BASICS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM: JOURNALIST

Hello everybody, It's Noelia!

It's nice to write for you after these two long weeks.

For this very interesting task my role to carry out has been THE JOURNALIST.

Our trip through this week started with a division made by our Facilitator, Ana, which we organized our work with.

Pilar, Paloma, Ana and Maria worked together for reading, summarizing and making the conceptual map about the Document 5: Administration and Governance at Local and/or Institutional Level I.

On the other hand, Fran, Javi and me worked together for doing the same process for the document 2: The Primary School.

We have had several mistakes and problems during the whole week. The girls did a very beautiful conceptual map (done by the tool called Creately) but there was a mistake with it. We have already had it into account for improving (improving, improving, improving, that's the spirit!).

Fran, Javi and me worked a lot for summarizing the document and, for creating the map, even more. We tried lots of tools for this, but they weren't good enough for making our map. Finally, we got to do it with Creately (not the best one of the tools but yes the best one of the ones we used/knew) and it was good indeed!

Our maps were presented on Monday.

Well, maybe present is not the right verb to use as we organized the class in Natives and Visitator groups for evaluating the maps. There were three groups. One group were the Native group (us) and our Star (Javier) was considered as an alien who had to go with the second group (7up!) to evaluate the evaluation of the three maps (one from each of the groups).

Here is a photo of this:

Alien + Second Group (7Up!)+ Visitant Group (Umpalumpas) (Own Photo)

The evaluation was done by the native group and half of the visitant group (half of such group was with us evaluating the document 2 and the other half was with 7up evaluating the document 5).

For evaluating we firstly decided that the best criteria to be followed for doing the evaluation was the one included in the survey (provided by Linda) we had to fill after evaluating.

Here is the survey:

Survey (Own Photos)

Survey Part 2 (Own Photo)

After that, we filled it out online all together.

I also want to show you the evaluation process thanks to the next photos:

Evaluation (Own Photo)

Here, we are talking about the mark we could establish for one of the items to evaluate (for instance if the map was readable and understandable).

In the the other one below, we do the same but checking the map to make sure we do a reasonable evaluation.

With all the work done, we got a surprised! We (the native group) had to make another conceptual map (THE FINAL ONE). It had to consist on a mix of the three maps, creating a really good map to work next week with.

And here is the result:

The Document 2's Conceptual Map (Own Photo)

For finishing my work as a journalist, I would like to recommend you a blog called "The innovative educator" (http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com.es/ ). In this blog, its owner, Lisa Nielsen, helps us to be better teachers giving us really good and innovative ideas for teaching contents. From my point of view, it is a great blog for us as it can help us with our job a lot.

Besides, I would also like to recommend this week to Umpalumpas' Group!

They had a very interesting conceptual map, they worked really good and they have a nice blog to see as well!
That's all from me.

See you after Easter!

• Meerkat Journalist.

BASICS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM: STAR'S POV

Hi people, this is Javi, with the role of the star this week. I was very nervous to be star for so long, because normally the star is the person who presents the project of the week in front of the class. But, this week the "exposition" was a bit different.

At first I would say that, as you know, this week we have made a conceptual-map related to the LOE and the LOMCE, which are the latest education laws in Spain. We made a diagram of the two documents we were told to do. They are these ones:

Document 2:

Document 5:

But the main function of the Star this week (in my case, because I was the alien star) was to evaluate how the two groups which had the same documents as my group evaluate the conceptual maps. Well, in my case, I had to wacth the Umpalumpa's Group and the 7up Group, I must say that they were very honest in the evaluation, because they had to take a very difficult decission, our conceptual-map of the document 5 was mistaken. Therefore, they decided that it was not enought to get a good mark. I think this decission was fair, so they did a great job.

For ending we made a better conceptual map of the document 2, and here it is:

In order to make it more clearly, I'm going to give you some links where you can find all the images and read our work:

Document 2 (previous):

https://mega.co.nz/#!WhVzSB7S!-_F2OABMHzzs3iOOZK6PoC8drMLEnh70D0LbMQ8qLt8

Document 5:

https://mega.co.nz/#!jsEnUJrR!tWgQEoVHslj9ABAzHsMPwaIAFd-x9hDodS4y-wSBQrc

Document 2 (final one):

https://mega.co.nz/#!Sl1wjCzA!UB-m0-YAy7GnIJ_wV-0a5rLyc8RBdAKjXMApOPCpIBE

That's all for now, I hope you enjoy my post, see you after Easter !!

