Last reflection

This reflection is going to be a bit special, not because it is the last, we finish and so on, because the way we finish (maybe I’m going too quickly talking about finish when we still have to prepare the portfolio and the final exam).
We finish in the same way we started, presenting our tasks with speed learning, and it made me reflecting about changes, changes that we have lived through this course and changes that we may live after this course. It was what I thought when we finished the task and that’s why I prefer to reflect about it than the task.

This course hasn’t been like another more. It’s a fact. You can read here in this blog all the works that we have done. We have had to work a lot and it have led to changes which we appreciate now. Usually courses challenges us at the beginning because we don’t know how it will be, but early you adapt to them. This course have challenged us every week, from the beginning to the end, showing us that we can go further and that we don’t need each thing just made, because we also can made it by ourselves. It’s easier that someone gives you all done and probably that’s the reason the most of us didn’t try to work by ourselves, because we always have had these people that facilitate it to us. Probably they did it thinking that it was the best for us, however it wasn’t, because they taught us to not doing anything because other person is going to do my part, and it isn’t efficience, neither fair. However it’s real, we live in a world where some people work a lot and do everything in order to other people don’t have to do nothing. That is what we are repeating instead of work all together to reach the more difficult goals, if all worked, we would have more brains, we would have more ideas, we would be faster than one brain doing the same task and all would have more time to rest in order to have strenght to the next goal. The point of view of our children about how to work depends of us. It’s up to us the change.

I will continue talking about changes, but this time about my group. We have broken together limits that we had and that we thought that it couldn’t be in another way. We had never thought that we could prepare in two days presentations, videos and so on about topic that we didn’t know. One reason to think it was because we lost a lot of time taking decisions, it was a good characteristic because it meant that we have many ideas but we had to be quickly choosing. These situations of having two days before presenting the task have forced us to be more efficients and to develop a better organization. We achieve it and it makes me feeling so proud of my group.

This course have shown us that there are many different resources for education, many different ways of organizing ourselves and many different ways of teaching and learning, real learning. All of them will have advantages and disadvantages, but we don’t have any reason to continue teaching in the same way when there are others that have more benefits. The easiest option is to do what people expect from us but we don’t have why fulfilling their traditional image of a teacher and now we have different learning experiences to decide which are we going to carry out.

Continuing  or changing.

It’s up to us.

All of us working as a team

This week has been a different one because Tuttifruties did not have to work as a group, we have to work with the whole class. I suppose that Linda wanted that we get in touch and work together in a different and creative way in order to improve ourselves.

At first, on Monday we were already divided in actors and writers. We just have to finish the field of the TV shows. Two components of Tuttifruties were in writers group and the rest in actors group, this can improve the strength of the group because we have learnt different things that we can provide in the rest of works. Also it can be a good way to rest working with the same people and maybe it can be more motivated for us because we want to make a good impression of ourselves.

Last Wednesday was the most cheerful day in this subject, in my opinion. I think that as students we need some works in which we do no have to do a hard work. Sometimes a little effort with many people becomes a big work, and we did it! The result of the video is going to be amazing and I hope that everybody really enjoy it. Also, we have learnt to work with other tools that we have never used it, and the most important thing, we have learnt to be a team.

We recorded different scenes of a tv program showing those news related to complexity theory that we have discovered last week. As the whole group fount a lot of articles, we chose the best ones in order to appear in the program.  In the afternoon, we were able to see a little part of the news presenter and I have to admit that I were impressed because of the ability of the class to made this type of things. In that moment I really felt that we are improving as future teachers that will use ICT in their classes. We are capable of doing whatever the teacher propose to us and I am proud of my class and also of myself.

Complexity and relationships

This week’s task has been, taking about content, the most complex one by far (notice the pun). It’s been about complexity and relationships within the school, and so, education in general. I say so because, seriously, there were weeks where I would’ve loved to be the analyst in order to make a good reflection, like on the dark side of the books, or perceptions, as they are topics that I personally am really interested about and think are of great importance for us not only as teachers, but as social human beings. However, I’ve gotten the complex one, so I’ll try and do my best.

