Our ideal school (Elisa)

The presentation of our ideal school was the second presentation. We have to do a video sawing how we want to be our school.

• The first video was my group, ENCENDIENDO BOMBILLAS. We comparate two real school, a state school called Colegio La paz in Azuqueca de Henares and a private school called Escolapios in Alcalá de Henares and our ideal school. With this video we can see that not depend on the school , depend on the teacher, the students… Also we want to saw that our ideal school isn’t so far than real schools, only it’s necessary change come little things. Our video are so long, but we want to saw that. To be as long sometime was boring and we can’t write all the subtitles.

• The second video was THE MINIONS video. Members of this group are Raúl García, Irene Merino, Ainara Rodríguez, Elisabet Lopéz and Isabel Lopez.  I like so much this video was so funny. I know that they have made a great effort and adjusting the audio recording time when talking minions. Moreover I think the goal of this activity is not achieved completely because despite being visually very nice, they did not explain much as would their ideal school. But the goal of this activity was not only make a nice and entertaining video, but also explain our ideal school. But the effort and interest that’s behind this work is noticed.

• The third video was THE FOUR MAGIC TEACHERS video. Members of this group are Sara Arenas, Eva Sánchez, Ramiro Pérez, Claudia Torrecilla. I think the opposite that in the minios video. Because I don’t like visually so much, but they explan very good their ideal school. The purpose of this activity has been achieved, but the goal of this activity was not only explain our ideal school, but also make a nice and entertaining video. But the effort and interest that’s behind this work is noticed.

• The forth video was L.A.S.H video. Members of this group are Héctor Vázquez, Sara Sánchez, Laura Borné and Andrea Santos. What I liked about this video is that used different tools like powtoon, a card to explain the structure of the school and everything that I like and where it can best reflect the goal of our video (our ideal school isn’t  so far from the real school) interviews with teachers and children. But the effort and interest that’s behind this work is noticed.

• The fifth and the last video was K.I.A video. Members of this group are . I liked the idea of ​​this group to make a video like the TV show 'This house was a wreck' but the school version 'This school was a wreck. "the part that explained his school with playmobils was a little boring, in my opinion should have done something more to pass photos. But the effort and interest that’s behind this work is noticed.

All videos are original and creative, so it is very difficult to decide on one. In a better explains the ideal school, have a better visual techniques, other uses are more tools ... All very well and got everyone to the purpose of the activity.

Elisa Pérez Sañudo

1ºB Magisterio Primaria Bilingüe

Chromosome 5 (Laura Sanz)

This video talks about a family with a daughter who has a disability.

On an interview the mother says it was difficult to remember her feelings but she needed them to film the video. It is very common to try to forget bad feelings and it is hard to remember them. It is natural that the brain deletes some details.

In this family the parents lose the concept that they had of being parents when their daughter born. This type of situations broke people´s mental schemes. They didn´t suppose it. Andrea has an illness, it is called “Chromosome 5” or “Cri du chat”. Some characteristics of this illness are: low weight, size and psychomotor and retardation because the chromosome 5 is not complete.

Doctors tell the parents that Andrea won´t to die soon. They are very happy until they arrive to home. Then, they realised about the situation. As parents say “hemos perdido la hija sana que esperábamos. Está aquí, pero no es la hija que esperábamos. Es una putada.” It is very usual that problems arrive after a stressful situation happens. When everything is calm, people have time to think about what have happened. In this moment, Andrea´s parents think about the future of their daughter. They feel alone. People realise about their disabilities when they confront the disabilities of others. In the video these feelings are represented in a metaphoric way: The mother is drowning in the water.

The mother needs to write on a diary her feelings. These parents suffer alone, not in front of their children. A lot of parents do the same as them, and because of that, many children don´t know about the effort that their parents are doing. People realise about it when they are adults. So I think parents should speak with their children about their situations and feelings. Not with the children of the video because they are so young.

It is very surprising that Andrea has a little sister. It seems that it implies more effort but it is not the case. Andrea and her sister play a lot and thanks to that, Andrea has improved her language. Now she can communicate. Communication lets people to feel as a part of the society and the language structures the knowledge and the thinking.

