MY EXPERIENCE AS STAR!

Hi everyone!! I’m Elena Sánchez the star of KC&KO this week and now I’m going to tell you how my experience has been!

First of all I want to recognize that I’m very happy because other stars had to talk in front of the class or answer some questions about our work of that week, but fortunately like I has been the last star or may be one of the last stars(who knows), I haven’t had to do that, a little of luck is always good J.

My work has consisted on creating a training to prepare my group for the game effectively! I mean, we met and thought in a good way to train ourselves and after suggesting some plays that we could use, we decided to create the fortune roulette!

I’m sure you are asking right now: what is a fortune roulette? Ok, it is consist of two circles, one small with numbers 1-6 and the other one bigger with numbers 1-36. The numbers of the small circle correspond with the six topics and the numbers of the bigger one correspond with the questions.

So when a member of the group turns the two roulettes he/she is choosing randomly one topic and one question of that topic.

We will decide on Thursday the two stars who will participate in the game representing KC&KO group, they will be the two members who get more correct answers.

So, from my point of view I guess that to be the star is difficult because sometimes the work of the group depends on you, in other words, sometimes if you make wrong the presentation of your work in public, you are damaging the whole group. But in my case, I just decided the game we would prepare, and everyone work in it, so I’m very lucky.

And that’s all for today, next week we are going to play the game and I’m sure it is going to be an exciting situation. Good luck for everyone guys!J 

POST ANALYST BY PAULA

Hi everybody, this week my role consists on analyzing the work of my whole group. It is being a “free week”, because we don’t have to do a formal work to present in class as the other weeks. We had to do a type of game in order to choose two stars for the final game. So, we have to prepare the answers of the game. Also, we have chosen the best answers of our partners of each topic in groups. 

The best part of the activity has been to create a game, because we have had freedom in order to do whatever we want and study the answers in a dynamic way. Also, we are advancing respect to our knowledge of the educational law, LOMCE and this is a motivation for us because we are realizing that we have possibilities to win the game. 

On the other hand, maybe choosing the best answers of our partners, it has been the worst part of the activity. Due to, we had to make difficult decisions, but we have tried to be as critical as we can and also I think we were honest and we chose the best, not only the easiest and most obvious. 

I think the best moment of the week at work in group was when the group met last Wednesday in order to design and make the game to chose the two starts, although I couldn’t attend the meeting, my partners showed me videos drawing the design of the game and it was really funny for them, because they invent a compass to do a circle and it was impossible for them to do it with the invented compass so that they have to do only by hand after try and try and try… 

I think the worse moment of week in the work of the group it has been the study of the question and the decision of the two stars who will play the final game because all of us should study and make an effort in order to be fair in the final decision. 

This week we have learnt a lot about the educational law, LOMCE. We have to read so much in order to understand the questions and the answers of the game so, it is important because we will be teachers and we must know the most that we can about the LOMCE. I think the game is a good idea because studying laws maybe is a bit boring but with a game we have had a motivation because if we make an effort we will obtain a really good reward. 

In my opinion, for the following weeks we should conserve the attitude, we are studying in order to be fair with the selection of the stars, all of us, so that although only two of us will be presented on the game, we will know that all of us have tried. 

Furthermore, the contents of the work of this week have a clear social connection, in my opinion, education is the mainstay of our society, so it is important to know and learn about our educational law, because the day of tomorrow we will understand the changes and the variations of the law and we will have the possibility of contribute with the improvement of the quality of the educational system.

I HAVE THE POWER

Hello blogger, I’m Noelia Hernández the new facilitator for this week.

So, in this week, the star of all groups has to do training in order to study the topic of this week, all members of group. Although, it is sound easy, I don ´t think so.

We must create a game for training and we met after class to make it. So, we were thinking what we could be doing. We wanted something original and clear to play. Among Clara and Holly thought about how to do the game. And I think that they had a brilliant idea. We had to do two roulettes where one was the number of topics and other with the number of question.

The roulette was held with a cardboard. It seemed that the game wasn’t difficulty, but we haven’t compass, so we decided to do the circumference by hand with a pencil and rope. Finally, we achieved the two circumferences and we painted both. Only one afternoon, we needed to make the game.

Moreover, we were spoken about when must study the questions of game in order to play. And, due to a lot of work, we decided to have an idea about the question, not to learn by heart. Thus, this Thursday, we will study very hard all the material of this week, in other words the six topics.

But, my role consist in correct the post too, before they loaded up to blog their post. Although, we are a wide group, correcting blogs is very boring and a bit exhausted. But, it is my role as a boss. I must organized the work and I must also put our work in order.

