LEADERSHIP: FACILITATOR'S POV

Hello,
This week I have been the facilitator of the group. As it was the last activity, I wanted to do the job easy for everyone: those who wanted to create a fakebook representing one of the leaders made the job. Those people were Ana Elena, Javi, Noelia and myself. The others were available if everyone needed help.
Monday I could not come to class, and Paloma took my place. We are a very well organised group, and it did not make any difference.

That’s all!! Hope you like to follow us, it has been a pleasure to let you know our trip across #soyer !!
Pilar Meerkat

LEADERSHIP: STAR'S POV

Hello everybody! I'm Noelia and this is my last post in this blog.

This week I'm the Meerkat star and, among some of my groupmates, I have studied four different leadership styles.

Here are the links of our fakebook's profiles!:

Authoritarian by Ana Meerkat: http://www.classtools.net/FB/1355-aaU9uD 

Transactional by Paloma and Pilar Meerkats: http://www.classtools.net/FB/1285-YnySdA

Transformational by Javi Meerkat:

Participative by Noelia Meerkat: http://www.classtools.net/FB/1681-Gn3DFW

The one I worked the most was the participative style. This style has as main points the ones below:

• Caring about social needs of the employees.
• There's no boss and bossy acts, all of us work as a team in a familiar atmosphere.
• Collaboration on making decisions about the goals and the process for achieving such goals.
• Taking into account other people's opinions.
• Respecting group's diversity.

This Monday, the debate day, Busy Bees and us worked together for preparing our strategy (for the participative style) to win the other groups. I must say that it has been a pleasure to work with all of them and, of course, with Gracia, the Busy Bees star that has been a great debatemate from my point of view. I hope that I can repeat another working experience with them as they are able to organize themselves really good, they perfectly know they content they must know and they are great workingmates, you never get bored with them. Nice to work with you guys!

Besides of preparing us, we collected the links of the nince participative profiles created by the whole class. Here are the links as well:

Meerkats: http://www.classtools.net/FB/1681-Gn3DFW  

BusyBees: http://www.classtools.net/FB/1979-HGgp9K 

Platypus: http://www.classtools.net/FB/1229-zC43xQ 

ItSchool: http://www.classtools.net/FB/1327-3nGya9 

Powerteachers:  http://www.classtools.net/FB/1098-H4hBQ2 

7UP!: http://www.classtools.net/FB/1190-YD4ibr 

Umpalumpas: http://www.classtools.net/FB/1577-HmGCk5 

PowerPuffTeachers: http://www.classtools.net/FB/1386-Cg2K9x 

Keep Calm and Keep Organized: http://www.classtools.net/FB/1590-xvj34k

After that, we did the debate. It was an enjoyable one. There were really good questions done by the moderator, Rebeca (PowerTeachers' Star). The other groups did a good debate as they defended in the best way the could their style and, also, they "attacked" us with very interesting arguments. Despite this, I reckon that Gracia and me, working in tandem, got to do a really good defense of our style.

Finally, I must say that, from my point of view, the winners of the debatre are the stars from Keep Calm and Keep Organized and Platypus, Clara and Ana Isabel) as they defended their Transformational leadership style with really good arguments and they "attacked" us in a really hard way. They did it really good. 

That's all.

This is my last see you soon for all of you.

I hope that you have learned more about School Organization and Educational Resources through these post. It was my goal.

It was as pleasure.

Noelia, Meerkat future teacher.

LEADERSHIP: TRANSLATOR´S POV

Hi dear readers! I´m Fran of the Meerkats´s group and this week I´m the translator of the task. This week we have done a task about the leadership styles. The categories of leadership styles have increased in the postmodern literature. We have done four profiles in fakebook to explain the different kinds of leadership. I have to define five relevant terms of this task. I hope that you can understand better this task with this five terms and you enjoy with our post. These are the five terms:

• Fakebook: Fakebook is a tool to create a fictional or historical character. It´s a tool where you can create a profile with fictional information or real if you want, but it´s using for fictional character generally. In this task we have used fakebook to create four profiles with different kinds of leaders to present in class.

• Authoritarian leaders: This kind of leader use coercive tactics to enfore rules. They are very strict and them attitude with them employed is very serious and distant. The more important characteristic in this kind of leaders is the necessity of the control. Control is the primary management strategy of employed. The most important for them is the productivity and they are not interesting in the emotion or affection of them employees. This kind of leaders is trying to take charge of the schools.

• Participative leaders: It´s a kind of leader in the line of the authoritarian leader but it´s more open. They leads to delegation and communication about every themes relatinship with the work and with the employees. This collaborative process brings a family atmosphere to the workpolace and a good relation between the workers and the boss. This kind of leader is a good way to get a team between the workers.

