STARS

Good afternoon!

We are Sandra and Laura, and his week we have been the stars, and we have presented a short speech telling the most relevant advantages and disadvantages of the leadership styles.

This week, we weren't the stars, but due to thd game week, that there were two stars, we broke the rotation, so we decided that we would present this week, eventhough we were the stars of the following week.

The experience has been good, because as we have learnt all the types, the six types: authoritarian, democratic, paternalistic, laissez-faire, transformational and transactional, so we could make a great presentation. We related each leadership with a closed example to our everyday life, so that everyone in the class could have a better understanding of the topic.

We were the last group who presented, so we were very nervous because it is not easy to go in front of the class, with more than 50 people looking at you, and to speak in a foreign language.

In the presentation we explained:
What an authoritarian leadership style was, which is a stric person who has all the power over their workers; and advantages, such as, the person is objective and the objectives are more clear because just one person gives the orders, and the disadvantage is the low level of communication between the followers and the leader.

The paternalistic leader is like a father for their workers; the advantages of this style are that the leader has trust and loyalty of their people and they are a family inside and outside of the work, and the disadvantage is that the leader can start to play favourites in decisions.

In the laissez-faire ( participant) the power is in the worker; the advantages are that the workers feel free to take decisions and there are more diversity in decisions, and the disadvantages are that the lack of the leader can make that the workers feel insecure and conflicts can be created for that reason.

The democratic leadership style is where the workers can decide and have their own opinion. The advantages are that workers are free to decise, there is transparency and social equality; and the disadvantage is that there is a lot of time required to take decisions.

The transformational leadership style is where the leader tries to get the workers performance. The advantage is that workers feel implicated in the work, and the disadvantage is that it is unreal and that it has to be done in a spititual context.

It has been the last presentation of the #SOyER1314 subject, but now we have to still work very hard on it for the exam.

See you! 

The Stars

STAR

Hello readers! here I am with interesting news.... =)

I'm Raquel and this week I was assigned the role of the Star. wonderful, isn't it? :P

Well, this week, Linda ordered us on Monday to do a mini- activity in which we had to design a School simply. This has been the activity, but there is in it a hidden information in order to understand the activity at all, that I'm going to say at the end of the post. :O

So, once we all know what are going to do, we have to do the activity in half- hour. So, hurry up!! 

We had started to give different ideas about what are the different and more important branchs/points that are going to talk in order to create the school. During the meeting of creating the school, I must do my role as better as possible. So, all the different ideas that people come up with had to be voted by everybody, as a democracy. All members laughed due to my behaviorsm, because I don't usually perform in this way. So, they know that something was happening. :O:O. At first, they don't mind the voting, I mean, they said that it was not neccessary because in most situations we thought in the same way and we put different examples from our school and own experience about it.

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OUR SCHOOL: PESTALOZZI.

We have thought that the kind of name like this or an artist or famous that had done important progress in the education branch could be interesting for a public school. 

It gathers up Preschool' level and Primary Education for girls and boys (mixed). There are 25 children per class and there are 2 lines, A and B, in total 50 students per course. Tablets and Ipads could be a good tool to introduce technologies in the school and in the children life as well not only using them to play but also to work and for academic things. 

It's a biligual school in which children start to learn a second language from Preschool level. ( English or French). Also, international exchanges programs are available for example with EEUU and United Kingdom as well to all members of the school in order to improve the level of them. 

According to the organization of the school, the leadership team composed by administrative staff, head teacher and school head, the 3 most important, and on the School Board composed as well by teachers, students that each trimester must to chose his representative ( an student of the class) and the parents with AMPA, and a main administratives of each department. 

Also, they are 12 main teachers assigned for Primary and 6 for preschool as well as other specialised teachers like one of them for music, other for English apart from a lector, 2 for Sport' subject and 1 for French Language. English Language or French Language  is required for all teachers. Apart from these, there have to be 2 PETE's for attending psichological and sociological problems and disabilities for those students that need it.  

The geografical situation and part of the school have been also decided by us. 

As we can see, the school has two wide playground, one of them for Preschoolers and the other one for students of Primary education, car park and enormous room in which student can play and do sport inside as well as 2 elevators and ramps adapted to people with physical disabilities. A luchroom, cateen, library in which there are a independent room with different electronic resources as well as music room. 

Inside on the corridors, different important and current or artistic things that students do will be presented on it in different pictures or something like that. 