I have to say that I very proud of my group, not only for working, if not the environment that we create every single day when we work. All laughs, photos, comments or simply the experience and confidence that every day we have achieved.

Only, I want to say that being the boss was very difficult if I wouldn’t have this enormous group. To sum up, thanks GIRLS for all!!!! But, we mustn’t relax, only I permit Keep Calm in order to Keep Organised (hahahahahahahhaa it was a pun).

See you blogger next week…!!!

And yeees blogger, it came the moment to say the roles…!!!!

The roles for next weeks activity

·         Elena   -    Facilitator

·         Noelia -  Journalist

·         Holly   -  Analyst

·         Paula    -  Translator

·         Clara   -  Curator-farmer

·         Ángela -  Star

·         Marina  - Helper

·         Marta   - Helper

I'm not the RAE, but I am going to try to be as good as they are!

Hello everybody!

Clara is here again! This week my role has been being the translator, but, first of all, what is a translator? We are going to start defining this important term:

Translator: is the person who collects the five most vital words that he or she has learnt in the week in order to explain the meanings of them.

So, once we know what a translator is, we are ready to start:

Firstly, I have to admit that I have found this week hard because, although it is not a very tiresome role, it has been a bit difficult to find words that the other translators of my group haven’t explained. Despite this, I finally got to have five words in order to define them:

Training: We could define training as a learning that is given so as to get a better execution on a job; in other words, the process to help people to learn something in order to achieve a specific goal.

Donald Clark. (1995). Learning and Training Definitions in Instructional Design. 20/04/2015,  from: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/index.html

This word this week is going to play a vital role in the election of the stars, because trough training, all the members are going to be prepared in the moment when we choose the stars.  Furthermore, I think that training is very necessary as with it you can break barriers and beat your limits, not only in sports, but also scholarly, I mean, you can train your body, but also your brain if you want to get high marks.

Education: As we have studied in the subject of Theories and Institutions, this word can be defined with three different meanings:

1.      We can talk about education like a social institution: the educational system. Like this, we can refer to the occidental education or the Spanish education, for example.  

2.      The word “education” is used to name the result of an action too. Then, we can speak about a good or bad education, for instance.

3.      The last meaning alludes to the process that connect two or more human beings and put them in an exchange of ideas.

Jaume Sarramona. (1989). Fundamentos de la Educación. Spain: CEAC.

This word (overall in its first meaning) has been a very essential term in this task (and in all the other tasks) because, although sometimes it doesn’t appear explicit in the questions, these ones are always related to this word.

Moreover, I would like to point out the importance of this term. Education is one of the factors that has more influence in the progress of the society. Education not only provides knowledge, but also enrich our culture and values. As far as I am concerned, education is required in every sense: from get more culture or increase your opportunities in life to improve progress in science and technology.

Curriculum: the word curriculum makes reference to, on the one hand, the achievemenst that you have got in your life ( that is, the curriculum vitae), and, on the other hand, the content that the students have to learn and to overcome and in what order he or she has to do it.

José Gimeno Sacristán. (1991). El curriculum: una reflexión sobre la práctica. Spain: Ediciones Morata.

As I see it, curriculum is extremely important since it acts like a guide in the teaching, it plans every aspect that takes part in the teaching in order to improve this process.  

Evaluation: Evaluation is the process where you judge whether an activity has been carried out in a good or bad way; its aim is to get better the efficiency of an activity.

Dr. Michaela Zint. (2014). Evaluation: What is it and why do it?. 20/04/2015,  from: http://meera.snre.umich.edu/plan-an-evaluation/evaluation-what-it-and-why-do-it

Evaluation is a key point inasmuch it is an analysis of what we have done and it has like aim the improvement of our work. For example, this week, on Thursday, my group had to appraise all the questions of the topic one in order to select the best ones, so evaluation helped us to choose the questions that we believed that were the most appropriated ones.

Game: Game is an activity in which players contend against others in accordance with a set of rules that ends with an outcome.

Ruben R. Puentedura, Ph.D. (2009). Games in Education: Introductory Concepts. 20/04/2015, from: http://hippasus.com/resources/connectivity21/Friday_4_GamesInEducation.pdf

In my opinion, games can be very useful in the process of learning, because children spend a good and funny time as the same time as they learn. As Vygotsky said “…play creates a zone of proximal development of the child”, that is, there are internal development process that the child can only develop when he is interacting or cooperating with people and play facilitates this. 

Hope to see you soon! Good bye :)

Why did we choose those ten questions?