BASICS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM: ANALYST

Hello everybody, I am María and now I am the analyst of the Meerkats, so I have had to evaluate the work of my partners which is difficult because this week all of them have worked a lot.

This week, the best part of the activity have been the realization of the conceptual maps because it is an enjoyable way to summarise information, but on the other hand, the worst part of the activity was that we made a mistake with one of the conceptual maps and we realised about that mistake on Monday so we could not change it. 

This week we cannot arrange to meet but once again we have worked together from a distance without problems and helping us one another. Luckily, skype facilitates us to share and exchange the information. But the worst part was that one of the conceptual maps was released very late (Sunday night), thing that worried us. This happened because there was some problems with the tools but finally we could solve them!

With this activity we have learnt to do conceptual maps and we also have learnt to summarise information in an enjoyable way. I think that this will be useful for future works or activities.

I would like to conserve for the next weeks the companonship that there is between us but I would like improving the coordination between us in order to try to have all the parts of the work at the same time.

About the content, I think that it is related to other contents of the course and subjects because in the rest of the subject and during the course we constantly summarise information and this is a perfect way to practise and learning to do it better. What is more, learning to do conceptual maps is very useful because it is a good way to study for an exam.

Also, this topic is very connected with the present because the politicians always are changing the education law and this concern us. The new curricular proposal that was offered the 3/01/2015 affects this content too.

BASICS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM: FACILITATOR

Hello everyone!!! This is Ana and this is the BOSS! Yes, this week I have been the facilitator and I have had to organize my group for the sixth activity of the course and the first of “school organisation”.

Being the boss is a hard experience because you have to organize all the members and control a lot of things at the same time to make sure that our work is going to be good. But it is not bad, my partners are obedient and they contribute as well. The best part of this role is that even if it does not look that way, I do not like to command my peers because sometimes I feel like I am being tiring.

We have changed our roles this week, as we have done the weeks before, and the results were these ones:
Javi: Star
Fran: Curator-Farmer
María: Analyst
Paloma: No role
Pilar: Translator
Noelia: Journalist
Ana: Facilitator

My organisation was not difficult and I think that almost all the member of the group worked equally. First of all, we all read the documents that Linda assigned to us in order to understand both of them and work with the same knowledge about it because is not only the star who has to be an expert of the topic.

Once we read it, on Tuesday, we divided the two documents, 2 and 5, and then, during the week we summarized them. The summary was a bit complex because the documents had a lot of important information and we had to remark the most important one in order to do the Conceptual map the clearest possible. So, on Friday I asked my peers for the summary, and after reading the documents carefully and do what I asked them (the same I did), I looked for some web 2.0 tools to create Conceptual maps. I also have to say that to facilitate the overview of the document I divided it in its 3 parts with different colours.

Then, as I have already said, I proposed to my partners three different webs: coggle.it, creately.com and www.gliffy.com. Finally, we decided to use creately.com because the size of the letters is good and there are many colours, types of diagrams and so on to do a great conceptual map. Its only disadvantage is that the template has got a predefined size that cannot be expanded.

We did not understand a part of the activity, so we did it wrong… On Monday we realised that we were not the only ones that did not understand that very well but it was too much late. We learn from our mistakes.

The last activity os the week was that we had to create other conceptual map completing the "best one" of the three that we have evaluated with other two groups. So, in class, we chose the best one and decided which will be the information that we was going to include from the one of Umpalumpas. Then, we organized to complete it again but this time, with "mindmeinster" due to the problem of the size.

Finally, as facilitator I am checking my partner’s posts, looking for spelling mistakes and justifying the margins. This is not a problem because I “enjoy” doing these kind of things, so let’s write and let’s command! ;)

See you next week! Bye !!!

BASICS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM: CURATOR-FARMER´S POV

Hi everyone! I´m Fran and this week I have been the "curator-farmer" of Meerkats. This task is about "Basics of the educational system", it is the name of the task and the end of it. We looked for information about LOMCE law and we had to work with the topics 2 and 5.

During the week we have used the links that Linda sent us in the instructions and some information out them and I have put the url of the resources that we have used in APA style.

To do our mindmaps, we are using the tool Examtime. So, I have uploaded this part of the mindmap, with the part of this task.

See you soon! 

BASICS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM: TRANSLATOR'S POV

Hi everyone, it's Pilar!

This week we started the second half of the course: school organisation.