There have to be a special room for speech therapist, pedagogist and psichologist. This is what we have done in class to present the work to the class. 

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Once we have design it, we have to present it to the rest of the class someone different from the stars. Paz and Laura has been the chosen! quickly because we haven't  enough time but it's Ok, they have done the presentation the best they could. =)

So, Linda ask us how can we work in the group deciding lots of things about the School. There have been some problems and stranges things because some people ( stars ) have behaved in a strange way. This mean

All the stars had a "role", one of them were democratic people, other performed as authorities people and the other ones have the role of "don't take care", they cannot add anything to the group because they don't mind anything their group are saying or doing. 

The aim of this activity is to see who can we get an idea or a conclusion with other people different like you, that think different from you and add other ideas really stranges for you. That's the point. Today, we have done like a "simulation" because these situations are going to be part of our occupation. We have performed as in a real situation in our proffesional work. These situation is going to happen when we were in a school. We are going to listen to different ideas and millions points of views about a simple things, but these things can be lots of consequences in the life negative or positive. So, we have to listen to and add ideas to reach a good conclusion and don't be egocentric or that the only you want is to do what you say and that's all. That's not good and useful. So, be patience and polite with everyone. :)

Thank you so much
T8T

JOURNALIST

Good evening dear readers!

We are Paz and Isa, the journalist of last week. Today our post is going to be shorter, but as interesting as always.

It is shorter because we didn’t have to do any task. We had to complete the big one we were preparing during the lasts few weeks before going on holiday. This was: THE GAME! 

Do you remember the cards we were making the weeks before and all the mind maps about the spanish educational system? well… these were for playing at class with all our mates to a “ladders and snakes” game.

We were very, very nervous, but we completely trust in our stars (Ana Ruiz and Ana Sanchez) and they didn’t let us down. They answered correctly all the questions and finally… WE WON THE GAME!

It was incredible! We were very happy and very proud of all of the members of our group, because all of them had done a very good job. But we were specially proud of our stars.

It has been a very nice experience for all of us (even when we were very nervous during the game).

As I have told you, this post has been the shortest one we have maked but, at the same time, is the one that remember us one of the best moments of this course.

See you soon!

Paz and Isa.

STARS

Hi everyone! We are Ana Ruiz and Ana Sánchez, the stars of this week.

T8T's selfie

As you know, this week we have done a quiz. It was based on the game Ladders and Snakes like this =)

The objective of that game was to learnt and understand some basics about how our educational system is organized. For it, before playing, we had to read and learnt basic legislation about our educational system and put special attention in the differences between LOMCE and LOE.

Our experience as this-week-Stars has been satisfying taking into account the result: we are so happy for having won the game!

In one hand, we were worried because we knew that being starts this week was so much responsibility for us because the prize of the game was important and the whole group depended on us. But on the other hand we were confident because we knew that our partners trusted on us.

The day of the game we were so, so nervous, especially before starting the game because we didn’t know exactly the rules and maybe the game could change and obviously for the pressure. But, finally, all was great, as we expected. As the game advanced, we were more and more confident firslty because we were answering all the questions and also, thankfully, we had very good luck. 

But apart from that, we are happy because we have learnt all this information and we didn’t have to stayed hours and hours studying it by heart. We have done it step by step, in a way that you don´t easily realise how much you have worked on it: first doing the conceptual maps, then review them and unifying them, building the questions and reviewing them too and finally puting all in practice doing the game.

We have worked so much during this activity that despite of the component of luck, that was there, we have the peace of mind of being concious that we know quite well the main issues of the law and that we are able to give reasoned arguments to the questions. 

And congratulations to Step by step as well and all the groups that have won something during the game... especially to those who even have won the most important prize: the knowledge and the competencies behind all that.

THE ANALYSTS

Good afternoon! We are the analysts of the previous week, Sanda and Laura. 

Last week it wasn't a current week, it was a special week, the most intensive of the whole year, due to we did the LOE-LOMCE game. All the students were very excited because the previous week all groups had been working hard choosing the questions and comparing both laws, preparing the questions... 

The game was a difficult task for all stars, because even though the star always has the responsability of showing the whole group work, this week it has been very complicated to show it, because behind the activity it was a desired reinforcement for the School and Organization subject. 

