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

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.

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.

STAR'S POST

Hello everyone!

We are Paz and Isa the stars of this week from the group T8T Team.

This week we have been working in two topics: the Primary School and Administration and Governance at Local and/or Institutional Level I. We have had to do one conceptual map for each topic.

To carry out it, we divided ourselves into two groups. One of the groups worked on the first topic and the second one, on the other.

When we arrived on Monday, we had to work in class with the conceptual maps. We had to put in common with the other groups, with the objective of doing only one conceptual map from each topic. So, for it, we gave our conceptual maps to the other groups, so they could work with them.

All groups had been asigned one topic in which they had to work. But, like there were only six topics, three of the groups had the role of being evaluators. Our group was one of those. Our function was to supervise and control another group, because they must valorate, evaluate and do a good conceptual map of the topic they were told to, without favoritism.

Now, we are going to explain you our two conceptual maps, which are here below.

In this first map, we can see firstly the tittle of the topic. The administration at institutional level in non-university institutions is divided into three big topics, as you can see in the cmap below. This three sub-topics are "pedagogical and curricular organization", "organizational management" and "management of resources". 

What we have made with those topics is to explain them and look for the changes between LOE and LOMCE (the articles related to these topics).

Here you have the results:

This second map is about Primary Education. In the centre of the map we can find the title of the topic. If we look on the top of it we can find the aim of the Primary Education, which are the basic learning and the personal development of the children.

Moreover, if we look on the opposite side we can find the LOE of Primary Education. It explain us the basic competences of Primary Education, which are linguistic competence, information and digital processing, social and civic, physical world, mathematical, cultural awareness and expresion, learning to learn and autonomy and personal initiative. The three cycles in which it is divided and the three types of school we can find, public school, private school and publicly-funded private.

Also we can find in the map the general objectives, the educational policy and the relation between them.

We hope it could be useful for all of you!

Best regards,

T8T Team's stars: Paz and Isa.

STAR

Hello everyone,

It´s Ana Mª Sánchez, the T8T Star for the task “Exploring the dark side of textbooks”. Well, what can I tell you about my experience? I think we have explored an interesting topic; the articles we were proposed to read were quite illuminating and instructive… I didn´t know, for example, about the existence of an Institute for International Textbook Research, just a pity, I thought at the beginning of searching into the website (http://www.gei.de), that most of the information is not translated into English (even if I was clicking the translating icon once and again). I was missing some broadcast articles that were giving examples about the different approaches to the same topic (e.g. a war, a battle or even an ideological conflict). At the end, after searching a little bit more, I found some information about textbooks in Middle East, National Identity and the images of self and other (Alayan, 2011), but was just information about a conference. Anyway, there is no much time to deepen into the topic, I mean, no before publishing the posts. Later on we can deepen into them as much as we want. And maybe, as future teachers, we should be quite aware about this issue, and the fewer intermediaries we have, the better.

             About the procedures we had to use to show this dark side of textbooks that we had been exploring through the articles and blog post we read, we were especially interested in two of them: infographics and advertisement videos. I really preferred to do an infographic… because I thought it was a cool way of showing information, especially after watching one interesting professional website (http://infographicworld.com) and particularly an infographic about Christmas and its transformation into a business; but also because I´m quite self-concious (something I have to improve, I know… not a good trait for anything, and less for a good teacher…) and, in some aspects, it was more comfortable for me to choose the infographic… But the majority gained, and even if I still have to assume that I am in youtube (I cannot believe it yet, hum… actually I try to not think of it…) Well, I have to say that I enjoyed with the whole process. What is more, I discovered there are quite skillful people in my group with the video making and with creative ideas for doing so… quite impressive the qualities that can be found around… Thanks to you all. Well, I felt supported throughout the week and, even if we had technical problems (always something happens, but we are becoming skilled at solving incidentals… aren´t we, girls?) I think the result was not bad at all, and I think we learnt quite a lot of things during the process… Even during the presentation, I had to learn to not apologise for the mistakes before presenting… I think I still have to learn quite a lot of things! And I expect to have the capacity, the motivation, the inner force and the inspiration for continuing learning… quite big desires, I know. Actually I hope to get assistance from on High, while I continue doing my part of the job. 

See you soon.

T8T team

STAR

Hello, I'm Raquel, the Star of my group this week, and I would like to tell you my experience about all the week and my presentation, which was a bit disaster!! :(

Well, first of all, what we had to do was to create a powerpoint explaning the main characteristics, types and definition of the Creative Commons Program, which is very useful to look up good information to do different academic works.
The next activity was create other powerpoint reflecting the main and more important tips to do a good presentation.

And finally, I, the Star, had to do a oral presentation, presenting a topic that we had chose, our topic was about Sources of Energies, imaging that I was a teachers and I had to explain the chosen lessons to the primary children' class in a useful and interesting way.

I was very very very nervous.Well, the oral presentation was weak, because Linda, the teachers explain us that our powerpoint was not a properly powerpoint to explain it children. So, we tried to do a good work, changing some wrong things. At first, I feel very worry about my presentation, because it was not how I expected. But, finally, I think that all this problems and difficulties can be very useful to improve and do the next work in a better way. So, instead of the horrible presentation, I believe that Linda correct us to improve and get a good grade in the subject and learn more and more everyday.