Anyway, apart from that, this week above all, I have realised how incredibly complex edication is, and how everything in some sort of way influences it. Of course, I knew that it was a really complex system, not only being formed by the great amounts of academic content, but also emotions, feelings, tiredness, loneliness, friends, beliefs, ideologies… but maybe I wasn’t aware of how everything’s related and that’s that connections can change the whole school and its values. Such an important fact that us, as students (who sometimes feel like we aren’t part of anything, that teachers don’t care about us and that the system is so centered about creating a perfect computer that forgets about our humanity), don’t know. I mean, if we knew that by using our powerful relationships we could change the system we would make it, but we don’t. Why? Simple, maybe they don’t want us to know, maybe they want to have all the power to treat us however they want and make of us their next «big generation». They make us feel like unuseful toys, but don’t know we could make a toy story.

Well, I started writing kind of confused but this is turning interesting, don’t you think? Maybe the best ideas come from the emptiest moments. However, this is weird to me, you know? I write like a student (as I still am, and referencing my experience from my recent compulsory education), but I’m a teacher in some sort of way. Well, I’m still not, of course, but I’m on the process, as I’m going out of the process of being a student. So I’m criticising myself at the same time that I’m defending myself. I guess it’s just complex.

Now, cantering more into the actual content of the week, I guess that mainly what I, and we, as a group have learned is that everything’s connected. It doesn’t matter if you have an amazing teacher or beautiful values on your school, as if you have a bad peer relationship it will change the way you see everything. Moreover, society is constantly changing. The values, norms, government and so, educational laws change like fashions do (if we had a state pact for education it wouldn’t happen), but we will always be subject to some change, as everything dies (teacher and students included) and comes again.

We, as teachers, should be aware of that natural change and balance it with our tendency of stablishing a certain perdurance thrift norms and values, taking into account each and every aspect and relationship that could be made within the system.

Finally, must add that this week I’m very proud of the work of my fruits, as they’ve done a very good job. Maybe we could change and obviously improve in some things, like being more aware of everyone an cooperate more, but in general I’m very happy. 

Finally it turned out to be not as bad as I though it was going to be, don’t you think? Well, of course it depends on the perspective, but that’s more complex….

Analyst task 5: summarizing the last weeks

This week in the activity we had to summarize all we have learned during the course from the beginning until now making an animation in a video format (Moovly, Powtoons or stop motion).

This activity was different and funniest. Firstly, we put in common the main ideas of what we learned in each task, to know the important information that would appear in the video. Once we had clearly the ideas, we chose the resource that would be better for our intentions, and we started making the video. We had to explore how to use that format because we didn´t know it. Then, we made the video step by step, including music and the voice of our star.

The best moment of the week was on Wednesday when all groups presented the video to the rest of the class. The reason is that we could see the greatest ideas of our partners and also the contest, in which we had to mark the works of the other groups.

On the other hand, the worst moment was on Tuesday when we had to stay in the university until the afternoon to make the video because we didn´t know how to use Moovly properly, so we had to explore it.

With this task we have learned to use other resource in order to make a creative, attractive and animated video. This can be useful in the present for the university at the time of doing works, and for our future as teachers, for example, to explain some content to the children using a video animation.

As an analyst, I am very happy this week with my group because we have worked hard, and I think that the organization has been better than in our other works, so in this way we save time. It was amazing when many of our classmates congratulates us because they like our video. This gives us motivation to continue working hard. However, maybe we should be more concentrated in the hours that we have on Monday in class to do the work, because sometimes we get distracted easily.

Analist Task 4: the dark side of textbooks

Reflection Task 4

This week we have a quite excited task: the dark side of the book.

