I am the star by María Moreno

QUESTIONS ABOUT TOPIC 6.

1.   What is the common teaching coordination body in pre-primary/ primary education and secondary education?

2.   Respect the curriculum, is more autonomous a public or a funded private school?

3.   Is any parent part of the Leadership Team in school?

4.   What are the main functions of the class representative?

5.   Can you explain briefly what a school board is and some main functions of it?

6.   When Non- University Institutions began to be autonomy and what are their principal areas of autonomy?

7.   Why Participation bodies are created? Do you know which are the three channels created for students?

8.   According to the model decentralised State and the share of Educational competences between Statement institutions and Educational institutions, think about of the curriculum and explain these different set of levels of application.

9.   You passed the public examination and it is your 7^th year as a teacher in a Primary School in Lorca, you also are the coordinator of your cycle, in which bodies are you involved?

10.   María is a teacher in 4^th grade in a Primary School in Santomera. She is the teacher of Pedro, a boy with lot of problems with maths. When María proposes activities with multiplications, he cannot do them. Can María by her own make adaptions of the curriculum for her student Pedro? If the answer is negative, who has to do it?

11. Talking about the Teaching Coordination Bodies compared this body in Primary Education and in Secondary Education.

12. With the new law LOMCE, one of the collegial bodies has lost power to decide about important issues. Analyse which issues we are talking about the implications of this.

13. A problematic child wants to enter a school, who is the person who takes the decision of saying no to this if it is necessary?

14. I am the father of a child in a state school. Can I form part of the Board of Education?

15. What happened with the approval of the LOMCE regarding the functions of the board of education?

16. If a student resides in a rural area and must move to another nearby town to go to school, who will pay the transportation cost, school meals and boarding?

17. Will the headmaster decide about the student’s admission? Why?

18. Regarding the school autonomy, educational administration has the freedom to create work plans outside of their curriculum. So, could these plans affect students in their titles obtention?

19. In a primary school, can the students be members of the school board?

20. Does headminintress or a headmaster need to have specific and complementary studies at his or her degree? Or can any teacher be a headmaster?

21. If you are a parent and you want to participate in your child´s school, how would you do?

22. The collegial school bodies are two: the School board and the teacher’s assembly. What are the differences between them?

23. The team of teachers in Secondary Education institutes has some duties. What are those duties?

24. If you are a class teacher in Primary School, what is your function?

25.  What is the individual body public school division?

26. Can the parents participate in the teacher assembly? Where they can participate?

27. What is the main difference between individual and collegial bodies?

28. In a primary school, can a teacher choose the components of class representative?

29.  If there are some students with learning difficulties in your class, which body can give solutions and who is it formed by?

30. In relation to school administration and according to LOMCE, could you tell what the main pillars to promote “Quality Education” are? Name at least four of them.

31. Who prepares and approves the School Development plan? Has it suffered any change with the LOMCE?

32. What is the roll of the School board modified by the LOMCE?

33. What happens in the case of absence of centre candidates?

34. Who chairs staff-meeting? Do all the teachers get involved on it?

35.  Who is governing board made up of?

36. Is it necessary to be a Director to hold any kind of certification or credential? If yes, which one?

The Facilitaros by Cristian Paco Andreo

Well, I don't even know where and how to star, many thinks happens this week but not all of then enjoyable at all, but better stop thinkig on the pass and  let's look forward to the sugerirse, the end of this subjet is close and I'm sure we'll remenber it for loooooooong time.

For the activity of this week, I have split the group into two team, the first was formed by María, Fely and Fernando taking the topic 5 and the second was Raquel, Rosana and my self takin the topic 2. both the groups were split into three task, one per person, What a mess!!!

To clarify it the reason for spliting and spliting the topics was to go deep and deep into the both topics by a determinate member of the group, by the way, I thing we've got it. ;)

The tool we have used was named "Inspiration 9". This is quite nice conceptual map software but isn't FREE, OMG!!! now  I have a trial version and my desk full of rubish from softonic, you know, when you get something fron softonic it never came alone, tones and tones of adds and so.