Our first task in this part of the subject was to do a conceptual map on the basics of the school system, so, the words that I have selected are all those related to this topic and this task: LOMCE, LOE, MECD, EDUCATION POLICY and CONCEPTUAL MAP:

LOMCE: A framework law approved in december 2013 that aims to improve the quality in Education. It is a law clasified as a  developper of human rights and public freedoms, adopting the Autonomy Statutes. This one substitues and modifies the previous framework law approved in 2006 (LOE, explained below) and also the one approved in 1985 (LODE).

Its main objecitves are the reduction of people that leave the school soon, change educational criteria according to international criteria, facilitate the entrance to the proffesional word, etc.

LOE: A framework law pproved in 2006. It was published on the BOE (Boletín del Estado), "the official journal of the Kingdom of Spain,providing the State Government the means to publish mandatory laws, regulations and other acts approved by the parliament" (Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado. Gobierno de España, Ministero de la Presidencia. Retrieved 7 May 2012)

This law regulates all the things related to the non Univerity education in Spain (kindergarden, elementary, and secondary education, pre-university studies, job training, languages, arts, sport, adults...). It guarantees the quality and eqality to all the students in these domains, tryng to convey moral values such as freedom, resposibility, tolerance, equality, respect and justice.

MECD: The Education, Culture and Sports department of the Spanish Government. It organises the educational issues concerning to univerities and non-university institutions, it prommotes and protects the Spanish historical heritage (museums, libraries, literary creations, cinematographic activities); it is in charge to spread Spanish culture, it protects and poromotes bullfighting, and it tries to coordinate the cooperantional actions carried out by the others Departments in cultural terms.

EDUCATION POLICY: the education policy is all the government policy-making and principles of a country regarding the educational field. It collects laws, rules and organisation (as we have seen above). It includes the very early education institutions, as kindergarden, and also the superior ones (univerities, job training, etc.), and also some debate areas, such as school privatisation, teachers' education, teaching methods, infrastructure, values upheld by schools and so on.

CONCEPT MAP: A concept map is a kind of schema used as a teaching technique in wich the students can organise the new concepts, thoughts and the relationship among them The concepts are represented on circles or boxes and their definition linked by words or phrases that explain the connection between ideas. There is normally a hierarchical structure that helps understand the topics ans subtopics.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT?: FACILITATOR'S POV

                                            FACILITATOR

Hi, it’s Pilar!

This week I have been the facilitator of the task number five. This week has been different: we have already finished the first part of the subject, and it was the last task in “educational resources”.  We had to make a video summarising all the tasks we have made until now. We chose to make it with moovly.

On Monday, when we knew what the task was about, I started thinking how I was going to organise the work in groups. I thought the best way to do it was to distribute the task in order to do the video from afar. As you may already know, our group members have difficulties to meet. I proposed to the stars to think about what things of their presentations they wanted to include in the video, and we created a structure to follow: What have we learnt, what tools we used and to choose some pictures to illustrate it. The three people that have not been stars yet helped us in another way: Javi and Fran helped me with the task of common licenses, tips and good presentations. Maria was the one in charge of the video, and we committed to help her in case she needed something.

The structure we followed to summarise what we learnt is this one:
           1)      Name of the activity

           2)      Message learnt

           3)      Tools used

           4)      Ways to teach

           5)      Pictures

I stated a deadline to send Maria all the documents needed to do the video, so Maria had time enough to do it during the weekend.

I have to say that I am very proud of my group. It was hard at the beginning to get used to each other and all the different ways of working, but now we all collaborate and we are organised and coordinated. We keep improving!

Today, we have showed our work to the other groups. We presented it in an “Eurovision” format, so we had to present it, and later we had to punctuate each group with the following marks: 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3.

We gave these points:

         -          Busybees: 12 (79 total points): We loved the fact that they thought about a story of a kid to show all the tasks... Original! 

         -          itsChool: 10 (82 total points): they are very technological!! They have created a very      dynamic video.

         -          Powerpuff teachers: 8 (53 total points): Music and pictures... lovely!

         -          7up: 7 (45 total points): well done! Very clear information :)

         -          Powerteachers: 6 (50 total points): We think that it is very entertaining!

         -          Keepcalm: 5 (58 total points): We enjoyed  the pictures they showed on the video. 

         -          Playtipus: 4 (35 total points): good effects, funny animations !

         -          Umpalumpas: 3 (36 total points): we really liked the music they chose.

We have enjoyed a lot this Monday!

See you soon,

Pilar Meerkat :) 

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT?: CURATOR-FARMER

Hello everybody!
I am Ana and this week I have been the curator-farmer. Being the curator this week has been a bit strange: we have done an animated video summarising the contents we have learnt during the previous weeks. So, we have not used any other urls nor web pages to search for information apart from that we used to download the music for our video: www.jamendo.com.

