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.

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!! :)

TRAINING FOR THE GAME: JOURNALIST'S POV

This week the class environment has changed, we are all going to fight for winning the snake and ladders game. As you may already know, we work on the Educational System during Easter and now, we have to demonstrate our knowledge playing this game. This is such a challenge, but our team is very motivated and I know we are going to do our best.

The original snakes and ladders game

To do so, last week we organised the group dynamic and we chose our speaker-persons.

Ana, Paloma, and Noelia were the ones who took the risks and the initiative. These brave girls now are in charge of showing the others how the group has worked and how we are able to learn effectively.

According to the group dynamics, we all read the documents, and we test the others to learn faster and to make the stars learn more. Moreover, this way, we all know what are the topics about, which make the study of the star easier. They can ask us if they have any question.

The team, trying to learn all the questions

Even if we are very well organised, and the stars are motivated and ready to go for it, as I said before, this is a new challenge and all the stars of the class are under pressure. We could feel it in the air.

the coach training the star 

I interviewed the representatives of our group to make you know how they feel and how they get ready for this new experience.

Ana, the coach, is very motivated and ready to do it. Nevertheless, she is under pressure because she feels she is the person in charge of the results of the game.Thanks to her we will lose or win: “I am the manager and the coach, Paloma and Noelia have to play, but I have to train them. I know they can do it perfectly, but I have to do my best to make them confident and ready to face this. I know what I have to do, but I want to do it well. I want all things to be perfect.”

Ana, the coach

Paloma, one of the stars, told me she was very nervous. She is afraid of lose her nerfs at the game. even if she knows the answer of each and every question: “I’m quite nervous, we have a very wide content. I know I can do it, but there is a lot of pressure. Fortunately, my mates help me a lot with the contents and Ana is a good coach… She encourages us and her advices are very useful!”.

Paloma, star

Finally, I talked to Noelia. She is motivated, and her optimism makes it easier to work and learn without stress. She really thinks we can win and this attitude helps both the stars and the support team: “This is our chance to show the others how we have improved from the beginning of the year until now. We can’t be overwhelmed, there is a lot of work, but we can do it. Go meerkats!   

Noelia, star

This is all by now, next week we will know if we finally win or not, the development of the game, how we deal with the questions, and so on!

Now I am going to show you a very interesting blog, created from a magazine. Its name is Educación 3.0 There you can find not only educational resources based in new technologies, but also news on education, information on formation (like seminars, training courses, etcetera), family resources… It is very complete and very useful for teachers and future teachers as well. I invite you to check it out and see by yourselves all the things this web can offer you!

Pilar Acosta- Meerkats’ journalist

BASICS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM II: JOURNALIST

Hi! I am Paloma and this week I am the journalist of Meerkats. So, I have to tell the story of this week, how we have developed the activity.

For doing it, I am going to insert some evidences of our work, such as pictures in which we can see that we were meeting in class talking about our activity.

We have worked in the elaboration of cards with questions related to the documents of  the Organization of the Spanish Educational System. These questions will be used for the game in which we are going to participate.

We had to divide the group in small groups to work in the production of the cards of every topic. Thus, every small group  were in charge of read and create 4 questions (with the corresponding answers) of each topic.

Once all of us had write the questions, we put all the questions together and we elaborated a general pattern for doing all the cards in the same way. After of this, Fran went to a copy shop and printed all our cards.

Monday in class, we were with other group because we had to evaluate the quality of the cards of the others groups.

Here we can see Meerkats meeting doing the evaluation!

And here we are talking with the other group, all of us working together for a good evaluation!

And finally, I show you our fantastic result, the cards to do the game!We can see cards of all of the groups, and also the cards created by Meerkats.

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!

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.

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:

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.

CC LICENCE AND GOOD PRESENTATIONS: JOURNALIST ´ S POV

Hi dear followers! I´m Fran, a member of Meerkats group. I´m the Journalist this week and I pretend to show you our development work this week.

In this third task named: "CC Licence and good Presentations", we did a good teamwork. We have known divide up the work to make it fast and efficiently. First of all, as each week, we changed our roles to pass all of the different profiles.

Journalist is an important role in the group, because is responsible for collecting all the organization of the week, as they have been drafted presentations on Monday and review the classmate´s blogs. It´s an important task, but also is very interesting task. Now, we´ll start to discover how we have worked on CC Licence and good Presentations!

In this task, we have made two types of work: First, talk about what Means to use creative commons licence resource and how to Do That in 10 slides and To Explain 20 tips for Developing a good presentation in slide 20. Second, choose a topic preferably related to any content on Primary School and prepare an oral presentation about it in 4 minutes. The responsible of the presentation should be the Star. Around this week, we have been preparing this task, both sides.

On Monday, the whole group discussed in the practical class about the organization of the activity. We decided to divide up objects search to begin immediately with the task. "The star" suggested the theme of the presentation "The Solar System" and the whole group we found a good idea. "The star" and two more sought information on this topic , while others we split the first part of the task (talk about what Means to use creative commons licence resource and how to Do That in 10 slides and To Explain 20 tips for Developing a good presentation in slide 20).