In conclusion, the activity was ok but not impresive, actully quite boring but the transversal competence is adquired which is the most importat.  About my mates I have to congratulate them they were doing very very well, I made Fernando and Feli to chenge their cmap many times and they never complain, lol!! 

Now if you want to  see the result of our job for this week, don't hesitate to click on the link below.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jc43lb8euf20j5k/final%20%20cmap.pdf

Work as Curator-Farmer by Rosana Yepes

This week I have been the Curator-Farmer. To be honest, I don’t like so much my work because it is very simple and it is very difficult being innovative and creative. Even I still think it is a necessary work because we must have the references recollected in order to when we study this subject. Moreover, the topic of this week is not my cup of tea; I don’t like so much the law. However, it doesn’t want to say that it doesn’t be important. Indeed, now with the law´s change is more important knowing it.

On the other hand, the dynamic that we used the last Monday, I don’t understand at all, because it was estrange having to evaluate my own conceptual map. I thing I didn’t understand exactly the activity. In contrast, I liked a lot the tool which we used in order to evaluate the conceptual maps.  

In regarding to the feelings, this week has been a bit difficult due to internal problems, but now I hope we face the least of the semester with a positive aptitude and trying to overtake our difficulties, our misunderstandings and we overtake our goals successfully.

Once more, congratulations partners!!

Translator by Raquel Pelayo

This week I have been the translator and my mission is to choose five terms and define them with their links

CONCEPTUAL MAPS: is a type of graphic organizer and structure the contents of a topic that used to help to someone to organize and to have a general idea of it. First of all, the concept map begins with the main idea (in boxes or circles, with different colors…) and with narrows or lines goes down and then the sub ideas of that topic. In the map we see concepts or a phrase very short or that phrase structure. The objective of this conceptual map is has the technique for visualizing the relations between the ideas and it is easier to understand, more comfortable and help to people that are frighten to read big paragraphs.

To build a conceptual map we must to start with the main idea or topic that it is focused in, secondly determine the key concepts and finally connecting concepts.

And here you have an example of a conceptual map, to understand better what it is.

 

http://www.inspiration.com/visual-learning/concept-mapping

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

LOE:  this new law organize, structure and delimit all the function of the Educational System including the education’s goals, the organization of the education, the teachers, schools, the inspections, the economic resources, etc. and the attention to the diversity of pupils.

The basic education is divided in two: primary school and secondary education (obligatory) where children between six and sixteen years old must go obligatory to the school and without paying. It determines the education which is no obligatory, like “Bachillerato” and “Formación profesional”.

http://www.ali.es/modules/miprofesion/item.php?itemid=34

And here you can find a document about the articles that includes the LOE:

http://www.e-torredebabel.com/leyes/LOE/LOE-Titulo-Preliminar.htm

LOMCE: this law is for the improvement of the educational quality, and this one was founded with the change of the last law (LOE).

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_Org%C3%A1nica_para_la_Mejora_de_la_Calidad_Educativa

Curriculum: for education, the curriculum is the planned of the knowledge, contents, material, tools, methods and process for evaluating if the objectives have been accomplish the objectives. Depending on how educators define or employ the term, the curriculum refers to the knowledge and skills that student are expected to learn.

An individual teacher’s curriculum would be what he/she has to teach to their students, the lessons which he/she must explain, assignments and materials used to organize for a particular course. For a teacher is very difficult to explain and do everything that is in the curriculum, in the sense that the teacher has not enough time to explain everything or to do everything what is in the curriculum.

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

http://edglossary.org/curriculum/

Inspiration 9: is a program for the computer that is useful for education to make conceptual maps and provides several visual thinking and learning products. It permits the graphic representation of a topic and it is very easy to understand.

http://www.facmed.unam.mx/emc/computo/mapas/framemapas.htm

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

Here you can find the link where you can download this program:

http://inspiration.softonic.com/

Analyst role by Fernando Tortosa Cutillas

I have been the analyst this week and first of all I have to say that all my partners have done the work great and I’m very proud of all of them. Especially of Cristian who was the facilitator this week and who has offered us help to explain us some concepts and also has helped us to organize our concept map.

What was the best part of the activity?