In my opinion, siblings are very important in a family. They help each other; they are peers if they are more or less the same age. In this type of families is very important that the member with an illness receives a lot of affection but also the rest of siblings. Because sometimes, the rest of siblings envy them and they try to call the attention of their parents all the time.

Andrea goes to two different schools, to the common one 2 days and to a special one 3 days a week. I think it is good that children with disabilities receive different education than the other but I don´t think going to different schools is the best way. I think the education system should change. Everybody should go to the same school. But if people with disabilities are in class with the rest of students and sometimes they go out with a special teacher, they feel different as the rest and maybe excluded.

I want that these people feel included in the society. So I propose a solution: Every student has his/her group of classmates, like now. But each student has a timetable different, so every student work with students of other classes in different subjects. Students are not always in the same class with the same students, they change. In one of these changes, people with disabilities, foreign students, students who have social problems … and so on have a special subject adapted to them. So, none is excluded because all the time students are changing the subject and the classmates. Well, it could be a solution.

In Andrea´s school students accept and respect him. But they integrate him? It is very difficult and in most of schools it doesn´t happen. The role of the teacher is very important. I feel that the nature try to integrate humans instead of their differences, but the society not. Students with disabilities of Andrea´s mother felt discriminated in their previous class. Andrea´s sister don´t do it maybe because they are sisters but also because the parents have taught her not to do it. Education is essential to build the personality.

To sum up, Andrea´s parents have changed a lot. They have accommodated to their new situation. Now, the mother works with teenagers with disabilities. She was unhappy because her daughter can´t do usual things fluency. So she wants to help this kind of people.

"Cuerdas" is a short video related to this topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYfK9jaUvg4

 

Whatever could be a problem or an opportunity, it depends on you.

The human is like a surprising box.

Laura.

"Our ideal school" (Mónica)

I'm going to do a reflection about all the videos in just one post:

Let's start with a general view:

I think that all the groups make a very big effort to do a great job. I believe that every video is very original and teach us new things to learn. I couldn't decide whether a video is better than another, I think that they are all different and we all used different resources but we did a great job

-"The Minions":

I think this video was amazing because they have to act as the characters in the film, I think is very funny, however I didn't unederstood quite good their ideal school. I think it was very dinamic and entertaining despite not explaining their ideas very good.

-"The four magic teachers":

I found this video fantastic. They expressed their ideas very clear and I understood everything perfectly. They also used a different programm to do the project, as Yolanda said it wasn't necessary the voices because the video gave us enough time to read the script. I think they also did a great job.If I have to decide which is the group I like most, I'd say this one. Congratulations guys !

-"LASH":

This group did a great summary of the theory. They seem to overcome with thecommunication difficulties they had previouly.

-"K.I.A":

Their project was very good as well. If I have to say something that I didn''t like very much is that at the end it was a bit boring, but I can see that the made an enourmous effort to create all the classes with the playmobils.

-"Encendiendo bombillas": (US)

I think we did a good job, we worked very hard on this project and I think we were able to face all the problems that appeared, I have to admit that maybe our video has parts that can be a bit boring because of the interviews and so on. But I think that it was very good.

"My ideal school"

- Microtask

- Responsabilities

- Commitments

- Objetives

Our ideal school (Laura Sanz)

I don´t know how to start… It is difficult and also to do in English.

First of all I won´t do one reflection to each video. I prefer to do only one and connect all the videos with my thoughts. Before start with the connections, I want to say that we are not using “properly” the blogs (it is only my opinion and my perception) Yolanda, not get angry, please ; ). In this subject we are using them only to publish our reflections and that´s all. We are using blogs but the use is the same than papers. The most important difference (and maybe the unique) is that we can read other reflections when we want because they are on Internet. Well, maybe this is the objective of the teacher. In my opinion, blogs are an excellence tool and we can use them deeper than we are doing in this subject. But, I repeat, Yolanda´s objective could be another like, for example, to focus our attention on our practices or our groups and not give too much importance to blogs.

For me, the comments in a blog are essential because they let the communication between people and the learning could be bigger. In our blogs, there aren´t any comments. There could be some reasons:

-          Teacher doesn´t forced us.