As my partners have done before, I have used the tool Examtime because it has all the conditions we want for a good mindmap. It has a lot of different colours, you can upload images and videos and whatever you want. We really like it!

Nowadays, our mindmap is in the process of improving and we are starting to use the tool Goo.gl in order to make the urls shorter and more comfortable for its later use. So, here is our "little" mindmap of this week. 

We hope you enjoy our video and learn something about us! :)

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT? STAR´S POV

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our Blog another week!

I´m Fran  and this week I´m the star of the Meerkats. I was very happy to be the star because it´s a role that I like very much. In this occasion, the function of the star was to present during 30 seconds the video we have done with "Moovly". That experience has been great and I have enjoyed this presentation very much. Sometimes the short things are more intense.

This week, we had  to do an animation video using the tool Moovly (https://editor.moovly.com/en/login), the tool Powtoons (http://www.powtoon.com/edu-home/). The time of video could not be longer than 1´ 30". We decided to use Moovly in the first moment because most of us thougth that it was a good option.

During this week, we have thought about the best things we have learnt in this first part of the subject. It was very easy to find common points with my groupmates. Later, we started to do the animation video with these ideas. 

On Monday, the star of each group had to present the projection of the video on the blackboard. We started when Linda told us to do so, and then we showed our video. I was the sixth and I tried to convince my classmates that our video had to win, because this task was a contest and my function as the star was to defend our video.

Our video is uploaded to Youtube and I´m goin to put the link so you can see it and enjoy with it:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYQk1kZZLnk

When all of the stars finished with their expositions, the contest started. The rules of the contest were like the rules of Eurovison. The facilitator of each group gave scores to the other groups from 3 to 12 points.

We finished in the 4th position, but this is not the end!! The second and third part are the scores of our lecturer Linda and the scores of other lecturers of the university. 

During my presentation I tried to convince my classmates that our video was very creative, nice and interesting. On the video we have shown  everything that we have learnt in this subject and we summarised it properly. In this first part of the subject we have used a lot of technological tools and we have learnt a lot of new technologies. In the video there is a remain of each task we have already done: T-PACK, TheTreasure Hunt, CCL and presentations and the dark side of textbooks. 

With this task we have remembered all we have learnt and it´s good for us to remark this important ideas. When I was on the blackboard I was a bit nervous but I knew that our video was great and I could be confident.

I hope I could be the star again, I like very much this role. Thanks for your attention.

See you soon!

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT? TRANSLATOR'S POV

Hi I am Paloma and this week I am the translator. So, I had to collect 5 of the most important terms related to the activity. This week our video was about the other 5 activities. I am going to define 5 terms that are associated to the activities that we have already developed.

TPACK: is a scheme that joins the knowledge that teachers need to teach with technology in a effective way. It integrates the following concepts: Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), Technological Content Knowledge (TCK), Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK), and the intersection of all three circles, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK).

Treasure Hunt: is a game in which one or more players can participate in order to find hidden things, locations, or places by following a serie of clues.

Distortion: A change or exageration that makes something seem different from reality.

Creative Commons: a nonprofit organization that allows to share and use original images and knowledge of other people through free legal tools.

Textbook: A book used in schools and it is the main and traditional tool used by students to learn the school contents. It presents an amount of disadvantages such as the weight, the expensive price or the transmission of knowledge in a subjective way.

Comic: Story explained through cartoons that contains illustrations and every cartoon has a little text in order to tell the story.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT? ANALYST´S POV

Hi bloggers, this is Javi, and this week I am the analyst of the group Meerkats.

This week the project was one of my favourite tasks, to make a video with all the contents we have learnt from the beginning of the subject. Of course, like always we made a big effort in order to get  good marks.

I think the best part of this task was the way we coordinated the work. It's true that probably some people of the group had to do a more difficult part, but in general I think that all the Meerkats made a great job. Probably the worst part of the work was that we didn't meet to edit the video, but fortunately we could share the video and comment the things we wanted to improve or change, but like always, Maria made a great job, and there wasn't anything we didn't like.

The best part of the week, was to present our video in a "Eurovision Contest" way, because we could check that our video was very good because most of the points given by our classmates were very high.
I don't know if there is a bad part of the work in this week, because in general, all the members of the group are cool to each other, and we are very comfortable working together. However if I must tell something bad of the week, it will probably be that we made a terrible mistake on the video: we forgot to put the credits.

This week we have learnt about "moovly.com", a webpage to make and edit videos. Probably we will use this application in other tasks, because, in my opinion, it is very useful to show information.