 

In my opinion, this kind of activities are so important in order to our life, because we have to be critical to take decisions and for them we have to know both sides of the same coin. Last year, in Spanish subject, I learnt that for having an opinion we must own enough knowledge, knowledge about why some people are in favour and other are against, for justifying it, if not it will be meaningless. That’s what our teacher said, through these years many teachers are going to tell us that books are the best tool ever, but, how the most of the things, it can have positive or negative characteristics depending on th way we see it. We will have to choose how to develop our lessons, that’s why the importance of this task is so high, we must know different point of view to can justifying our decisions.

We also had to choose between three different ways of showing our works: a cómic, an infographic and a timeline of Twitter. It is a good way of explaining our opinions but we usually spend a lot of time to agree and we haven’t many. I think this is the worse part of each task: the amount of time we lose to take some decisions.

The best moment of the group work of this week was when we had to solve some problems before the performance of the Wednesday, because in the worse moment we usually see the best of each person. We had to work actually as a group for it and we have to try to relax between us in order to think the best way of solving the unexpected event. This experience was more rewarding than others because we have learnt that all can change in a moment and that’s why we mustn’t have fixed ideas and we have to learn to adapt us to surprises.

Suming up this week, all isn’t always as we think it will be, this is the life, therefore we must be ready to deal with problems and to try to solve them.

Analyst task 3: repetition

During this week we have to repeat things which in the other task we had had bad.

All of us have encouraged a lot but I still thinking that maybe we could do it better if for example our comunnication between us was better.

In my opinion this week have been easilier than the past weeks because weeks ago we had to do a new task and to the first we did not know how can do it, however this week we only had to repeat the task but we must to improve it to get a good mark.

All the tuttifruties have worked so much to get a good task, all of us have changed the roles of our team except our two stars who only had to improve the video and the presentation to the class. The rest of the group, the analyst,the journalist,the curator,the facilitator  have investigated to can improve the previous task and  we have progressed together.

I think that all these tasks are helping us to know the importance to make groupal tasks and to know understand each member of the group. Also this is helping for us because in our future when we have worked in a school we should work with the rest of the teachers to help our future students.

In general this week as I say before has been less difficult than the past weeks but also has been so important for us because we have learnt many new things and ways to work.

The last day we did a common task between all the members in different groups but in the same role and this has been so useful because through that way we have explain our different opinions and ways to do things and this experience was very constructive for all of us, because if one of us didn´t know how to do any thing, for example other person know how to do that and inmediatly he went to help his classmate. This last day was been so great for our knowledge.

 

 

Analyst / Task 3 Creative Commons and Presentations

This is the third work we have done in the subject and we had to invent a good story. For us, this activity is more interesting and funnier than the other two we have made before. I guess the teacher wanted us to do the story to increase our imagination ans our creativity. On monday class we choose the topic about the work. The topic had to be a content of Primary. After thinking on it and sharing different ideas we believed the best would be talking about the student diversity. We guessed that we had to be original so we invented a story about the pet of our group, Miss Apple. A component of the group brought from her house different fruits (an apple, an orange, a banana, a strawberry and a pear) in order to makes photos for the video. Also, we made a power point in which we explain with phrases and images the story of Miss Apple.                                                                                                        Maybe the best part of the activity was when put stickers in the eyes and drew the smiles in the fruits because we laugh a lot and all the people looked us and I guess they thought we were so strange. On the other and, the worst part of the group was looking for the images with creative commons. With this task we have learnt to be more creative in the presentations when we have to teach to our children as we learnt in the subject «Planificación» that it said that we have to be so creative to not bore the child. If we   weren´t original the child would be bored, they wouldn´t want to go to the school and this would foment the school leave.

Cartographic projection, reflection

In our second activity we have to talk about cartographic map.

It was so difficult for us because we didn´t know nothing about this.

On monday class the teacher explained us how we had to do the task. She said that the cartographic map could be useful for us because it will help us to see the different explanations and controversies between a lot of things, in this case the way to see the world. Doing the task we have seen that depends of the author, the same country in the map was different.