The answer to the question above is actually pretty simple.
Us, Keep calm, with a few members of Powerteachers, chose those ten questions because, as well as being clear, well spelt, understandable and clean; they were the ones out of the whole lot that made most sense and the ones we saw more accurate for our level (university level); this meaning, not too easy for us so that they are pips, but also not too difficult that we get stuck and have no idea how to answer them. We worked together as one and we all intervened in the selection of the questions and as always, asked the opinion of the others; so that they all had a chance to say things about the different cards our classmates had made.

So what went on this week then?

Hi guys, it´s Holly here once again, and this time I´m here to tell you about all the stuff that has happened during this past week.

There is not that much to tell due to the fact that we are still working on the same task (task 6) but just changing the activity each time but there are some bullet points that need to be told; well, this weeks activity was, with the questions for "The Game" all formulated and ready for action, to create/invent a kind of warm up method (like a huge die, or a roulette, etc.) so that we can 1. prepare ourselves for the game coming up next week, and 2. train hard so that we (as a group) can choose the two stars that will be taking part in the big game mentioned above. This is very difficult and takes a lot of time because there are 36 questions for each topic, and 6 topics; so how many questions in total? Way too many if you ask me ha-ha

So anyway, we chose to do a big roulette in which there are two circles: one smaller than the other; and a big hand (arrow). The reason there is one circle smaller than the other is because the bigger circle is divided into 36 parts: the total of questions for each topic (hence why it is larger), and the smaller circle is divided into 6: the number of topics.

In the process of making this we had a few laughs and there were numerous funny moments like when we didn't have a compass on us at the time we met up, so Marta, Angela, and Noelia made one out of a pencil and a shoelace. It was hilarious because they didn't really get the desired affect but in the end it all worked out really well.

So after drawing the cut-out lines for the two circles, Noelia cut them out of cardboard and they were looking awesome. After this Angela coloured them in a way in which you could see the different numbers. etc. and meanwhile the rest of us all worked together getting all the questions gathered so that we could print them out all ready to use with our wheel/roulette.

Another funny thing was that every time we needed something: a ruler, some glue, some scissors, etc. we had to go one after another asking the man at the library because once one person is lent something, he keeps your university card. It was funny because it got to the stage where we were like "have you been yet?" "no" "awesome, go now then". Below you will see some pictures we took during "the making of" lol

Its nice when the group has laughs together because that way its not all work work work. there is also a little spirit going into it.

The roulette was ready for us to commence our training. This is going to be challenging.

On THURSDAY our mission was to select, from each topic, the top ten. Each group was assigned a topic, and those who weren't assigned one just split up and went with other groups to help them choose the best questions for the topic.

We were with some of the girls from Powerteachers; it was a pleasure to work with them and they were very helpful when choosing the right questions. We had to take everything into account: redaction, spelling, readable...

After about 50 minutes we had chosen the best questions out of the lot and so we gave them back to the teacher. It was pretty difficult trying to make sure you choose the right ones and that they´re not that easy but neither too difficult; but all in all it was ok because there were a lot of us and we managed perfectly. Below you can find some pictures of all of the class teaming up and working together.

 Here we can see Noelia in action cutting the cardboard and then all of us working hard together. And there is a video with a really funny moment, when we were trying to do the circles with a pencil and a cord :)

The whole class working on Thursday, choosing the questions for each topic.


To finish up, I would like to recommend two blogs that I thought were very interesting, and that I think you guys will find them quite interesting too. The first one is my colleagues blog:

 http://www.losumpalumpas01.blogspot.com.es/

 I like their blog because as well as being very organized and put out well, the set-out is also very nice and their ideas are always clear and they transmit belief. 

The second one is more to do with school and the educational system (what we are working on ourselves actually):

 http://the1709blog.blogspot.com.es/2014/11/that-new-spanish-law-tale-of-fragments.html 

This blog not only gives you the overview of the whole Spanish educational system but also tells you their perspective of the whole thing, possible solutions, etc. I think its worth the read.

Thanks for the attention folks and see you next week :)

Let me introduce you...the curator-farmer!

Hello again guys! I’m Ángela and this week I’m the curator-farmer, so I’m in charge of collecting all the data that we have used for the development of this week’s activity. 

This week we haven’t looked for so many information because we have been choosing the questions for the game.  Because of that reason I have to say that this role haven’t been as difficult as I thought it was going to be, but I am pretty sure that some of my mates have had to spend much more time collecting the data used in that week. 

We have used a program called ‘pearltress’ during the whole course and I personally think that it is quite easy to use and to understand. If you click here, you can see the ‘pearltress’ I have created this week, where I have divided the information in two different files, one of them with the references in APA style and another one with every single webpage used.  