If there is anything we should keep as a group it will be the nice atmosphere while working together, because it will help us to be more efficient at  work time.

Probably, we should meet more often to make better works, but it is really difficult to agree a date.

This week's work was a recopilation of all the previous works, and it helps us to remember all the contents: TPACK, Cartographic Projections, etc.

To finish the answers, in my opinion, there is nothing new to relate to social events this week. The reason is that we have already related it in the previous tasks.

And this is all, I hope you enjoyed this week
See you next week !!

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT?: JOURNALIST'S POV

Hi followers, I am María, and this week I have been the journalist. This role consists in telling the story of my group and how we have worked.

I think that having this role is very interesting because I have been able to follow all the work developed during this week and I have had a good time doing it.

This week, the activity consisted on doing an animated video with the web 2.0 moovly in which we have summarised all the information we have learnt and developed during this first part of the course (educational resources).

The topic of the video was a story about a group of students who arrived to the university and started a new course called SOYER in which they used a lot of new different resources like as blogger, photoshop, flickr and so on. There, they have learnt about Tpack for being best teachers, about the map projections which show that media are not neutral, about creative commons licenses for doing a good use of the resources that we have on the Internet, and finally, about the dark side of textbooks.

We have divided the work in different activities to be done by the different members of the group and share all the information. One member of the group has finished the whole video and published it on Youtube.

On Monday,this video has been showed on class with the presentation of the start about the reasons for which we have to win this "Eurovision" contest. All the groups have voted all the presentation with the same system that is used in Eurovision. Then, we have given all the points and the winner has been the group called "It'School". We have been the 4th, is not the best position but we are happy with our work.

This is our video, we hope you enjoy it:

I would like to recommend you a blog called "Mi pizarra virtual". The author of this blog is a woman who talks about the different resources that we are using in this course and it is useful for us because her posts explain very well this 2.0 tools.

About the blogs of our classmates, I want to remark the Umpalumpas' blog beacuse their blog is very funny and creative and I think that all the information is very clear. I recommend you have a look it.

Now, I am going to show you some pictures about the presentations of mondey:

ART-GALLERY: TITTLES AND KEY POINTS

Hello, we are the meerkats and we are going to talk about the different tittles and key points that we have put to each group:

1)Powerpuff teachers: the tittle that we have chosen is "Changing perspectives" and the key points are:

• Need explanation to understand the images
• Clair images
• Well organized 

2)Power teachers: the tittle that we have chosen is "instiling ideologies" and the key points are:

• Clear images 
• Creative organization 
• Good story

3)Its Chool: the tittle that we have chosen is "Textbooks negative consequences" and the key points are:

• Shocking images
• Good explanation
• Well organized 

4)Platypus: the tittle that we have chosen is "no textbooks" and the key points are:

• Disorganized contents
• Images as a support of the text
• Need explanation 

5) 7up: the tittle that we have chosen is "Manipulation" and the key points are:

• Creative story
• Organized story line 
• Clear texts

6)Umpalumpas: the tittle that we have chosen is "Bad side of textbooks" and the key points are:

• Lack of images
• No shocking images
• Crearly explained

7)Keepcalm & KO: the tittle that we have chosen is " Darth vader testimony" and the key points are:

• Lot of text
• Well organized 
• Shocking presentation

8)Busybees:  the tittle that we have chosen is "Disadvantages and alternatives" and the key points are:

• Significant images
• Good content organization 
• Creative 

THE DARK SIDE OF TEXTBOOKS: TRANSLATOR'S POV

Hello everyone! It's Noelia!

It's lovely blogging for all of you.

This week, my role to developed has been the translator.As some of my groupmates have explained you before, the translator must explain the 5 most important terms of the task done using his or her own words.

From my poing of view, the 5 most important terms of "the dark side of the textbooks" have been the ones below:

1. Textbooks: The textbooks are the current books of paper used in the majority of the world's schools. Reading some literature and just being a little aware of what is happening nowadays, we can realize that textbooks are part of one of the most common debates in the society (we may call it, "Textbooks vs eTextbooks"). In this debate, Textbooks are criticised for being outmoded (as we are in in the digital age and they are a XIX Century's tool) for being a tool which is possible to transmit political ideology and limitating the knowledge (to be acquired) with.

2. eTextbooks: The eTextbooks are electronic textbooks. These are used in schools. However, they are less used than the Textbooks as their introduction in schools is not supported by everyone, and mainly by the textbooks editorials, because it could cause the end of a very succesful business.