We did a power point to can explain in class our task, we met on tuesday and we did the work very fast. First we followed the instructions which the teacher gave us and then when all of us finished,we started to do the power point.

I have to say that it wasn´t easy because we thought so different.

We wanted doing the power point because we thought that these was the best way to explained us to our class and that way, ours classmates could understand us.

Finally, we have discovered that all of this served us to can explain our students the different situation in the real world, and it has been useful for us because now we know the truth.

The best moment of the week was when we finished the work because during the first two days we have to work a lot.

In my opinion the worst moment was the exposition because our power point failed and we were so nervous, besides our stars were nervous and they made some mistakes in their explanation.

Our teacher said us bad things about our task, for example she said that the power point didn´t have enough information,she said that our stars needed practise more in the next sesion.

As a analyst I know that we need to improve and to the next week we work a lot to improve.

We have learned the importance of contrast information of different sources before teaching. It´s very important to students because of that they will know the reality point of view in different ways.

In our task we put as example the different situation between woman and men in jobs. We looked in a primary book and we saw some pictures and in total there was eight pictures and six of them were pictures of man workers and the rest was woman.

In nowadays we can´t permit this distorssion in our society.

We need to conserve as a group our good relation between us and I think that the way to distribute in parts the task and definetely we need to improve the way to presen tour work in class and check our notes before the exposition.

This is related with the majority of things that we saw during all our academic life because we have seen a lot of examples of this deformation of reality, in the school books, in the map which teacher put on the blackboard…

Also we can see a lot of examples of this deformation of the reality in media for example, when we saw news on tv and then on internet where the information is different.

Finally we have understood that this task has been useful to our future life as a teachers. We should teach in a correct way and then our students will show grattitude to us.

TPACK, reflection

In this first activity we had to talk about TPACK. We did not know what it exactly is but we guessed that the teacher ordered us to do this activity because it is interesting and useful for us. We reflected the ideas of TPACK on a poster, and decorating it was our favorite part of the task because we enjoyed working together as a group and it was entertaining too. We think that putting our ideas in common was the worst part because some components differed on them, and we wanted to do things differently, but in the end we reached an agreement. We guess that we had to create the poster for many reasons, one of them could be working in group and other understanding and reflecting the principal ideas of the work.

Maybe the best moment of the week was when we finished the work because we worked very hard and spent a lot of hours doing it. On the other hand, the worst moment was when we knew that only one star could expose the work, and in our group there were two of them, so one of them had to do both parts without preparing the concepts that belonged to the other one.

With this task we have learned so many things, as nowadays technology is essential. Although many people is against its use, technology is necessary in the classroom to improve the motivation of students and the understanding of teaching, because there is a clear relationship between it and pedagogy and content.

As an analyst, I suppose that my team has to conserve the talent, perseverance and strength. We have many things in common and that is a positive point, so as the proverb says: “Birds of a feather flock together”. However, maybe we could improve our effort, the organization and to be involved in the best way.

When we knew some information about TPACK, we thought that it was related with some contents of the subject “Planificación de la Acción Educativa”.There, we learned some things about methodology and one important fact was that technology is demanded in a big scale. Today, it is very strange if a child does not have an electronic gadget, so he could think that is better to spend time with it than with a book. For that reason, many schools use computers instead of books, they use an electronic board instead of the traditional one and they also use powerpoints as an exposition method. Finally, this part of the subject thought us that we have to be aware of the changes of electronics, because it is something that is constantly developing over time.

In addition, TPACK is related to social connection. As I said, technology is improving and it is making it increasingly. It could be a problem because children spend more time with gadgets than socializing. When we were young, we met at the park and did not bring our electronic tools to enjoy of friendship and the park, obviously. Technology is taking control of us because we focus so much on having the best and the newest device and we forget the real sense and practice of things. In contrast, technology is also helpful and a great tool for education, in this case, as well as in the majority of things. Technology should be reflexed in education for students to make a good use of it.