-          Teacher doesn´t propose it to us, or maybe not a lot.

-          We have a lot of work.

-          We consider that writing posts is enough.

-          Nobody wants to be the first person who writes a comment.

-          People doesn´t give too much importance to comments.

These are my hypothesis (I think they are hypothesis but I really don´t know exactly if they are or not) I know that I have said that comments are essential for me and until now I have not written anyone. Because of that I am writing this post (and also because it is an “obligation”). I am sure that if we write comments to our classmates, it would be funnier; more people would read other posts; it would be more interesting; we would write our posts thinking on the reaction of the rest… So, let´s start with the comments! ; )

The previous semester we also had blogs and I remember that Alejandro wrote in our blog some comments to our posts. I don´t want to compare the teachers, neither the subject nor the blogs because they are completely different and also their objectives and the contexts. I only want to say that it was really motivating to some of us.

Well, maybe I am saying too much things but I want to ask something else: why each team have a blog? Each member writes his/her reflections individually. We could have only one blog to the whole class or, as we are doing in another subject, each group could “correct” the blog of other group.

This is part of my reflection. Now I want to say something about the last work “Our ideal school”. I think it was a difficult work because we needed to read a lot of information and then adapt it and imagine an ideal school; it was interesting and funny (we almost sleep in the university more than one day).

In our group we divided the texts and each member read one, then me met and put all the information in common. We were thinking a lot of time how to do our video. When we found an idea it was very complicated and too long. So we needed to summarise it a lot, nevertheless our video is 25 minutes. For the next time we have to summarise more or think on another idea.  I am very proud of my group because everybody has made a big effort to do the video. Another think we need to improve for the next time is to start before to work, because we made the video the last days and the program we used was so slow. I had some stress that days and I couldn´t enjoy the work as I would have wanted. And also I consider that it was not finished, there aren´t enough subtitles…

I am satisfied with our work because we cooperate better than I thought and because our ideas of an ideal school appear on the video.

Before start to comment the other videos I want to say that it is difficult to put a mark to each group and take this decision with my group because one of us think something different. Well, this is one of the “best” parts of heterogeneous groups, there are different opinions. I also think that the mark we put to one video or one presentation is influenced by what the teacher think, how the others react, how is this group, their progress, what we have done in relation to the others, how we feel this day…

Minions group did a video really funny. I think it is the funniest and also the presentation was really good, it is like a real movie. But the organization inside is not clear at all. Maybe if I could see again the video it would be clearer (and I could laugh again).

Lash group did a great summery of the text we read and they explained very clear the structure of their ideal school on the video. So I think this work was the most complete one. I can notice their progress as a group. On the first work they had communication problems but it seems they have overcome them. Congrats!

4 magic teachers group also made a funny video. They did it like a comic. They included an interesting idea: Not to do your ideal school alone, you can ask for help. Their main character of the comic asks to some people before do his ideal school. I like this because sometimes we make a lot of thinks alone and “empezando de cero” and there could be people who know more than us or have other ideas and could help us.

KIA group also did a good work. And I think they work a lot, like all of us but in a different way because they put all play mobile in their ideal school. To do it, they need to have a lot of patience. It seemed like a game in which they moved teachers and students. I also like the idea of make the video as the program “Esta casa colegio es una ruina”. They divided the school in different areas like languages, science, art…

Lump together some subjects is a good idea because divide them is not natural, our brain doesn´t divide the knowledge. If the school only have three or four areas, pupils could develop better their skills like communication, critical thinking, or cooperation than now. Now, pupils have around 12 subjects.

To sum up, in my opinion the ideal school should have an ideal structure (the building) but this is not the most important part. It should have a great organization, great teachers and also the help of the government and the families. The idea of education should be changed. Teachers are like guides of facilitators of the human develop. We will be teachers, so let´s start! (Manos  a la obra ; )

 

Laura.

 

LASH (Mónica)

The first time they did the presentation we really thought they were going to do really well as they were the last group, but they had little issues to fix, for example they divided they class putting etiquetes like "smarter, normal and those who need more help" I think it was basic to know before doing the presentation that we can't put a "name" to each student because they could "believe" they are the ones who need more help and this will pause them to do some things.