3.Influence: It is the action of producing an specific effect (and getting that effect is the main goal of this action) on someone else. In education, the influence can be done by the political parties through the textbook and effect students. The textbooks, depending on the political period, can include some units (or some explanations for the units) that reflect or are characteristic features of the ideology of such political parties.

4. Limitated knowledge: When we talk about limitated knowledge in the school environment we refer to the reality that student just learn the knowledge which is included in the textbooks or in any other instrument used for teaching the curriculum (but generally the textbooks are the only instrument used). Because of this, they are not able to investigate, study or suggest any other topic which they can learn a different knowledge with. So we have a limitated knowledge.

5. Comic: A comic is a story told with drawings showed in several bulllets. In each bullet, the illustration can be supported by speech bubbles. The comic may be used instead of a simple written story because, with the comic, you can transmit a message with more success than with such written story as, with the last one, a person's imagination interferes and makes the message received different from the real one. 

I hope you  have understood them well. Sometimes it is a bit difficult to express your version of something when you have read several point of views about it (all true,in my opinion).

And thanks to Jordi Ardell, he has given to me the best explanations for understanding everything about this topic. I definetely recommend his blog. It's great! (Here is the url: http://elbonia.cent.uji.es/jordi/)

See you next week!

Meerkat Translator

THE DARK SIDE OF TEXTBOOKS: ANALYST´S POV

Hi everyone! I´m Fran. I have changed my role and this week I've been the analyst of my group. As you know, the analyst has to evaluate the work of the group, in this case, the work of my group. This week we have been working on "The dark side of textbooks". To prepare this task, we could do it of three ways and we chose to make a comic.

The best part of the activity has been to design the comic and to create the story that we have used to the exposition in the "Art Gallery". When we met on Tuesday, some people of my group had thought a good story with many creative ideas and then, we chose this idea for the comic. Creating the comic was the funiest part and the best of this week. Thanks to some of my groupmates that are very good in computer programs, we could finish the comic soon and without problems.

On the contrary, I think that the worse part of the activity was the exposition time. It´s true that my groupmate Ana had prepared very good her exposition and the results were very good, but this part of the task it´s always the most complicated. The problem in general used to be the nervous but This part is required to the task, it´s the way to show your work to your peers. This week, we have been told  "well done", In general to the hole class and in particular to our star when she showed our comic.

This week I can say that we have had two great moments. First moment was we decided the story of the comic. When we decided the bullets and we developed the story. It was a great moment and I have to say it!. The second moment was when we were congratulated because we could check that our comic was creative and good.

Now, I have to talk about the worse moment of the week. This week have been very good and we haven´t had bad moments. I think, the worse moment of this week was that  my group and I saw our star alone a couple of times during the exposition of the "Art Gallery".We thought "oh no! anybody want to see our comic!" but it was a stupid thing because every group came to see our "piece of art" and in general, everyone liked it.

I have learnt this week that an image can make you feel a lot sensations and you can show perfectly an idea or understand thanks to images.

About the work of my group, I think that if we conserve the emphaty in the group and the way we distribute the task, we can do a good job in the following tasks. I don´t know what to say about how to improve the work of my group, because I think that we work hard and We must continue as now.

The content of this task it´s important because technologies are a reality in the classrooms and we can say that books are a small pedagogical jail. This content is related with our career and above all is related with our future as teachers.

This content and the discussion about it, we can find in the media. Many digital news, Newspapers, films or some studies talk about this content.

See you next week! Regards.

THE DARK SIDE OF TEXTBOOKS

COMIC: english & spanish

THE DARK SIDE OF TEXTBOOKS: JOURNALIST'S POV

Hi people!!! This is Javi, and this week I am going to be the journalist, I am very excited, because I’ve been waiting for this week a long time.

This week we made a work about “The dark side of Textbooks”, I think this was the most interesting activity we had done because the thematic, I mean, I have never expected that books are “evil”, and they are, we realized that with books not only students, it affects to their creativity, a not only for them, teachers also have to follow the structure of the book, avoiding talk or teach another things (included in the curriculum) that probably are more interesting and/or important than the content of the books.

Also, text books are very expensive as well as heavy, a student usually had in their bag more or less 7.5 kg of books, and this is a big problem, because they are developing their body.

This week we organized this way: we join the Tuesday afternoon to plan that the best option of the three that Linda offer us was the comic, because it was more creative and funnier than the others. At first we decided to made the comic with famous cartoons like Disney, and use the characters of Phineas and Ferb, the two brothers that all the days of the summer build, or create, an incredible thing, like a roller coaster, a beach in their garden, etc. and we thought a story in which the summer finished and they come back to school. The problem is that with the books their creativity goes off and they became like a government system robots.