• Transactional leaders: This kind of leader attempt to balance initiating structure in order to get things done with meeting the needs of people that is near to them. They look for the integration the needs of the employeed to do the work en better conditions.These leaders think that the goals are due to the whole of the worker not only a personal goal, This style of leadership is based in a dual organization. In the school organizations is the predominat model.

• Transformational leaders: This kind of leader is able to the human understanding. The most important characteristic in this kind of leader is the necessity of change. It´s very important the integrity in this leader. Every workers are very important and them work is essential to the goals. The moral leadship is based on dignity,  the respect of the rules and respect of the humans. It´s very important the justice in this leadership. This is a good kind of leaders to aply in the schools. 

These are the five terms that I thing that you must know to understand this task. I hope that you enjoy with our posts of this week and I want you have a nice wekk!. See you soon! 

LEADERSHIP: CURATOR-FARMER' PLE

Hi readers, this is Javier, and this week I'm the curator farmer, and here you got the references we have researched in the task of this week:

LEADERS: ANALYST' POV

Hello I am Paloma, the analyst of this week and I am going to try to analyse objectively the develpment of the activity of this week.

This week, we had to create 4 profiles in Fakebook, so 4 of us had to create a profile representig 4 different leaders.

The best part of the activity I think that it was the exposition of our star, Noelia, who did a good work representig the participative leader, together with Gracia, the participative leader of Busy-bees. Also I think that it was te best moment of the week. 

The worst moment maybe was the moment of divide the profiles, we had to flip a coin to stablish them to every member of the group. 

With this activity, I think that we have learn about the different types of leaders that can govern us. We have learn the methods, actitudes and principiles of every type of leader. Thanks to this activity, now we can recognize if a leader is authoritarian, participative, transactional or transformational and we know the advantages and disadvantages of every type of leader.

This is all this week! Thank you to our readers!

LEADERSHIP STYLES: JOURNALIST

Hello everybody! Today, it is the time of our final posts. We have almost finished our course of school organization and our first year in the degree of Primary Education.

This time we have worked on the different types of leadership (Authoritarian, transactional, transformational and participative) imagining that we were a candidate for the head teacher of our school.

With these instructions we had to create four different profiles in the tool Fakebook (one for each type of leadership) where we had to put some arguments defending our position, giving reasons to vote us and saying why the other styles were not so adequate for the school.

First, after the explanation of the activity on Monday, we decided which members of the group would be in charge of creating each profile and defend the leadership. Two of them were volunteers and the other two were selected randomly and by chance.

The rest of the members controlled the development of the activity and provide a lot of ideas for creating interesting profiles. Also, I created an image with Photoshop because I thought it would look nice in our profiles.

 Finally, on Monday Linda told the star of each group to say a number from 1 to 9, our star, Noelia, said number three and we had to defend the participative leadership with our peers Busy Bees. Both groups got together and we looked for the participative profiles of the other groups in class to recover good arguments that the stars of Meerkats and Busy Bees had to defend orally with the rest of the stars of the week and with Rebeca from Power Teachers as moderator. Power Teacher had to do four questions which were given to each group 10 minutes before the final judgement. We prepared it quite good.

Because of that, participative stars did a great job defending the position, they were very well organized and explained reasonable arguments to gain a lot of votes, in fact, they were one of the two favourites.

Today, I am going to recommend you  a special blog, it is done by a friend and as it is the final one that I am going to put here I think is interesting to see different things. In this case, I would describe it as moving, sad... It has only a post but I share it to you because she used the blog and that post to let off steam and express her feelings some weeks after the loss of her best friend...

http://dominguejo.tumblr.com/post/39221354645/vida-que-perra-eres 

On the other hand, I am going to recommend you the blog of Busy Bees with whom we have spent a good time working on Monday and which are very implicated in the creativity of their blog and their posts. It looks really nice!!

http://busybeestakeiteasy.blogspot.com.es/

So people, this has been our final activity, as always, we have learnt new things and enhanced our knowledge in the subject. This has been an interesting and different course in which we have worked a lot and done our bests. I expect to continue in the same way until the final exam where we are going to demonstrate the work of the whole year.

This is Ana and I wish you good luck in everything, Bye Bye!

COEXISTENCE PLANS: JOURNALIST'S PLE

Hi people, this is Javi, this week we made a video in which we expose the situation of Pablo, a boy with some problems with his family, and the way of his acts we suspect are doubt to his family situation, and unless that situation change, we can’t do other thing to solve it.
We made the video near to the university, we passed a great moment, we enjoy much this week activity, and it is probably our favorite activity.