We would like to congratulate all the stars of that week, because they have done a great job and they all did it very good in the game. We are very proud that with this high level we have in class, our stars have been the ones who got the prize. 

Thanks to our wonderful stars, all the members of the T8T group has been reinforced with a 9.5 in one of the questions of the final exam.

The best things of this week has been that all the members of the group has been linked. We have been supporting a lot our stars in the game, and we have suffered even more than them. It has been the activity which has motivated us the most in the course, even though we were very nervous.

The worst thing has been the role of the stars. We all think that in a future the game should be planned different, so that not just 2 members of each group have to play, because the responsability is very hard. It would be better if the whole group is able to participate and to compare the answers between them. 

The best moment of the activity was when we win the game, because after the nerves we suffered, we won the game, and the whole group was very implicated in the game the two previous weeks. It wasn't an easy task because the rest of the groups had a high level too.

The worst moments were during the game, when we were near to a snake or when our parners were near us or near a ladder, because they could reach us, and we wanted to win. Also, when it was our team turn, we were all the time worried about their answer, if it was correct or not. 

With this activity we have learnt that as future teachers, when we have to teach a hard unit, it is easier to motivate the students with a creative activity or with reinforcements. With this we get better results from the students, and we are able to see how a such a borring topic become exciting and funny for the students.

As a group, we would have to conserve the feeling of unification, and try to continue with a positive attitude, due to we just have 2 more weeks together as a group. 

This LOE-LOMCE content is related to other subjects such as "Acción tutorial", where we are designing some children activities, other ways of learning for the students... and we think that all the activities that we are carring out with Linda in this subject have gave us a lot of ideas for the other subjects tasks.
Moreover, as future teachers, it is very important to know well the laws of the educational system

Besides, it is a currently topic, which is being discussed in the media every day, and that directly affect us as current students but also as future teachers.

As a conclusion, we have to say that we have enjoyed being the analysts this week. The work of this week has been very positive, there isn't any negative aspect to say. We would have liked that all the weeks had been like this one.

See you soon.

T8T analysts.

FACILITATORS

Hello readers!

We are Paz and Isa from the group T8T and this week we are the facilitators!

This week we are repeating role, so in certain way, we have known what to do, which is interesting and great, isn’t it? 

Although we have repeated role, we haven’t repeated activity. Like you know each week we work in very different activities and we do many different things.

This week we have been working doing some questions about the spanish educational laws and about the conceptual maps, which we worked at last week. We did that with an objective: use it in the game that we are going to do the last week of the course.

As we have said before, these questions were about LOE and LOMCE, and the differences between them, I mean the changes and similarities that are among both laws. This is because LOMCE only modify some topics of LOE.

At first, as we had to do four questions about each topic, which were six; we decided to distribute them between the six roles that we are in the group. But then, we realized that in this way we were not going to learn about all topics. So we did a raffle, in order to decide which role will start with each topic. We took a number and then, we started to work.

After working in our topic, we changed them and we worked in a different one.

When we had all the questions, we met at the university on Tuesday in order to improve and revise them, if any had mistakes, or we could make them better.

It was very useful because we could modify some of them.

And, finally, on Thursday we printed and worked with them.

The way of working was like last week. Each group worked alone with one topic, our topic was number three (Organization of Primary School), choosing the eight questions that we considered the best for the game, but this time the evaluators weren’t the same at the last week. This time the evaluators were different group. My group T8T worked with a half of the group called Hide&Sick.

We think that we worked very well and we understand each other.

Our mission was to choose the best eight questions of topic 3, valuing the difficulty, the mistakes, the expression and the understanding. The mission of the evaluators was to supervise that we did well our work.

Fortunately, we think we did it the best we could.

Our star, Alba, have upload to the blog the 36 questions which we have worked. The eight that we selected have been sent to Linda by email, because they are secret.

One of the best things of this week is that, as facilitators, we haven’t have any problem to solve. It’s true that all the people in the group don’t think in the same way, but we have get an agreement and we have worked as a real group. That’s a very good aspect we have to mention about our group.

We hope you have enjoy it and have understand our way of organizing this week.

Regards,

Paz and Isa, the facilitators.

TRANSLATOR

Hello readers!

I'm Raquel and this week I was assigned the translator role. This is my second time as translator. So, I hope to do it better than the first one! =)

Both laws, which are the main and important topics that are going to be carried out in the mysterious game when we come back holidays, have differences as well as similarities respect to the Spanish System education and to education in general, measures that affect to our country and therefore to us. 


