism that allows pupils parents to cooperate and to participate in the educational tasks of the school?

-          Which kind of educational institutions is able to determine the constitutional principles of its centre?

-          If you were a member of the school council, what functions would you have?

-          Mention three duties of the head teachers.

-          What is the state school council?

-          How is the Proyecto Educativo de Centro related to the organizational management of the centre?

-          What teacher coordinating body is composed of: the principal, vice principal, cycle coordinator, responsible for the orientation of the centre and in some case the support teacher?

-          If you are the tutor of a group of 3^rd primary grade, what are you in charge of? (Being one of the basic education coordinating bodies?

-          Associate the following statement (functions) powers with their corresponding person: head teacher, head of studies or Teacher’s Assembly

·         Responsible for planning, coordinating, informing and making decisions for educational aspects

·         To supervise and coordinate the school activities without detriment to the power of the Teacher Assembly and School council

·         Person responsible for all academic-educational matters in the school

-          State the persons that integrate the School Council

-          State the three areas where educational institutions enjoy a wide degree of autonomy:

-          Which part of proyecto educativo from a public school has to read a student who wants to form part of the School Council?

-          Do centros concertados enjoy autonomy to structure their organization and governing bodies?

-          Is every cost-free education in a school in Spain compulsory?

Working on

We spent most of last week doing the current activity, therefor today we are so tired. My group is working really hard, so as helper I decided to provide the last part of the activity (for now) and print and cut out the cards.  it's not such a hard job as others' one, but someone have to do it.

THE WEEK OF THE SPANISH EDUCATION ORGANIZATION

The topic of this week is about how Spanish education is organized. But the task that we have to do doesn’t only consist in reading the current law; we are going to play a game. We have to read the European document that explains the organization of the Spanish Educational System and then each group must to design 3 questions for each of these topics:

1. Laws and Structure of our educational system
2. Management (person and groups of management and government)
3. School time and grouping
4. General indications about teaching methods
5. Assessment and certification
6. Differences between public and private centres
7. Financing issues
8. Other structures and variations

Each of the questions only can have a possible answer. Then with our answers we have to prepare white cards including in one face of the card: the question, the answer, name of the group that build the card; and in the other face of the card we have to write the topic in which this question are included. We have the whole week for preparing them and on Monday by groups we are going to review our questions. We have to value them by groups, and each group has to review at least one topic and choose the 3 more representative and good questions. The same Monday after class we will publish the questions that we have review in our blogs. But the only things that we can publish are the questions. On Friday next week we will play a game done with all the questions and by turns each group (each turn will be done by a different member) will have to participate. There are prices in two different categories: the best question and the game winners.

This week we had lots of work to do so we decided to have a meeting to start to do the questions on Wednesday morning, from 9 to 12 and from 13 to 14 in the morning. We didn’t have enough time so we decided to continue on Thursday afternoon.

We prepared a lot of questions of each topic and on Friday morning we decided which of them were better and more representative for the game. At the end of the morning we corrected the spelling and this weekend Dinka printed them.

 We have made a big effort this week to play a good game next week so let’s play!

Analist's Reflection

This week we have worked a lot of hours together in order to elaborate the questions that on monday we have to bring to the class for the game about LOE. As I am the analist this week I'm in charge of doing the reflection so here it goes:

The best part of the activity I think is coming but during this week, in my opinion, the best thing has been the interest and the motivation of being reading a document and finding a lot of interesting things. I don't know how to name it but that kind of curiosity and enthusiasm that you have when you are "discovering the world".

We had to read the hole document at home without the rest of the group so we had a lot of questions because it had some words in spanish in the middle of a text in english that wasn't a simple story. If you go to LOE it doesn´t say the same as the document that we had because LOE had another structure so...

Some things that we found in the law left us thinking: Wow! Things that were not obvious and are said in LOE. The best moments have been when someone discovered an interesting sentence or parragraf and showed it to the rest of the group as if she had find a treasure and then one of the others already knew it. We have also shared a lot of information about personal experiences.

When we were doing the questions it was difficult because we weren't sure if we had understood correctly the parragraf. A lot of times not every member of the group understood the same so it was hard because we had a big mess composed by all the messes that we had in our brains.

 We have learnt a lot of things that we didn't know. working with LOE we have seen that there are thousands of things that influence education. Now we know what part of the curricula can Autonomous Comunities elaborate and why. It is not the same if the child lives in a big city in a small village or in a house in the middle of nowhere but all of them will have to go to school. In the city the parents will have more schools to choose between them and in the village maybe the school has only one classroom.

In my opinion, as a group we should conserve the patience that we are having with the rest of the group. We do not always think or see things in the same way and I would say that now we are better than at the begining listening to the rest of ideas and choosing that which we think is the best. Now we lose less time.

 Maybe we should learn how to read faster but it would take us a lot of time. Communication between us is a thing that sometimes works wrong so we must do something in order to foster it. But, what? We will have to look for a solution.

ROLES

Hi everyone!

After two weeks of holidays, Easter week and our Spring Festival week (typical festival from Murcia) here we are again!

During this week I´m the facilitator and the roles of my group mates are:

Ana: Star

Paloma: Analist

Dinka: Helper

Pilar: Journalist

And the first thing that I´ve done to help my group is to book a cabin to work next Wednesday because we need a quiet place to work and to be able to concentrate :)