Even though we couldn’t meet for the recording the entire group, Pilar, did the editing of the video, and in my opinion she did an incredible video.

On Monday we saw all the videos and we have now to put a comment in all of them.

Despite this are the lasts weeks, we have enjoyed all the weeks, ones more, other less, but in general, we are pretty nervous of next week activity,I hope it’ll be as funny as this.

I expect you enjoy the post, see you next week.

COEXISTENCE'S PLAN: FACILITATOR'S POV

Hi I am Paloma and this week I have been the facilitator!

Te activity was about making a video which represents the coexistence plan of a school. We decide to record an interview for explaining the measures of the coexistence plan when there is a conflict between students and teachers.

So, we divided the work because before of record the video, we needed to wrote the script. Most of us, participated in the elaboration of the script, and after, María y Fran, our actors, filmed the video.

After of the recording, Pilar was in charge of the montaje, and she did a good job.

I think that this activity has had good results and everyone has participated and colaborated.

Thank you!

COEXISTENCE PLANS: ANALYST

Helloooo dear bloggers! As the analyst, this week I have to remark some different things, so let's do it!

First of all, I would like to say that initially, we became afraid when Linda explained the activity because we are in the end of the course and need a lot of time to study. But then, we realized that this was not so difficult. On the contrary, it was really fun, specially the moment of recording the video. Maria was laughing and we laughed with her, however, the two actors were very implicated in their roles and did the work easily.

Other good moment was when we saw the complete video with some outtakes, we were impressed with the video and its explanations and we felt proud of our work, including the script, the actor and the video editing.

Maybe, the"worse" part of the week was to see that we could have made other interviews or amplify the perspectives but we wanted to focus in an specific type of report so we think it is nice.

An important aspect of this activity is that with it, we have learnt a lot of important thing for our future. When we start to work, we will have to follow a coexistence plan to act in a fair way with children and parents. In that way, the activity helps to introduce us in these documents and learn about them step by step.

Also, it is related with all the contents of our course. Each institution must have a coexistence plan, so involuntarily, we are following it all days. However, this connection goes beyond and frequently we have to watch in the news real cases of conflict in schools. This is case of the recent information about the child who killed his teacher with a crossbow.

Finally, I would like to say that as a group we are improving a lot and this have been a good week. Each week, we collaborate more between us and do an equilibrated job.

Best regards, Ana.

COEXISTENCE PLAN: CURATOR-FARMER POV

Hello everyone!

This is Pilar and this week I have been the curator farmer. I had to compile the documents we used to do the seventh task. 

We used only one document, because that was all we needed to do the role play. We used the coexistence plan of the Jesús María School from Murcia.

You can see below the 7th task's mind map.

Hope you like it!

COEXISTENCE PLANS: STAR'S POV

Hi everybody! I am María and this week I have been one of the two stars of the Meerkats group. As far as I am concerned, the activity of this week has been very enjoyable because I have never made a video like this.

I was the journalist and the presenter of the video and it was very difficult for me because I am shy but despite all, the situation was very funny. Thanks to Fran ( the other actor), record the video was more easy because he done very well his work.

I think that the result of the video is very amusing, above all the end. My colleagues had patience with me because I laughed all the time doing the video. In conclusion, I liked record the video and the final result too.

COEXISTENCE PLAN: TRANSLATOR'S POV

Hello everyone. It's Noelia again!

This week, the next to last week, my role is the translator.

As you know, as a translator I must choose 5 main terms from the task of this week. From my point of view, the 5 main terms are the following ones:

1. Coexistence Plan: It is a plan developed by a school center which contains some rules, aspects, procedures and so on that must be followed in order to obtain a good school atmosphere, to prevent any conflictive situation between students, students-teachers, teachers-teachers, teacher-parents (it depends on the coexistence plan of each school).

2. Fault: It is a punishment used for  a specfic wrongful behaviour carried out in the school. There are different types of faults depending on the grade of the act carried out. For instance, we distinguished between slight, severe and very severe fault.

3. School Conflict: It is a conflict that has happened at school. People involved in there may be, teachers, students or parents. This type of conflicts may differ from bullying  (from a student to another one) to religion conflicts (as, for instance, an occidental student despises arabic student's religion). These are punished by the faults assigned to them.

4. Documentary: It is a video that shows real themes at the moment. School themes are really used in these type of videos as it is a topic in which most of people is very into it.

5.  Aggression: It is a social interaction carried out by one of some people with the purpose of hurting physically or psychologically to just one or even more than one person.

Here you got them!

I hope that, with them, you are able to understand better our work as I reckon these are the five key terms of it.