AS translator I am and after reading the whole group the 6 topics to do the questions for the game, I have to choose the five more important definitions that we have learn this week. I think that the main words are:


INEQUALITIES: It is understood Inequalities as disparity or dissimilarity that some students experience in their education field where they are lots of differences respect to the rest of the students.These differences between students are caused by social, geography;location, gender ethnicity, poverty and disabilities, which are the most common reasons. Most disadvantaged or rural areas suffer from these inequalities. For example, in Yemen, children keep out of the school because of they don't have the necessary tools and resources to go. Even poverty increases mostly this. So, we see that due to geographical reasons, these children cannot be educated as they deserve, so they are in disadvantage.As Unesco says, "Around 45% of 7- to 16-year olds from poor households in both rural and urban areas have never been to school. 

Unesco affirms that "The World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE) draws attention to unacceptable levels of education inequality across countries and between groups within countries, with the aim informing policy design and public debate" (UNESCO, 2008; pag; 0,1,14)

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002204/220440E.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_inequality

ORGANIZATION: It's a important term because not only for knowing what is the definition, but also to understand the subject School Organization. This term means to have everything in an order. School organization therefore is how school and all the members and contributors are structured in a specific context, in this case, the school.There are lots of types of organizations like associations, cooperatives that fight to get a common goal. In the case of the school, all the context of the school is organized by the current law and the Spanish Education System that make decisions cooperatively to change things and measures that can be improved to increase the quality of the country and their inhabitants.Then, there other cooperatives that also participate in these changes that are local in the specific place where school is situated such as School Board(Consejo Escolar), Leadership team (cuerpo directivo), teacher assembly and even other less important but at the same time very important because all the changes affect directly them, the students and consequently parents through the representative or parents associations. 

https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Glossary#School_development_plan_.28Proyecto_educativo.29

SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT PLAN called in Spanish Language Proyecto educativo

It consists in a working document created by non-university education institutions. It appears in it the values, objectives and priorities, its assessment of how current trends
and future factors could impact on the school. Also, it includes the specific curriculum established by the Education Authority.Social and cultural background of each different school has to be considered in it because this could be encourage the inequality According to the background, this plan have to give answer to the wide diversity of students student diversity and also how has to performance a teacher as a tutor as well.
It has two main aims: avoid discrimination solving the inequalities and attend to the diversity to be socially included in the relationships (inclusion social)

 This plan improve of course the school organization 

http://www.deni.gov.uk/sdp_guidance-2.pdf (Pág 1, 2)



CURRICULUM: It's the set of basic competences, objetives, contents and the criteria for methodologies to teach and to do a evaluation that student have to get in a educational level.All the scholar context have to be under curriculum rules not only the contens but also the methodologies that can be carried out by teachers or even the basic competences for example in primary education there are 8 main important that we learn in Planificación de la Acción Educativa in the first fourth-month period. This curriculum is a process because the curriculum created by the State is one in the organizational view and this is changes according to the specific area by autonomous communities and this one is also rechange by school and teachers from a pedagogical point of view according to the diversity, ethnicity, culture and needs of the place and of the students.


http://epistemologia.over-blog.es/pages/DEFINICION_DE_CURRICULO_Y_CONTENIDOS-1432924.html

EVALUATION: it's another important term because it's an action that takes part in our life. I think that in this subject we have done lots of evaluations about our collegues and our works done each week. Most of members of the group don't know what is exactly evaluation, I mean how can we develop a evaluation properly. I think that this week, we have performanced as a team of teachers because we had to meet to decide what are the best questions and answer according to lots of things as if they are good, with quality, understandable etc. Then, we had to decide only a few of them and evaluate them in the webpage that Linda ordered us. So, I think that in this moment, we performance as teachers that evaluate other learners. Evaluation therefore is an continue process of recommendations that teachers has to do in order to student can make sure that they have learned in a good way something in concrete. Evaluating doesn't mean to put an exam and see how a student has answered to the questions. It's the contrary, there are lots of different ways to evaluate if a student have learned something or not and these may be more effective than a simple final exam. You can evaluate through works, practices, games, doing different activities and trips the whole class to visit places that can be related to content and after that doing a set of questions related to the trip, his feelings etc. I think that it's a good way to evaluate children from their experience and improve the quality of the learning. 