The best part of the activity in my opinion has been when on Monday in class we had to compare the others groups maps of the same topic and unify them all together. And also we have learnt to organize concepts in a conceptual map in a simple way using a program called "Inspiration 9".

What was the worst?

The worst moment was when we have to start reading the LOE and the LOMCE because we were not used to work with that and it was a little difficult to understand at first.

What was the best moment of the week (group work)?

The best moment was when we had to evaluate ourselves in a fair way because we have a group supervising us, so we ask them for opinion and we agreed with them.

What was the worst?

The worst thing this week has been was the difficulty of the activity; we are not too much familiar with the educational laws, so at first I have been a little difficult to understand. But Cristian as facilitator this week has helped us a lot to organize each part of our conceptual map.

What have you learned?

We have learned to see our own mistakes comparing with others group perspectives to organize and make things clear with the conceptual maps. But we have also learnt some principal concepts about the educational laws LOE and LOMCE and its changes.

What is needed to conserve, as a group for the next few weeks?

Well I think we are doing the things right and that we have improve a lot since the start of the course and we also have get used to work in group and to help each other.

What needs to improve, as a group for the next few weeks?

We dont have to do just the activity, we have to investigate and try to learn also about other things related to the topic that will help us in the future as teachers.

How this has been related to other content in the course and in the race?

Well it’s obvious that knowing the educational laws is very important for us because we have to know our limitations and the things that we can do in each situation at school.

There is no obvious social connection of this content (news, politics, etc.)?

All the aspects the educational laws in Spain at least, are related with politics, depending of the political party governing they can make changes in the educational law but this is not fair at all because they are all time changing the laws and this cause many problems, like with the change of textbooks.

Journalist by Maria & Feli.

Feli's report

Scoring giveme 7 &T8T

Human beings existence is characterized and focused in spending time and behave, both individually and in groups. Now that we are facing the student stage, we spend a great deal of our time in groups. What is even more, in the working world, even if we are ready or not we will spend even more.

The big group

Of course, many times we have no choice whether we will work alone or with more people. We are just told what to do. GOALS? To be best apt to be prepared in order to gain aptitude skills to be prepared and able to interact with society in general.

The Brainstorming group, as the remaining ones have been working more than two moths, and that fact helped us to know each other better, our goals, hobbies, hopes….

REFLEXION is a nice way to foresee, what about the rest of your class groups?

Learning from other's perspectives

So that my role this week will consist on going through all the groups integrated in the B section, and ask them their general feed back about this weekly task, whether they found it more difficult or easier than previous ones, what should be improved, if all of them find the task difficult or on the contrary, some find them easier than others.

                                           STEP BY STEP

 http://stepbystepineducation.blogspot.com.es/

I asked them whether they found this week's task about conceptual maps easier than Moovly, and their general answer was that for them getting used to using Moovly was more complicated because the had to invest a deal of time in order to get used to it. All of them told me that concepts maps were easier that they were expecting.

Let´s see what T8T has to add.

http://t8tteam.blogspot.com.es/

Their role on the exposition day was to work as supervisors, and for them in general the experience was not good, because none of them could compare their maps with other groups in order to improve or just have different perceptions, and I have to admit that they are right, they play disadvantaged.

What about  THE LITTLE ANTS?

http://thelittleants.blogspot.com.es/

Their general feed back is that the LOGSE-LOMCE differences has been approached on an overbearing manner, so that, not time enough to chew the concept. For them going through Moovly or the conceptual maps did not make any difference, as they think that every tool is new and requires time and cooperative work in order to cope with all the subjects.

Our own feedback

http://7brainstorming.blogspot.com.es/p/class-mates-blogs.html

It is curious that even though we have not been working with the rest of the groups, our opinion in general does not differ from the rest. On the contrary, we could witness how the team that was supervising us were telling that as much as they like to supervise, they did not have the same opportunity to correct their own maps. We also think that a subject like LOE-LOGSE, maybe because the majority of us do not go often through the BOE is not an easy subject, if we are to learn the roots of them. And we also add that I would be great if we had more time to compare all of them.

Well my friends, that was all. Even though working in groups is more time-consuming than individual or interpersonal effort, at least I could report that our worries, our willingness to exceed expectations in order to improve, and motivation overall will guide us to good destination.