See you next tuesday!
Meerkat Translator

COEXISTENCE PLANS: STAR´S POV

Hi everyone! I´m Fran and this week I´m one of the two stars of my group, Meerkats group!This week we had to invent a story of a conflictive situation placed in a Primary School. First, we invented the story and later, Linda said us that we had to change our story with another group of the class and we had to film a video explaning the story of another group like a TV documentary.

We have  represented the story of the Powerteacher´s group. I have been one of the characters of the documentary. We have used only two characters, the journalist and the headteacher of a Primary School. The TV documentary is a about a troubled student and about the keys to solve this situation.

The Journalist interview an headteacher of a Primary School and He try to answer all of the question about the situation and about the coexistence plans for this situation.

In Our video only appear two of the group, but everyone have done the screenplay and everyone were when María and me recorded the video. This week we have worked very good  like a team and I hope that you like the results.

This is the link of the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUrzV5TTvOw

I Have enjoyed very much filming the video and I think we have done a good job. We hope that Powerteacher´s group can see the documentary and they recognize them story.

I think that this task have been very interesting. We have learnt about coexistence plans with the information and with our creativity and I think that it´s a good way to learn.

We  hope you learn with our TV documentary and we want that you enjoy with it!

See you soon!!

DAY -D. SNAKES AND LADDERS: TRANSLATOR'S POV

Hello dear followers of meerkats, my name is Javi and this week I have to be the translator.

This week we made the game of Snakes and Ladders.

Anyway you these are the three words that will translate:

- Snakes and ladders: a traditional game of India, similar to the Spanish goose, where players have to try to reach the last box through ladders and snakes

- Snakes are one of the elements that can be found on the game board if you miss the question, you will automatically lose the snake's head to tail, turn and losing a lot of runs

- Stairs: They are one of the elements that we can find on the game board if you hit the question help you to raise enough cells which may increase your chances of winning the game.

- Sheets: are some pieces that players move on the board

- Die: a cube on each side containing a certain number of points, 1 point to 6, to launch it, depending on which side is facing up, indicating the number of squares you may move.

I hope you enjoy my post, see you next week

DAY-D. SNAKES AND LADDERS: STAR'S POV

Hello everyone, It's Noelia!

The last weeks, we've been working on six topics related to the school organization in Spain. We illustrated the topics in conceptual maps, got some of the key aspects for creating some questions and, finally, we made some cards with one question (of those that we did before) on each card.

Why were they made for? For playing.

Last Monday and today, the two stars of each group played snakes and ladders' game.  I hadn't played before to such game, it's quite similar to the spanish "Goose's play" ("El juego de la Oca"). Here you can see some pictures from the game (courtesy of this week's meerkat journalist, Ana):

Monday's  Game Session

  Today's Game Session

Game Board

The experience hasn't been as good as I would like to.

On Monday, we knew the answer for most of the questions Linda asked us. However, everytime we rolled the die we went to a snake's square and we lost the turn and came back to the previous one. We spent the whole three hours in that way. It was depressing and I definetely got really sad because of how unlucky we were.

Today, we just had one hour and one opportunity for playing that I missed as I didn't know the answer clearly. I still feel bad for it.

So, in the end, the only thing we can think of is that we did our best (the whole group) and we have learned a lot of school organization (what is really useful for us in the not distant future) during these weeks.

As I have said, the whole group did their best for working these topics and help to Paloma and me on our training, so I'd like to say them thank you so much for it.

 THANKS SO MUCH MEERKATS MATES!

Finally, I must say that if you play you've got winners, and these have beenPower Teachers and Keep Calm and Keep Organizated. Because of their win I really want to say them Congratulations, they have done a great job and, obviously, they deserve such reward. 

CONGRATULATIONS LADIES!

That's all. 

See you soon, everybody.

Meerkat Star.

SNAKES AND LADDERS: FACILITATOR'S POV

Hi everybody! I am María and this week I have been the facilitator again. I am very happy with the work of this week because I think that the two stars have done a good job answering the questions and representing the Meerkats group. Despite all our work, we have not won but the game has been very enjoyable for us. We are a little sad with the defeat but, at the same time, we are pleased with the victory of our classmates.

The two stars answered almost all the questions but the luck was not on our side. One more week, we have not had problems between us and I am very satisfied with Meerkats group.

SNAKES ANS LADDERS: STAR'S POV

Hi! I am Paloma and this week I have been one fo the stars that have to play!

At first I did not want to be the star because I had to study and I did not have much time...

But now I recognise that the experience has not been bad and I realize that Noelia and me form a good team!

