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.