I really enjoy their final presentation, I think they did it very well and knew how to fix their previous problems, they still had little details not very well, but I think they had very good ideas, dinamic and entertaining for children. I have to say that they used the TGT technique, not cooperative at all, they didn't realised that until Yolanda told them, but I think this is very enriching because even when we are presnting our work we are still learning. 

I really like the beautiful ideas they have, so good job guys ! 

Guizem´s presentation (Laura Sanz)

Guizem did a big effort because she was alone, he hadn´t got any group. Despite of it she did her presentation very well, I think. I feel she is familiar with expositions because she did it very natural and dynamic. She had problems with a video but it doesn´t matter, she could continue with the rest.

I was thinking about this. Using technology in class is not secure, it can fail. Because of that, teacher should have a B plan. If it happens in a class I think it is a great opportunity to talk about this with the students, as Yolanda did with us. Sometimes we have some plans but there could be some external factors that don´t let us to carry out our plans. Some things don´t depend on us. In these moments we need to control our feelings like ire, fury or irritation. We also can talk about these feelings in class with the pupils.

Guizem explained us she chose Jigsaw technique because it is the most effective one. And I think it is true. Because of that all the groups have used it.

When she finished, each group asked her a question. There were interesting questions; I remember that LASH group did the same question as we had thought. It was: “What is your experience of work alone doing a task about cooperative learning?” I find this question really interesting, but unluckily I didn´t heard her because I was with my group thinking on another question. Finally we found a new question, but in my opinion, that new one was not as better as the other, and we didn´t head her answer.   : (

I was thinking about it too. Often we focus our attention on irrelevant things or things that are not so important than others. And with the time we realise it, but it is late. Why? Where should we focus our attention? And when?

Laura.

LASH presentation (Laura Sanz)

I really learn a lot with their first presentation.

They were the last group so I thought (and almost all the class) that they would do very well because they had the opportunity to change their work more times than the rest of the groups. But it was not the case.  We are all the time expecting something (feed-forward) and the world gives us something (feed-back) sometimes different and sometimes the same as we expected.

There could be a lot of reasons that made they didn´t do a good work. It is curious that we often ignore this factors despite of they are so important.

Hector hadn´t a commitment, well he had one but it was really estrange, he said he put the first thing he thought/find. As he said “Puse eso por poner algo”, in our daily lives we do a lot of things by obligation and some of them haven´t got any value because we don´t make them ours. A commitment cannot be an obligation. Many teachers forced children to have X commitment, I think this is stupid. A real commitment is something volunteer and each people need to have some motivations and reasons to have this X commitment. I think this should be worked and reflected with pupils. They are free to have the commitment they want.

Going back to this group, they had the opportunity to make again their exposition. This is putting into practice the theory we are learning, one of the main idea of cooperative learning is: IPROVE.

One of the problems of education is to separate the theory and the practice and not to connect the learning with the real live. In my opinion, this is not learning. Luckily, in this subject and in almost all of our subjects it doesn´t happen.

I was really surprised with their second presentation. Maybe due to I didn´t expect they would do as well as they did (another feed-forward and feed-back). This second presentation was very similar to the rest of presentations; they used the jigsaw technique too. They divided the class in two groups (the students that don´t know how to cooperate and the others that can do it) to make the basic groups. I think this is a good distribution of the class if we want they learn how to be cooperative. I know it now, before this subject I didn´t think this. I have learnt this doing our presentation. This group made a mistake the first time they did their exposition because they divided the class in these two groups: “Intelligent students and not” or something similar.  But the second time they did well. It is a common distribution nowadays but it is not correct in a cooperative way of learning and teaching. Not all the students with excellent calcifications are cooperative, most of them are not.

In this second presentation this group used bad the TGT technique. It is a common mistake because this technique is not cooperative at all. They used the competition despite they didn´t wanted to use it. Once again they modified it thanks to the teacher´s explanation. This is one of the best parts of the cooperative learning: We are all the time learning and we always have the opportunity to improve.

Laura.