Thank you so much for reading us! 

CURATOR-FARMER IS HERE!!

Hello everyone again! I’m Elena Sánchez and this week my role is: Curator-farmer! I have been collecting all the webpages and documents which my group has used during this week to elaborate the questions for THE GAME!

My work this time hasn’t been really difficult, I thought this role would be worse but now that I have deal with it, I can say I like it because it’s a very dynamic role.

This is the first time I have used pearltree and the experience has been interesting, it hasn’t been a difficult or problematic resource, in fact you can learn how to use it easily.

So guys, here you can find all the resources we have used for this activity. If you don’t understand something of our questions or whatever PLEASE open this link and look for in the information you will find there. Feel free to take a look when you want!

http://www.pearltrees.com/keepcalmandkeeporganized/questions-basics-educational/id14021317

See you next week! THE GAME is near!!! :O

My Star Experience by Marta

Hi bloggers!

After two weeks of holidays we are here again!

Once more I’m Marta López and this week it’s my turn, I’m the star of my group, as you can see we change our roles every week and this week I felt very nervous because I was the star and I think that it’s a big responsibility. But it was so interesting and I have lot things to tell you.

This week is one of the most important; we are at the beginning of the final 

stretch of the course and we have to make a very good work. I think my group 

is very involved in the work we do, but this week even more. 

This week, after two weeks of holidays, we are working on “The Game”; we 

have to make 24 cards with questions and answers. But there aren’t simple 

questions; we have to invent questions about six topics that our teacher gave to us. I was so impatient for the day of the game because I was the star and I 

didn’t know what I had to do, and that get me nervous.

We all prepared the questions in our home and we divided the work between us, we had to make 4 questions each, with the answers.

On Monday I got into the class and I wasn’t too nervous to be honest, but it was when the teacher walked in that I started to get very nervous, but when she 

explained what we had to do I started to relax, because this week the star works with her group and did not have as much weight as other weeks they have had.

First the teacher asked for what topics we had done last week in our mindmaps and then she gives us topic number 4 and with the half of the Bussy Bees’ group like the supervisors, we had to evaluate the cards of our partners from other

 groups. Bussy Bees had to correct our cards and us theirs.

After that in Aula Virtual Linda posted an evaluating sheet to put the data of 

scores that we gave to our fellow cards.

Once we filled the sheet we returned the cards to our teacher.

You have all the information that we have used in our pearltrees that our curator-farmer have done.

I have to say that it was a great job because although we were in holidays and we 

couldn’t meet we made a very good job. We chat with Whatsapp and we resolved all doubts we had. I think that all of us want to win “The game” and I’m sure 

that we are going to do everything to get it. And also I think that our group 

made a great job with the cards and we were working for it, each of the 

components of my group worked to do our best work. 

I want to let you know that I’m very proud with my group and they are great 

people and very hardworking people.

I hope you liked it and that you all had a good Easter, but now it's back to the

grind!

Thank you very much for reading!

This week needs an analysis!!!

Hello again! I’m Clara and this week I have been the analyst of my group! As an analyst, you have to evaluate and appraise how the work of the group was as well as tell a little about what we have learnt and with what areas this content can be related to.

First of all, I have to say that the best part of the activity was learning about LOMCE and LOE and their differences (although the previous week we had to read them and we also learnt about them doing two conceptual maps, I think that this week we have increased our knowledge about these two laws as we have read it more in detail and we have gone deeper). And why is this the best part? Educational laws are going to be a part of our job and we can’t lay them aside, so it is very interesting that we start to have contact with them since we can. Furthermore, it is very curious to know how the educational laws change depending on the government that has been chosen.  However, we have had some difficulties; when you read so much information (as these two laws have), you don’t know what information you should chose in order to do the questions, therefore, you normally spend too much time on this, so this has turned into the worse part of the activity.

In my opinion, on the one hand, the best moment of the week has been with no doubt the moment when we have finished the work and all was solved. In that moment, we see the work that we have done and how it remained; you feel very satisfied with yourself as well as relieved due to the fact that the task is already ended.  On the other hand, the worse part of the week has been the fact of collecting all the questions inasmuch there are always some problems and someone who hand them over in the last minute.

According to what have we learnt, I have to say that we have learnt not only many aspects and differences about LOE and LOMCE, but also to see the relevant information of the two laws and to set out practical questions with that information, that then will be used in a game; this will be very useful in our future, since you, as a teacher, with the information that you have in a topic, can create a game so as to the children spend a good time while they are learning.

