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.