And that is all for this week. I hope you undertand all the definitions and enjoy reading them!=)=)

Thank you very muchh!!
T8T

JOURNALISTS

Hi Everyone!!! We are Laura and Sandra and this week we have been journalist :)

We have thought about a different and interesting way of presenting T8T Team work during this week, so as to make it more visual and dynamic. We hope you like it!

Moreover, we have commented in an interesting blog what we recommend you about the different between LOE and LOMCE........... http://blog.fernandotrujillo.es/el-curriculo-basico-de-la-lomce-analisis-de-aspectos-generales/#comment-2236 

We want to congratulate the group Education Rush Hour about their videos that they have published in their blog. We think that it´s a good idea to explain their work of this week! =)
Well, that is all about this week. We see you after the holidays as analyst, we hope that you will spend a good weeks of holidays :) :)

The journalist 
t8t

CURATOR FARMER

Hello, I am Ana Ruiz, this week as a curator farmer again.

 Well this week we have used the same sources as last week, but we have find a very interesting and useful document in order to see the differents between LOE and LOMCE. 

 You can see it in our Pearltree:

 

STAR

 Hello everyone, I'm Alba, this weeks star and my task is to publish the 36 questions of topic number 3, Organisation of Primary Education, so here they are:

1.- According to the Admission of students, based on the principles of equity and quality on LOE and LOMCE, who are the first group to get vacancy?

2.- A child from Africa, who has difficulties, is adopted by a whealthy family. They have decided to inscribe him in a private school. Could this child access to a public school if his parents had requested it?

3.-During what period of time must children acquire basic competences? What happened if the do not acquire them?

4.- If a family live at the countryside, half an hour far from the school, are the LOE and LOMCE bring assistance?

5.- Why are educational centers losing their democratic management with the LOMCE?

6.- In relation to interim staff, who is responsible for the management of their contracts? What is the criteria to contract/maintein interim staff and requisites for their section?

7.- Regarding to the secondary education, private centers, who is responsible to promote the curricular specialization?

8.- What are the sutdents' rights as defined at LOMCE?

9.- How many holiday weeks do the school year have?

10.- What are the aspects that we have to consider when planning the education provision in a specific geographical area?

11.- If a public school doesn't offer enough places, what are the criteria to access it?

12.- If you were a teacher and you noticed that some of your students have more difficulties to execute the tasks than other, would you make two different groups?

13.- How has been distributed the organization of the school stage with the implementation of the LOMCE after LOE?

14.- If we are working in a public school and there aren't enough places, what criteria you have to take into account to select students?

15.- If you were in a rural area school, in what aspects would depend the number of pupils in your school?

16.- The organization of the school year has a fixed number of school days?  

17.- There is a city that decided to have more holidays in their schools at Easter. They have 3 days more than others. Then, are there some free days left the centre can put during the year? How many are them?

18.-Keely is a girl who lives in a rural area a few kilometers from London, in this area the most part of the nieghtborhood has inequalities derived from geographical, social and economic aspects. What education authorities must do according to the article Organizational variations and alternative structures in Primary Education?

19.- Lucy has been living in Englanc since this year. This year, she has moved to Spain and wants to enter in a Primary school Education. Which would be her weekly timetable?

20.- Derek is a boy who lives in Orihuela, he is 6 years and his parents want him to start Primary Education in Santo Domingo, a private school near their house where his older brother is. Jane is a gril who has specific educational needs, she lives in Redovan and she is 6 years old. She also wants to enter at Santo Domingo's school this year. Santo Domingo has insufficient places this year so they have to choose one of them... Who will start this year at Santo Domingo? Jane or Derek?

21.- What are the main objectives of the Territorial Cooperation Programme?

22.- How many hours does a primary kid recieve per week and how can the sessions be divided?

23.- Which are the age levels and grouping pupils?

24.- What kind of things do you have to keep in mind if there are insufficient places for the admission of students?

25.- Which are the main measures that the education authorities has to carry out if a student cannot access to the school due to his geographic area?

26.- According to LOMCE, in the admission of processes in Primary Schools, when there are not enough places, have preference those students who come from Primary Schools that have attached. In addition to this, what students also have priority?

27.- Which aspects have to be considered in the planning of the education provision in the two specific geographical areas?

28.- Autonomous Communities must regulate pupils' admission to public schools. Should the also regulate it for other schools that are publicly-funded private schools? Why?