In addition, as I see it, we ought to conserve as a group the spirit of help that we have, I mean, when any member of the group has a doubt or she needs help, there is always someone that is ready to give a helping hand and it is nice to see this comradeship in our group. On the contrary, one thing that has to be improved is the organization of the group and the compliance of the deadlines owing to the fact that there are almost always problems and members of the group that hand over what they have to do in the last minute.

The content of this task is much related with our degree due to the fact that LOE and LOMCE are educational laws and we, as future teachers, should be interested in knowing the changes that are being produced and will be produced in this field. Moreover, this activity can be developed by us when we are teachers since, as I mentioned before, with interactive games children learn in a funny way.

Finally, as far as I am concerned, in this task exits a clear social connection. This activity is evidently connected with the educational area inasmuch it is about two different educational laws that change the organization of the education. What is more, it is related with politics, since each law has been made by different political parties given that every time that a political party rises to power, it changes the educational law of the previous one (in Spain the education is non-political). Also, this could be associated with religion as there is one measurement in LOMCE that has been very talked about and criticized: this subject, religion, count in order to do the final average of the school year.

In light of the above, I think that this role is a very important because it helps to see what problems you have had as well as to help to solve them. As we know, analysis is applied in many areas; from politicians that use the analysis to study the results of the elections to a teacher that ask to his or her students a morphological and syntactic analysis of a sentence (that’s why there are many types of analysis), so analysis is very vital in our lives.

See you soon!!

Questions Topic 5

Hi guys, 

here you have the questions from topic number 5.

1. According to LOMCE and related to the school development plan, what is the function of the Teachers Assembly?
2. According to LOMCE… what ensures the principle of autonomy?
3.  According to LOMCE, what is… what element includes the Yearly General Programme?
4. A teacher is unhappy with the resources he has for developing the classes. Who will he have to talk to in order to try to solve that situation?
5. At the beginning of every School year the schools must develop a Yearly General Programme. What is the purpose of that programme?
6.  Every year, the school you work in develops a Yearly General Programme which includes the its running rules and projects. A report is prepared at the end of the academic year. What should the report include and evaluate?
7. How are controlled that the schools prepare their own organization and running rules?
8. How many levels of curricular development exist? Name and explain the briefly.
9. If you need look up the action plans or the curriculum that facilitate the educational authorities, where can we find it?
10. If you want to do social activities in an educational institution outside school hours, who you should talk with?
11.  Imagine that an educational institution wants to prepare a school development plan. What is a school development plan? What sections have to be included in it?
12. In what is based the autonomy of the headteacher?
13. Liam is a new student who comes from England and he is attending the Primary School. Sometimes, he feels a bit out of place in class. Although, he does not speak Spanish, the rest of Liam’s schoolmates should help him and integrate him into the class. If that situation does not change, Liam must know that there are non-university institutions that could help him. Where must Liam investigate about that?
14. Name two functions that the Education Authorities carry out.
15. Schools are responsible for promoting certain values. What type of values can those be?
16. There are two schools that request a help for their center, taking into account that one is an educational public institution and the other is a private center with students with specific needs, what school will receive the bigger help?
17.  We are members of the educational institutions so; can you tell me, at least, what educational institutions have? Explain them briefly and, tell me three of their functions.
18. We are situated in a primary school of Murcia. Teachers have a big amount of resources in their classrooms one of them is the projector, where the History teacher projects a power point about the content of this subject. What principle allows that?
19. What can the educational institutions do with the management of resources?
20. What does the Organization Management of the Non-University Institution set and include?
21. What include the pedagogical and curricular organization?
22. What is the aim of the importance that is given to the principle of school autonomy?
23.  What is the composition of the Curriculum and who specified it?
24.  What is the labor of “Coordination bodies” and “school governing”?
25. What is the purpose of curricular specialization of secondary schools supported with public funds?
26. What must coordinate the education authorities between Primary Education and Lower Compulsory Secondary Education?
27. What regulates the changes of educational institutions in the non-university institutions?
28. What will a teacher have to look for in the curriculum in order to perform properly his or her job?
29. When an educational institution has autonomous management, which are the 5 objectives that they are allowed to do without any demands by parents and Education Authorities?
30. Which are the actions for educational quality?
31. Which are the components of the Lea deship Team of any school?
32. Which are the five main characteristics of the curriculum?
33. Which are the levels of curricular development?
34. Which are the three areas of the organization and management that enjoy a wide degree of autonomy?
35.  While you are studying the school organization and educational resources’ subject you read that there are three áreas where educational institutions enjoy a wide degree of autonomy. Which are those áreas?
36. Who regulates the MOF?