Before think all the story we realized that we cannot use this type of characters, and also, the program we were using was pretty bad as compare with the program we used later to our story: pixton.com

Finally, we finished the work with the incredible help of our Star, which finished the comic by her own, and we exposed with the others in the class last Monday.

These day was one of the funniest days of exposition probably of the subject, because you can go and see others exposition in the order that you want, and as there were different types of works, so we could see different “pieces of art”, and the idea of each star be like the artist and explain what does it means its piece was very funny

For finish I will like to recommend you is one of Benjamin Stern about textbooks which I think is very interesting for yours http://smartblogs.com/education/2012/08/29/textbooks/, and for finish, my other recommendation ishttp://powerteachers15.blogspot.com.es/ this one is from my classmates, and I think they made a great work this week.

THE DARK SIDE OF TEXTBOOKS: FACILITATOR

Hi! I am Paloma and this week I have been the facilitator. My role consisted in organizing the group in order to do the activity.

This week we decided to design a comic which reflected the dark side of textbooks and considered the advantages of new technologies as a scholar method for learning.

Once we had the idea of doing it, we had to meet one afternoon at the university to put in practice the comic. We had to read several of documents in order to get informed about the disadvantages of textbooks, so we divided the information  and every person was in charge of reading a part.

At first, it was difficult and we were a little bit exasperated because we did not find a good history to tell in the comic. Furthermore, we were a long time looking for the appropiate program on Internet for doing the comic. Finally, we found a web page named Pixton, that we considered the best for doing our work.

We passed the afternoon thinking on the story and we had a lot of different ideas, but none of these were convencing enough! We wanted to show in an easy and funny way that textbooks have a bad impact on schools. They present various problems for students and their families, such as the amount of money that they cost, the excessive weight, or the cultural influences that they have.

Finally, we decided that our story was going to be about a child dreaming that at school he learned with technologies, and he was happy because of all the advantages that technologies have and textbooks don't.

I have to say that this week, our star Ana, has a big merit because she has been who has make all the cartoons with the web page. She has been very important because she has a really good ability with tecnhologies. The work have not been easy, and specially for her, but we think that at the end, we achieved a good result :)

I think that as facilitator, I have not had any problem because every member of the Meerkats have contributed providing ideas and doing the work.

THE DARK SIDE OF TEXTBOOKS: CURATOR-FARMER'S POV

CURATOR POV

Hi! I am Pilar, and this week I have been the curator or farmer of my group. This week we had to find out the “sad reality” of text books. For that, we read some papers, websites and books, which were also useful to have our own ideas about this topic.

Once we knew what was the topic about and the different stances about it, we had to make it “physical”, and we decided to make a comic to explain it. We made it virtually and we focused on the use of electronic devices, especially tablets. We wrote a history about a child who dreams in a school system that uses this device to teach and to make the students learn in a more autonomous way.

I have compiled all the resources we have used and I have quoted them in APA style. To see them more clearly, I had done a mind map, using ExamTime, because we have seen the good results and the creative way it shows the different nodes.

Hope you like it, Pilar

DARK SIDE OF TEXTBOOKS: STAR

Hi!!! This is Ana and this week I have been the STAR. The first thing that I can say is that I was delighted to do it, really. I think that azar loves me and with the activity and the exposition, I have been able to enjoy and learn a lot.

As you know, we had to investigate “The dark side of textbooks” and after read and discover that textbooks are not good as we thought, we expressed the principal ideas in a comic. I must say that we chose a comic instead of the other alternatives we had (infographic, time line in twitter) because we think that a comic is one of the most easiest and attracting ways to transmit a message. Comics arouse the curiosity of people who watching the images want to know the history. This is also important for our professional live, we will work with children and a comic is perfectly short, funny and appropriate to transmit an idea to a child. Here you can see it.

Well, the story is quite easy. We have created two principal characters, the teacher and the student (Juanito) in order to transmit the message we wanted. As you can see, in the first “chapter” the teacher is doing what they used to, although is not their fault; she is explaining the book, reading the pages and putting some homework, so the child is not interesting in the lesson and starts imagine a better method. First, he imagines a computer room where children could use other resources to learn. For example, with technology resources, children would be able to look for videos or animated programs which could help them understand concepts and lessons better.