29.- What are the studies that now make up the Basic Education?

30.- What is the name of the subject that replaces "Civic Education"?

31.- Which are the core subjects in Primary Education?

32.- A student who repeated 4th grade of primary education hasn't achieved the goals at the end of 5th grade. Will he have to repear course? Why?

33.- Taking into account the geographical accessibility, what should we pay important attention to?

34.- Imagine that you want your son to be admitted in a school and the school head is taking into account if your son has siblings already registered in the school? Why do they do that?

35.- How are class groups made?

36.- Imagine that you are the principal of a school and you are the one who have the power to admit students. In which way would you do so?


Good luck to everyone from the T8T team.

See you next week.

Alba Ramsay.

THE ANALYST

Analysing the third and fourth steps of the game: The creation of questions and its group evaluation.

By: Ana Mª Sánchez Clares.

Let´s divide the analysis in three parts: the one related to the activity, the group functioning and the social implications of the issues.

Considering that studying an educational law is always a harsh task, it could be said that the way of focusing the activity has added some creativity and have forced us to use the superior thinking skills. Creating questions has helped us to focus on the more important issues the law is presenting and thinking on practical situations has been an effective way of understanding the scope of the law changes. On the other hand, it could be said that the worst part of this task has been the ignorance about the criteria that would be used for examining and grading the questions: if the whole class would had known what the criteria were, the quality of the questions had been superior. According to this, the lack of time for examining the whole topic questions was stressful and could have made that the evaluations were no as fair as they could have been. To sum up, let´s say that we value the type of activity positively: tasks that entail a process of elaboration are more time-consuming and require a bigger cognitive effort, but are slower to forget and the learning achievement they provide is usually a better quality one.

In relation to the group work, there have been quite positive moments, but some annoying and disappointing ones as well, and believe me, it is not easy neither to analyse nor to express it. In this case I have to start by the negative points: from the division of the task (that was not understood by half of the group, but in any case was not fair) passing through the content used by most of the group members to make the first set of questions (not the LOMCE, but the topics based on the LOE) and finishing by the delay in presenting the questions to the rest of the group members. On the positive side it has to be considered that, after the first partial failure when creating the first set of questions, we had a group session on Tuesday where we worked as a group analysing the questions, examining the law, rewriting bad questions, making other more simple and, actually, I had to point that day as the best one for being the most "learning generator" one and because of the attitude of openness to change and the will of improvement; unfortunately the will is fickle and we had to suffer again a second delay in the improved set of questions, with all their associated problems for revising language on time and for printing the final work. That relapse can be marked as the worst part, together with the unfair way of dividing the task, and that definitely has to be improved: a group cannot afford repeating the same mistakes, because it undermines confidence and has to keep some equilibrium in the division of work fristly because it´s fair and, secondly, to avoid resentments and for keeping a good atmosphere. Does it mean that the balance tip on the negative? Well, to be fair, not all the members did it badly, and some of them try hard to improve on time, so let´s say that the result is a bittersweet experience.

And what about the educational relations and the implications of the contents we have been working on? Let´s start with the more simple advantage of knowing the law: next year, when we have our teaching-training, we will have a better understanding of the functioning of the school. The second advantage is that having analysed the law changes managing the main sources make us a little less dependent on political manipulation, which is an annoying timeless social issue, but quite a hot issue now the European polls are coming. Finally I would like to reflect on the taxonomy of Bloom and its revisions in relation to the task given: it would have been so different to have had to read the law and learnt it by articles or titles or just stopping in the earlier step of our game when creating the C-maps... This way of structuring the course is a prove of that creativeness and other superior thinking skills can be developed even in relation to arid topics as a law.

FACILITATORS

Hi everyone! :)

We are Sandra and Laura, the facilitators of this week.

We have had to do two conceptual maps of two different topics of primary education to compare the LOE and the LOMCE.

As in our group there are eight members, we thought that the best way to work out with our topic is dividing us in two smaller groups of four members and each group would work in one topic. Our topics were primary education and administtation of non-university institutions.

Firstly we read all the documents that Linda gave as and after that we began to look for a good program to represent our conceptual maps in the best way. This part was the most interesting. There are a lot of programmes for this. We first of all tried to use mind42 to do our maps, but it did not have a lot of different tools and things to include in our map, so finally we decided to use inspiration 9. It is a great program, we recomend it to everyone!