In the first round of the play, we were very lucky because we knew all the questions! Unfortunately after, our luck changed and we only fall with the snakes... It was so frustrating but we could not do anything. I know that Noelia and me could win the game but sometimes the luck plays against us!

Also I think that the winners have done a good job and they deserve the prize because they also knew answer the questions correctly!

DAY-D, SNAKES AND LADDERS: JOURNALIST

Hello guys!! This is Ana and my mission this week is to recollect all the effort of my group and let you know how we have worked on the famous Game! So, I am the journalist. I love this role so I have enjoyed it as each week.

Well, this week has been one of the most important of the part of “Scholar Organization”, consequently, we were nervous and a bit under pressure. Specially, our Stars who are really great!! As I have said before, it has been the time of the game, we are still in the sixth activity of the course but this is the final step. The game is “Snakes & Ladders” and it has been the one in charge to demonstrate if we have worked deeply with the Basis of the Educational System.

First, we continued following the strategy that I, as the coach, developed and which we explained in the last week posts. Thus, our stars continued preparing their knowledge for Monday and we kept answering their questions. Thus, we did not need to meet this week, on the contrary, we discussed the problems in class, by WhatsApp and by Skype, where we met two nights during the week to help Paloma and Noelia and to support them, although they did not need it since they are the best!

As every week, we changed the roles. This is something that created some problems with our partners in the class, but fortunately we did not have any trouble because Noelia and Paloma were very courageous and decided to deal with this challenge. So, modifying a bit the table that we use to change our roles, the rest of us continued with the same dynamic as at the beginning and which have been very good for us.

Monday, at 9’o clock, now, it is time for the game!!

I have to say that our stars were nervous but at the same time, they were very motivated because they had trained a lot and we were confident of their knowledge, we knew that they were going to do their bests, and that is what they did. During the progress of the game we supported them unconditionally. Go Meerkats!!

Our stars did an unbeatable work, they knew the questions very good and even the audience cry out that she answer wrong any question. If had continue as we started the game, we could have won but nor chance nor the dice loved us and we were constantly moving down from snake to snake. This is what impeded us to advance, but well, this is a game for lucky people. Nonetheless, we are very very proud of their work and their effort. We love you!!

Then, I have been watching some blogs and I have found this very interesting and useful for our professional career. This blog has the intention to inform students, families and future teachers about important news such as the next oppositions. Also, it offers a variety of resources for each academic level and its appearance makes it attractive. I find it very interesting and I invite you to visit it!
http://www.blogdelmaestro.com/

On the other hand, I have been watching the blogs of my partners, and now I can say that which is more beautiful from point of view is the one of Power Teachers. Apart from its appearance which is nice, I can see that they make a big effort and work a lot each post they write.
http://powerteachers15.blogspot.com.es/

CONGRATULATIONS for Power Teachers who have been the winners!! :)

DAY-D, SNAKES AND LADDERS: ANALYST'S POV

This week we finally play “the game”, we have been working on this topic since Easter and we really wanted to do a good job and, if possible, win the game Snakes and ladders. I think this is a really good way to conclude this topic: a funny and interesting way to show our knowledge and how we have worked on it. We were all very motivated and everybody helped in the groups dynamics. Our Stars have worked and studied also during the weekend. I think that was the best part of the week, the compromise of each other and how we have worked to do our best. I think it could have been better if the entire group could participate in the game. Even if we helped the stars, they had a lot of pressure that any of us had, making their task more difficult and harder.

In my opinion, the best part of the week has been the great job of the stars, they knew all the answers and they really showed that we worked on it. Unfortunately, we have not been lucky and the dice has not helped us… Snakes made us loose!

Anyway, we have learnt a lot about the topic and we keep learning team-working. I think this is very important because it is always necessary how to work with others, collaborate and cooperate to do a good job.

If we continue working as well as until now, we will keep improving. Nevertheless, we have to learn how to distribute better the tasks. There are always people who work more than others, and that is not fair.

To conclude, I would like to say that this topic has been very useful, as we will work as teachers under these laws (as one is the continuation of the first one), we must know the law in order to know and understand all the system that surrounds us in the education field, almost in Spain. I think it is really interesting to see how politics influences everything, education as well, but, in my opinion, some issues must be always the same to guarantee consistency.

Pilar-Meerkat

DAY-D, SNAKES AND LADDERS: CURATOR-FARMER´S POV

Hi everybody! I´m Fran and this week I´m the curator-farmer of the Meerkats group. We are doing the same task as last week so, we have the same mindmap that the last week because we have been studying the whole topic for the game and this week we have not needed to look for new bibliography.

I´m going to put our complete mindmap. I hope that you´ll enjoy with our post and good luck for the contest!