Other advantage that we have remarked is the benefit that the use of technology instead of textbooks will produce in the environment. The fewer textbooks we buy the fewer they produce it and the fewer they produce it, the fewer trees are cut. This also implies saving money, we can see that the child dreams with their parents saving money to go on holiday. Some of my partners asked me in the exposition: “But if you buy a tablet you spend a lot of money and then when you buy online textbooks you have to pay”. Well, my answer is that we do not want a tablet or a computer to use online textbooks (it does not make sense), we want technology to learn in a different way; to look for information in multiple webpages (thanks to the broader range on Internet), to see videos, doing questionnaires, create and explore own pages and so on. So, if we buy a tablet we can use during years and years because information is updated every second!

The other factor is the weight of textbooks…is there  someone who has not arrived home destroyed and throwing the schoolbag in the first place he/she has found? 6 textbooks, 6 notebooks and the rest of the material is too much weight for a child. On the other hand, a tablet does not weight more than a kilo and they do not have to use notebooks because you can write there too.

Then, in the fifth chapter the child is imaging the dreamt class with technology. We can see the child happy and having a good time while he is learning new things what prompts that the teacher is also happy and enjoying with their children.

Finally, we find again the sad reality; I think I do not have to add any comments about this part because all of us have been in class like this one.

The data and the reflections for doing these affirmations has been collected from this websites, so if you want to know more about the dark side of textbooks, please go to this links:

http://mashable.com/2012/10/05/tablets-vs-textbooks/

http://tablets-textbooks.procon.org/

http://english.varsavskyfoundation.org/educar/online-learning-vs-textbook-learning.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textbook

Well, as I said before, working on this activity has been a great experience. I love working with programs like Photoshop, PowerPoint and so on so it has helped me a lot when I started doing the comic and exploring www.pixton.com, I new web 2.0 tool for me which is very interesting, easy to use and with a lot of possibilities. It is very complete. It was not difficult to do the comic; I only needed a bit of imagination and creativity!

When the moment of the “exposition” arrived on Monday I was a bit nervous but also good because this week, we had to answer questions only, I mean, we did not have to expose our work and knowledge to the whole class. Thus, when the teacher asked me I relaxed and felt very comfortable and happy with the work!!  I am also happy with my partners because all the groups smiled with our comic and only gave it great comments.

I am looking forward to repeat it with the same luck!

That’s all, bye :)

4th WEEK!

Hello everyone!!!

This is our fourth week of the course and our activity has been developed around "The dark side of textbooks".

The roles of this week have changed and they are the following ones:
1. Star: Ana Elena

2. Facilitator: Paloma

3. Analyst: Fran

4. Curator-Farmer: Pilar

5. Journalist: Javi 

6. Translator: Noelia

7. No role: María

We hope you can enjoy reading our posts and start hating textbooks!

See you next week :)

CC LICENCE AND GOOD PRESENTATIONS: NON-ROLE'S POV

Hi people, this is Javi, I know that is not usual to have a NON-ROLE'S POV, but this week the facilitator told me that it will be interesting to include in the post a lines in which I will include the PowerPoint in slideshare.com where I share the presentation in order to make it accessible for all the people that want to watch it.

http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/45388185

CC LICENCE AND GOOD PRESENTATIONS: TRANSLATOR'S POV

Hello everybody!!! I am Maria, and this week I have been the translator of my group (The Meerkats). Now I am going to talk about five different terms that we consider the most important related to the work of this week:

• Creative commons license: The creative commons licenses are different licenses of copyright published the 16 of December of 2002 by Creative Commons. It is a corporation non-profit from EEUU and it was founded in 2001. We can find 6 different licenses:

-Attribution CC BY

-Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND

-Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA

-Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA

-Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC

-Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND

• Presentation:  It is a way to offer and show a piece of information and results of an investigation. It is used as a support to express the results of an investigation because with the presentation we can use media content. We can find in a presentation: texts, images, videos and sound file. There are two types of presentation: The multimedia presentation and common or normal presentation.

• Solar system: It is a formation of celestial bodies that spin around the star known as a Sun. Inside  of this solar system we can find the planet Earth ( The one and only with optimal conditions for the existence of life). The solar system is, at least for now, the one and only of all of the solar system with life that we know.

• Slide: It is a presentation of images in a funny way, typically in a prearranged sequence. The image is projected during a few seconds and after this image is replaced by other image and so on. The changes in the presentation of images can be automatic or also in a manual way controlled by a presenter or the viewer.

• Communication skills: The ability to send and receive information, ideas, opinions and concepts guided to personal and organizational objectives.  Inside of communication skills we can distinguish: oral communication, written communication and non-verbal communication.