We have had some problems with one of the maps, because we did not know at the beginning that we had to compare both laws, LOE and LOMCE, so we had not done it; we just focused this map on the LOE law.

On Monday in class, we have had to compare the maps with other groups which had done the same topics as us. As there were just 6 topics:

- An overview of the Educational System.

- Primary School.

- Organization of Primary Education.

- Organizational variations and akternative structures in Primary Education

- Administration and governance at local and/or institutional level I.

- Administration and Governance at local and/or institutional level II.

And we are 9 groups in class, the 6 topics were divided into those groups, mixing the maps of the other groups which had the same topic, and they had to join the 3 maps into a single one for the rest of the class to study the concepts for the game. Our group did not have to join any map, so we split our group members again, and be supervisors of two groups: Educational Rush Hour and C'mon Tutankamon. 

We had to check that they evaluate good the other maps and that they were objectives with their own califocations, apart from the good joint of the final map. After that, they had to publish it into their blogs. Moreover, we have uploaded our own maps to our blogs too.

In general it has been a very abstract and messy week, because it has been a very theorical topic, but we have learnt some new things.

See you next week.

TRANSLATOR

Hello everyone! I am Ana Ruiz and this week I am the translator. Which means that, this week I have collected the five most important concepts that we have used this week and I have defined each one.

Concept Map: A concept map is a diagram that represent relationships between concepts. It is a graphical tool that designers, engineers, technical writers, and others use to organize and to represent knowledge.

It shows ideas and information usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Words on the line, referred to as linking words or linking phrases, specify the relationship between the two concepts.  The technique for visualizing these relationships among different concepts is called concept mapping. 
The difference between concept map and mind map is that a mind map is a technique for drawing information in diagrams, instead of writing it in sentences. The diagrams always take the same basic format of a tree, with a single starting point in the middle that branches out, and divides again and again. The tree is made up of words or short sentences connected by lines. The lines that connect the words are part of the meaning.  

Education System: The term education system generally refers to  kindergarten through high school programs. Systems of schooling involve institutionalized teaching and learning in relation to a curriculum, which itself is established according to a predetermined purpose of the schools in the system. School systems are sometimes also based on religions, giving them different curricula.
Simply put, an education system comprises everything that goes into educating public-school students at the federal, state, or community levels:
•        Laws, policies, and regulations
•        Public funding, resource allocations, and procedures for determining funding levels
•        State and district administrative offices, school facilities, and transportation vehicles
•        Human resources, staffing, contracts, compensation, and employee benefits
•        Books, computers, teaching resources, and other learning materials
•        And countless other contributing elements


Law: The term Law, does not have a universally accepted definition, but one definition is that law is a system of rules and guidelines which are applied through social institutions to govern behaviour.Laws can be made by legislatures through legislation (resulting instatutes), the executive through decrees and regulations, or judges through binding precedents (normally in common law jurisdictions). Private individuals can create legally binding contracts, including  arbitration agreements that exclude the normal court process.
The formation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution and the rights encoded in it. The law shapes politics, economics, and society in various ways and serves as a mediator of relations between people.

Administration: This term is also referred to as business administration, is the management of an office, business, or organisation. It involves the efficient organisation of people, information, and other resources to achieve organisational objectives.Administration is the interpretation and implementation of the policy set by an organisation characterised by control. It can be appointed by the courts, the holder of the assets of a business or a company.


Governance: This term can be defined as the rule of the rulers, typically within a given set of rules.  One might conclude that governance is the process – by which authority is conferred on rulers, by which they make the rules, and by which those rules are enforced and modified. Thus, understanding governance requires an identification of both the rulers and the rules, as well as the various processes by which they are selected, defined, and linked together and with the society generally.

It is also refers to "all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market or network, whether over a family, tribe, formal or informal organization or territory and whether through laws, norms, power or language." It relates to processes and decisions that seek to define actions, grant power and verify performance.
 



I hope it could be useful!

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

http://cmap.ihmc.us/docs/conceptmap.html

http://litemind.com/what-is-mind-mapping/

·         http://www.mindomo.com/help/mind-mapping.htm

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/MENAEXT/EXTMNAREGTOPGOVERNANCE/0,,contentMDK:20513159~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:497024,00.html

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

http://edglossary.org/education-system/

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

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/administration.html