YOU ALL ARE DOING GREAT!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

Maria's Report

As the other journalist has said, this is not an easy work to do.  When a new law is adopted, a lot of changes appear and we had to contrast both in order to understand what happened.

As I don´t know if the differences between LOE and LOGSE have been clearly understood, I wanted to explain them with two videos. They are in Spanish, because it is a Spanish legislation, so that, I will explain them in English in order to clarify some aspects.

Firstly I wanted to say that LOGSE was a Spanish law from 1990 to 2006 when it was derogated by LOE. So now let´s see the videos!!

The first one talks about the establishment of LOGSE and explains it´s main functions and ways of teaching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykxVLUPGK28

As we can see the most important aspects of this law were:

-           Equal  opportunity to education;

-          Moral and religious education;

-          Free and compulsory basic education;

-          Printed material (textbook, Workbook and worksheet)

-          Evaluation with an exam in order to saw what the student had learnt.

-          Teachers with a close bond with their students and subject.

The second video talks about the establishment of LOE, so it is in favour of it, presenting it´s relevant pros.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0KMAHclQlY

As we can see, this law wanted to take many specific points from LOGSE and try to improve them. It´s main goal is to fight against school failure from the beginning.

With this purpose It not only included improvement measures to students in primary and secondary education, but also in secondary education the number o subjects was reduced.

In general, students have a 65% of common contents, having the religion subject as a voluntary one.

So know we really know the differences between both laws, but if you have to decide which one is the best, what do you say?

Well, my answer is clear, I really prefer LOE and these is because I hate studying only with printed materials and do an exam to show what I have learnt. Also we have more freedom to choose what we want to study and how we want to learn things.

In conclusion, we have lots of opportunities and resources that we should use in order to make our knowledge bigger.

SO LET´S INVESTIGATE AND WORK HARD!!!!!

Conceptual maps: topic 5 and 2

Cmap of topic 5: Administration at educational institutions level

Cmap of topic 2: The Primary School.

Curator farmer by Rocío Ramón

This week I have been the curator farmer, it has been a different week because, for personal reasons I have missed quite a class and I could not spend much time with my teammates. But next week I'll try and make all my teammates working more. As curator farmer I have learned to use pearl tree that I find very interesting and a great way to organize your work and have referenced it. It has been fun to discover for myself how to use it and once I already knew was very easy. The worst being cuartor farmer this week has been that there was not much reference as there was no looking information if not use our previous work. I am very happy with my group and I are all hard workers and imagintavos, or I hope we progress each week and we can be the best!

Facilitator by Rosana Yepes

Hello everybody!

The last week I have been the facilitator, the boss of the group. To be honest, I was wishing to be the facilitator in order to know what it feels. My feelings have been good at whiles. I mean, when I divided the work and we were thinking on it were wonderful, but when we were until the last moment doing the video not at all.

As I have mentioned before, we had to make a video. So, my first impression was: Wonderful! I love doing artistic things! However, we had to use a program for us and the worst thing, we only had 1.30 minute!

Truly, we were leaving and leaving the work due to the amount of things that we had to do and honestly I was expecting that Linda uploaded the instructions.   When I realized that the time passed and we had not done anything, I decided to divide the work. My strategy was based on each couple did a topic in regard to the topic that they were the analyst, for example in my case I did the topic of the dark side of testbooks, because I had been the analyst the previous week.

I made this decision because I think the analyst is the person that uses up the most the topic due to he or she must summarize and tell the true essence of the activity. And in this way, he or she could represent better him or her topic.

However, we had some discussion due to we didn’t know exactly the limitations of the program. Fortunately, it was solved quickly.  We were until the last moment doing the video, but it was a funny situation for me. However, it doesn’t care because the really important thing was the result, and from my point of view the result was amazing, we picked up everything that we have learnt exactly.

Curiously, during the watching video I didn’t watch it, but Linda´s face since I was aware to I was the major responsible. Even we weren’t the group with more votes, Linda liked our video I could read her face and her mind and it is the really important.

Once more, I admit that I am proud of my group, above all when we are thinking the ideas and we make continue mention at our name: brainstorming.