On Wednesday we were to gather all the information found and start selecting the material we were going to use for the task. That day we prepared all material we used for this task.

Due to the strike called on Thursday and Friday, we werre unable to physically these days and we wee finishing the task through Internet. We use platforms such as Skype, Gmail, Google Drive and Whatsapp. The first part of the task, created by one of the group, always in touch with the rest and helped by all. The presentation was prepared by another group member and also was helped by the rest at all time.

This Monday, Our "Star" did the exposition about "The Solar System". The order of Expositions was decided by the Professor. The order was as follows:

The whole of expositions used the pojector and some of them used accessories and others materials. I think that the expositions werre very good in general. The themes of expositions were original and very interesting, but the professor said us that we must take into account to chose themes related with the School curriculum.

We wrote some notes about the different groups:

GROUP 1: The presentation was well prepared but It was a bit monotonous.

GROUP 2: Fluid communication.

GROUP 3: The presentation was slow and with doubts.

GROUP 4 (My group): The presentation was very good.

GROUP 5: The presentation was original.

GROUP 6: The presentation was easy to understand and very clear.

GROUP 7: The presentation was very original and funny. This group did a good job.

GROUP 8: The presentation was good.

GROUP 9: The presentation was good but it was very difficult to the School curriculum.

In general, the expositions was very good, so we would think more in the content for children. Our exposition was very fluid but the professor said Our "Star" that the content was very big for the children .

I want to congratulate to "Busybees group" because them presentation was very creative and original and them "Star" did the presentation very good. I recommend them blog this week:
 http://busybeestakeiteasy.blogspot.com.es/

And now, I´m going to recommend a Blog this week. It´s a Blog about music very interesting and each post describe different kinds of music and in general a lot of music culture. I like very much this blog and I wish that you like it too.
http://www.blog.musicacreativa.com/

That´s all. We´ll read soon!!

TREASURE HUNT: JOURNALIST

Hello everybody!!!! I’m Ana and this week I have had the opportunity to be the Journalist of my awesome group Meerkats.

In this second task, named as: “Treasure hunt: cartographic projections”, we had to do a very hard work. First of all, as each week, we changed our roles using a simple method in a way that all the members of the group can have the chance of enjoying the experience of each role.

Being the journalist makes me feel cheerful because I think that is nice to recollect all the effort of my group and let you know how we have worked on the Treasure hunt!

In this task, we had to analyse three Map Projections (Robinson, Mercator and Azimuthal) in order to find the projection which is the most realistic, comparing them and synthesizing their properties. 
Then, we had to choose two countries and look for the differences of their representation in the three different Map projections. Finally, we had to resolve the Big question and choose some examples of media distortions and Treasure Hunt to answer the reflection proposed for the teacher consisting of the neutrality of media.

On Wednesday the whole group discussed about the organization of the activity and we agreed that all of us would search for information to better understand the general context of the Treasure Hunt and the cartographic projections. So, we all met through Skype and shared our perceptions of the activity.

On Friday, we met and completed the table with the content of the different cartographic projections as well as the other theoretical questions of the activity. Also, we did the sketch of our poster and the rest of the group, who could not come to Murcia, was the responsible of its construction. We decided to make a handcraft poster because in our first activity we received a lot of critics for doing the mind map by computer. So, we thought a lot of ideas and decided that it will be enormous, in that way; people would see it very good and wouldn’t complain about neither the size nor originality.

Finally, on Monday, the day of the exposition when we arrive to the class, we found a “surprise”. The exposition about Treasure Hunt would be carried out with other two groups. In our case, they were: Fran from Platypus and Marina from Power Teachers. Fortunately, the three groups worked very well and we could make a quite good improvised exposition. For the presentation we decided to use our poster and a mix of the power points done by our peers. As I have said, the result was good.

Here, you can see the three groups planning the exposition and then, our stars doing their best!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR6HIQiIfvw&feature=youtu.be

Simultaneously, the Journalists, Analysts and the Facilitators of each group had to share their reflections and perceptions about the work in their own groups, that is to say, the techniques they use, what is their methodology, problems, and so on.

We agreed that the main problem of the work in so big groups is that is very difficult to meet because each member of the groups has their personal occupations and when the majority of the team can, there are other ones that cannot. On the other hand, we used the same method, a previous look for information and one day, all together complete and finish the whole work. In short, the second experience has been good and we are working bit by bit for improving our strategies.

Now, I would like to recommend you some blogs. First of all, I have chosen the blog: http://www.generaciondigital.es/. Its author, a pedagogue and designer of educational interactive products, talks about infancy, entertainment and education in a digital world. I have chosen this blog because I find it really interesting and what is more, it is much related to our subject because links education, technology and school! You can find there, innovative strategies created to introduce children in new technologies and facilitate their learning offering such different alternatives. I really recommend you to visit it, you won’t

regret it!!!

Also I like the blog http://7upgroup.blogspot.com.es/ because until now they are doing a good work and I like the design of their blog since the posts are simple and their content is good. I expect they continue working in this way!

See you soon. :-*