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! 

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

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

TRAINING FOR THE GAME: TRANSLATOR´S POV

Hello everybody! I´m Fran again, and This week I´m the translator of the Meerkats group. Like you know, the analyst is the responsible to show you five concepts each week concerning the task of this week. This week we have continued with the last task, "The card´s game", and we have to prepared the game for the next week. This role is confortable but it´s very interesting too, because the analyst must know the really important concepts of the task and I think that it´s interesting.

Now, I´m going to start with the concepts:

• BOARD GAME: Is a game that is played on board. There are a lot of board games and there are different kinds of board games. Some of the types of board games are these: Strategy games, role games, thematic games, abstract games, war games or simulation games. all of them are made to enjoy and to play with others.

• SNAKES AND LADDERS: Snakes and ladders is a classical board game. This game is very old and is famous around the world. To play to snakes and ladders is necessary two or more players, a die and a snakes and ladder´s board. The objective of the game is to start at home and to arrive to the finish of the game helped by the ladders and try to avoid the snakes. The winner is the first to arrive to the finish line. It´s a game very popular and it´s very similar of the Oca´s game.

• CONTEST: It´s an organized meeting between players with a previous preparation about something and an collegiate institution called jury. Jury have the function to puctuate the players about them merits and habilities. The players demostrate them habilities with differents proofs. In our contest, the proofs are the cards. The player must get right the questions to continue the turn.

• LOMCE: Organic Law Improving Educational Quality is the new educational law valid in Spain. The congress of deputies approved the law in 2013. The objective of this law is the universalization of education. The law try to provide all student minimun and uniform levels of education in general is characterized by teh implementation of rigid an uniform system s with very detailed curriculum and little autonomy of  teachers and schools. LOMCE has been a polemic law. Nowadays exist a discussion about it.

• AUDIENCE:Set od people who follow a content or competition and they are integral part of the content. They analyze the content and they can opine about the players, the jury or anything. They are very important because their implication is the success of the content.

These are the five concepts of this week. I wish that you´ll enjoy with my post. see you soon! Regards.

BASICS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM II: TRANSLATOR

HELLO AGAIN to our fans. It was a long time without you but Meerkats are here again and with the batteries recharged!! I am Ana and this week I have been the translator. Being the translator is not bad and with this role I can say that I have already tested all of them! This time we have continued the last and long task that we started before easter; now we have done some questions related to the documents about the educational system, so, the terms that I have described for you are the following ones: 

Educational administration: It is a part of the educational system of an educational institution that is in charge of the managing of resources, the relation and communication with other centres and its supervision. The head of school is the senior in the scale of Educational Administrators, so he/she has to budget decisions, control all the activities in and out the centre, adapt the curriculum, and so on.

School board: This term refers to a group of people who have been selected to take some decisions in schools in small regional areas. Its general function is to give instructions about the management of the school and the power can be shared with other institutions (the government’s department of education). We can find school boards in public or private schools.

Competence: It is the capacity to apply in an integrated way, all the contents developed in the different courses of school, in order to make a good job, act in future situations and solve properly, complex and daily activities.

Curriculum: This term is referred to the document that regulates the elements which form the different processes developed in school (teaching and learning), during the different parts of the courses. It gathers the knowledge that a student has to achieve to promote, as well as, the hours which have to be followed, the different subjects that shape the courses, the contents that teachers have to teach and the way in which they must evaluate students.

Law: The law is referred to a set of rules established by the government in order to regulate and coordinate the cohabitation and behaviour of people in a country. We can find a legislative power, executive power and judicial power. 

"A body of rules fixed and enforced by a sovereign political authority." (Austin, 1790)

I expect with them you can better understand these important concepts about our law and enjoy a bit more with our weekly works. 

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? 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.

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

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.

TREASURE HUNT: TRANSLATOR' POV

Hello dears followers of meerkats, I am Javi, and this week I’m the translator of the group, my principal role in the group this week is to talk about five different words that have relation wih the treasure hunt . of course, we can’t made the poster with out the help of the:

Maps: A map is a symbolic depiction between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, and themes.

Many maps are static two-dimensional, geometrically accurate (or approximately accurate) representations of three-dimensional space, while others are dynamic or interactive, even three-dimensional. A good example of mix between maps and media are programs like “GoogleMaps”, or “GoogleEarth”.

Scavenger Hunt: A scavenger hunt is a game that consist on different tasks that people should pass in order to get a new clue and go to the next task, the people or the group that pass all the tasks first will win.

Extension of a Country: Is the surface on km² of a country that allow us to ensure how big is a country and we can compare this country with others, in my opinion this is the best option for seeing the countries with his real size, and no with some changes that usually happen with maps.

Distortion: A distortion is when you try to put the earth on a surface, and of course, try to establish to represent a sphere in a plane with two-dimensions, the main problem is that this surface will be a failed representation of the real size of the content included on it

Projection: projection is a way of representation of maps, there are lots of them, because is impossible to set in a two-dimension object something with three-dimension object like the earth, for this reason there are more than one proyection, because the first ones had some problems, we are talking about “Robinson” and “Mercator” projections, the Azimuthal projection is older and more realistic that the others.

TPACK PRESENTATION: TRANSLATOR´S POV

The Translator

Hi! I am Francisco Álvarez and this week I´ll be the translator of my group. In the task of this week we have learn a lot of TPACK and about the related concepts with TPACK. The concepts of this task were unknown for me but now, I can understand better the function and the importance of TPACK in live in general and particularly in education. Like translator, I have to choise five terms and explain with my own words.

The 5 most important terms that we have been learnt on the week are the following:

• Technology: Technology is a class of knowledge about a specfic area. Technology require diferent technical skills to use a product. Technology implies a lot of knowledge, techniches and tools. Technology is very important in the concept of TPACK and it´s necessary to know this concept to understand better the concept of TPACK.

• Pedagogy: Pedagogy is a discipline that deal with the theory and practice of education. One of the most important goals of the pedagogy is a better practice of education. This term it´s important in the concept of TPACK, it´s the second letter of this word. To understand this term, we need to know what is pedagogy? and we need a good pedagogy to aply the TPACK.

• Content: Are the subjects or topics covered in a book or document. The contents are the things must included in a document, a book, a programming, etc.The content must be referred of the subject or topic that we want to teach. Content change in the different stages of education, in the different subjects of the education and with different teacher of the same subject. The content i the TPACK are content with a technological relatioship. 

• Knowledge: Knowledge is the whole a person know.  The knowledge is everything we learn and everything we remember due to the education, the life experience, etc. We need knowledge to understand the life, to understan the world. There are many forms to acquire knowledge. In the concept of TPACK, the knowledge is an important term to understand it. 

• Context: The context is the situation where something happen. The context situate something in a place and in atime. To talk about TPACK we need to situate this term in a context (educational, pedagogical, technological, etc). When we talk about TPACK we must situate us in a concrete situation. 

CONCLUSION

The first four terms build the concept of TPACK. This concept is the key to undertand the task due to that word is the set of the other four words.

TPACK is a framework taht identifies the knowledge teachers need to teach effectively with technology (Koehler and Mishra, 2009)

I hope that you have learnt very much with this post. See you soon!