Congratulation partners!!

Translator by María Moreno

These week I´ve been the translator and I think that these final part has to summary the basic things that we must have in mind when we work in some activities. So after a great time thinking I get in the conclusion that these are the basic words that we should know in order to reach our goals.

WEB 2.0 TOOL

A web 2.0 tool is the one which allows people to create, publish and share information on the internet without any knowledge of technical tools.

INNOVATION

The process of making changes to something established by introducing something new. We need to have in mind that nowadays, technology is a significant driver behind change, and sometimes plays an important role in innovations in educational design and delivery.

PROJECT

An individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim.

EXPECTATION

It can be define as a believing that something is going to happen or that something should be in a certain way.

SKILL

Is the learned ability to carry out a task with pre-determined results often within a given amount of time, energy, or both.

My role as the translator is very interesting, because I have to think about how can I explain our work in only five important words, so I have to read the contents and take the basic ideas to join them and summarise.

I´m very glad with the final result of these week, we have learnt how to use Moovly and hoy to summarize our work in only a small video.

CONGRATULATIONS TO MY COLLEGUES!

Analyst by Feli Travieso.

Imagine that two people are carving a six-foot slab of wood at the same time. One is using a hand-chisel, the other, a chainsaw. If you were interested in the future of that slab, whom would you watch?

The best part of the activity we had to perform this week, was the opportunity to learn a wide variety of paths to search and create your own information with innovative tools, in order to successfully synthetize the skills that we have acquired during this period. I have to say that not only has it been quite motivating, but also has helped us to get gradually more confident with new ways of transmitting knowledge.

Technology is not only on the rise, but it is also dramatically spreading and evolving, so discovering a new tool like Moovly has been exciting as it is a very useful application to use with children being visual and helping on catching their attention to transmit the message.

On the other hand, the most ghastly part was that in order to be proficient in using a video program as Moovly or PowToon among others, requires not only time (scarce this week), but also patience, and constancy( features not well developed).

Using this new method is a way to acquire or trying to achieve a new skill, which is to be able to foresee in a near future a good way to control time in a classroom when we have to be faced with a wide variety of diverse students. Why? Because going through this new and challenging task has taught us that in order to be proficient when given a lesson to future students in a class without surpassing the time, we as professionals, have to invest time and effort to transform a 50-minute class in a productive and rewarding experience for teaching-learning.

The best moment of the week was during the presentation, seeing that two groups, Come On Tutankamon and T8T, have done a great job and achieved the goal. They have been able to synthesize the contents in a clear, cohesive and attractive presentation and in the given time, which states they have worked hard and together as a team. It was a pleasure to see their faces were they were scored as the best ones on the class.

On the other hand and at the same time, the worst part of the week was when  realising our work did not achive expectations. This was for clear reasons, to name it: incoordination, lack of interest of some integrants, working at the very last moment running like chickens with not head.

Another bad moment was to witness that even though  the work done by giveme7, which  on my opinion it has been the best group all this time, was not scored as I was specting and I could clearly see some signs of langhisment among some of the integrants, due to the fact that they work so hard on this project.

These facts send as a clear message to learn: working in groups is important as long as all the members are playing at the same court.  Leonardo Messi would not be a football star if he did not receive his teammates unconditional support. Therefore it is necessary to put all members capacities together in order to create synergy, but sadly, teamwork is understood as splitting the work, and that fact will affect the way we are learning this subject as well as other subjects working with the same system.

For that reason, the main goal would be to understand that working in groups does not mean splitting the tasks in order to become more proactive, on the contrary, as a team we all should clearly being acquainted and share all the information we find in order to help our classmates in case that one or more if for for any reason are not able to perform as good as they should any of the remaining integrant are able to substitute them without problems.

In order to get better, we really need to work as a group, as if we were ONE PIECE belonging to a device, setting above the group before personal interest. Everyone should work for the group and do not expect the group to work for him/her.

This content is very related to the course and the whole degree as it can be applied in any subject, as mentioned above.

And finally, every step, every though, every effort we make to progress in this subject is increasingly connected on the same direction society in general should cope in order to be capable to exceed other’s expectation.