Also, thanks to this activity, we learnt to use other programs such as Slidshare to put the video on it. When I look up something on Internet, powerpoint on slidshare was used by me and my classmates to pick up information to do a especific work and I never thought about... ¿ Can I put a video made by me in this program? or answer like What's about this program?

So, I leave you my oral presentation in a video. I hope you like it.
Also, we can see our powerpoints in Slidshare about other methodology to introduce the sources of energies to children and the tips to do a good presentation and also the other work that we did at the beginning about the Universe.

Thank you very muchh



T8T

STAR

Hi everyone!

 This week my partner Alba has transferred me the role of  STAR so this week I had  to present the class our work.

When we started this second practice about the Treasure Hunt, we were more lost than the last week  but we kept trying to last day and we finished with good sensations.

The work for this week is divided in three parts.

The first one is about cartographic projections.

We had presentation for it.  Where I supposed to explain: What is a map projection?, the important features of the three map projections ( Robinson Projection, Mercator Projection and Azimuthal Projection) and compare Russia and Australia in this projections and to conclude this point  I had to explain why  our group have chosen the Robinson projection as the best projection for present in classroom. Also for this presentation we have made a poster with the different projections and the comparisons of the two countries in each map.

 I had to explain why  our group have chosen the Robinson projection as the best projection for present in classroom. Also for this presentation we have made a poster with the different projections and the comparisons of the two countries 

 

Also I would like to say that our group  have chosen Russia and Australia because their location and also for their sizes. We can observe perfectly the distortions on them, where  a very  good example is the Azimuthal Projection  in which despite of the fact that Russia has a total area of 17,075,400 square kilometres and Australia  a total area of 7.686.850 square kilometres, Australia seems to be bigger and longer than Russia. 

The second one is about the Treasure Hunt.

In this part, I would explained : What is a Treasure Hunt and  also we have chosen some examples about it. One example is  The Parts of the House. It is a  easy Treasure Hunt for children of Primary Education.In this exercise children have to look for information about the parts of the house in the given links, in order to response the questions and finally they have to answer the following Big Question:

Which is the most important room for you in your house? Why? Write in your notebook?

With this exercise children learn how to obtain and use for his activities, information from  different sites.

http://poster.4teachers.org/worksheet/view.php?id=77942

The last one is about a media distorted.

For this part, we have chosen some examples, which my partners have published in their post but for the presentation day we have chosen a distortion in a Textbook, where in one of their characters appears a photography of  one part of Mexico , but in reality the photography was in another place of Mexico.

Well this was to be  the presentation but finally  in the presentation’s day all star went together  to compare and share information  with others to prepare a collective presentation.

Finally all the star could prepare and organize a good presentation, which I think all we learnt something new and interesting. 

 To conclude I want to say that I really liked to do this exercise and I think that it is a another way of learning  that some of us have never used it. And that is all, I really enjoyed having this role , and more this week, and I will see you next week in  my next role.

Ana Mª Ruiz.

STAR

Hello everyone!

I'm Alba Ramsay and this week my task has consisted of setting out our week's work, I was the star and I want to tell you about my experience and how I felt.

Firstly, when I knew I was going to be the one that introduced and explained the content of the first week, I was quite worried and nervous, of course, because it was the first week and the first time we have worked this way, nevertheless, something inside told me that everything was going to be okay.

Secondly, the big worry for our team was to focus on a correct explanation of the TPACK. This week has been quite tough, lots of work had to be done, there were many things to understand, and constantly fighting against time. As the work was getting done, we better understood the goal of this weeks task and my fears started to disappear. I would especially like to emphasise the stress and our panic on the weekend before the presentation, especially mine I must admit, and thinking that we were not going to have it finished on time was really killing me. However, everything was finally indeed prepared and ready for my exposition on Monday.

Monday arrived, I could feel the butterflies in my stomach as I do before every presentation. Once the lesson started I just wanted to get it out, but our teacher surprised me when she explained how the presentation was going to be oriented. I had to present it 10 different times, to 10 different groups, at first I panicked, so my first presentation was quite poor, I was not happy at all, but the 2nd and the 3rd were better and my confidence grew each time I repeated it. However, notwithstanding the improvement, by the tenth time I was really looking forward to the end, to say my last phrase: "do you have any questions?"

Despite all the nerves, stress and the pressure, my final conclusion is positive, indeed I am sure I would not say no to repeating it. My overall assessment is a positive result. It is a very good experience to help you gain confidence, to leave behind your fears and, of course to have a good amount of time to practice your English. I also want to highlight that at first I didn't know how well the functionality of this subject would work, but after this stressful first week I'm pretty happy to work this way in the future.

So that's all for this week, see you next week with other new experiences to tell and to show.

Alba xxx

STAR

Here we publish some parts of the excellent presentation done by the star of the week: Alba Ramsay! :D

We would like to congratulate her because exposing the first one in a new subject, with a totally different way of working and methodology... has much merit!

CONGRATULATIONS ALBA!!

The Journalist (Sandra and Laura)