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

  

THE JOURNALIST

“The Spanish Educational System and its recent changes”.  How has T8T work developed?

By Ana Mª Sánchez Clares.

This week #SOyER1314 has started a new term in their course, and the tasks are becoming harsher… Yes, it is never pleasant to analyse a law. The vocabulary, the structure and bureaucracy factors around it make the study really rough for students. 

On Monday, March 24, the T8T team was given the task of analyzing two issues from a given list of six topics:
    Topic 2. Primary school role, general aims and objectives, education policies and legislative references. 
    Topic 5. Administration of non-university institutions; running on three aspects: Pedagogical, organisational and resources management.

These 8 teachers-in-training read the general information on Monday afternoon and, on Tuesday, the team was split into two groups and an innocent hand was asked to extract a paper… And the adventure started! “What a horrible task!”, “Oh gosh, what do we have to do then?” Yes, those were some of the more popular comments between T8T, but it was time to get down to work… And so did they.

The topics were being analyzed while they were searching for a useful tool for creating a proper concept map; not an easy job, none of them seemed to be appropriate!

On Thursday, well, maybe that day could be omitted from the work table… Some kind of a very important event kept the team busy for almost the whole day.

So let´s past to Friday morning, when one of the small groups met at 8:30 in “La Merced” campus…

and the other one at 10:30 in “Espinardo”…(Maybe was it due to that Thursday vital event? No… just a medical appointment).

 

The team members had their part almost ready and it was time to put it all together and deepen into the  LOE-LOMCE differences by helping each other to analyse them. Well, maybe that was not the most successful part of the job… It all seemed to be so similar… Maybe the lack of time and the unattractiveness of such a task played against. 

The “8:30 group” finished their work sooner and when they shared the task, the other group realized that some particles were missed on the maps to be proper “conceptual maps”. Therefore, each one rearranged their work, and both groups tried to make their best. Finally, after exploring and commenting lots of options, they decided to introduce the data in the tool “Inspiration 9” (thanks Ana Ruíz for volunteering to introduce data for "10:30-group").

Last but not least, the group members came on Monday 31 to share their works and they found out that they had to evaluate others topics different from their own ones, what caused them frustration. Half group was “supervising” Education Rush Hour...

...and the other one “supervised” C´mon Tutankamon. (Let´s say for “helping them to be impartial when evaluating their own work in comparison with the others’). 

It was an unexpected job and any of them were too happy with the role they had to play. T8T did enjoyed analyzing the different ways of representing information, but they just think that knowledge improve so much when it is known properly what is being analyzed… Well, don´t worry too much T8T and the rest of the members that were in the same situation! You all have the synthesis of the maps in a forum. Enjoy yourself!

The next step on this journey through School Organization is making questions on the synthesized maps, but this is another story…

Acknowledgements:

After an overview to the #SOyER1314 posts of this weekly task, T8T had congratulated “Education Rush Hour” for innovating the format when presenting their post. Refreshing, guys. Well done. Readers, have a look to it!

 

Personal opinion on the general task:

From the point of view of this journalist this task has had some kind of political bias from the very beginning, what have made her feel upset and have some rejection to it. In the first place, we could compare the LOE and the LOMCE from the BOE, but it was specially recommended to us a document that belongs to CCOO, well, maybe because of the fact that it has an index and it contains not only the LOMCE modifications but the whole text, it´s worth having a look to it, but, what are we learning? Letting others (from a very specific ideology) filter the information we should look up in the original sources? Well, sometimes I don´t know what to think. I have to recognise that I need guide, some kind of light to go through the law, it is harsh, and I´m not prepared enough to understand the real scope of some changes. In spite of that, I do know the results from LOGSE and LOE...  So, which is the purpose of this task? To know what have changed... or  what has got “worse”? Maybe it´s just me, that I´m fed up of this kind of boring play between PP-PSOE in which they are working on the same wrong pattern... What about if we look to others countries like Finland? Have a look to what Oscar Ray (2013) explains in his blog unadocenade... in this sense.

Maybe the reform we need is much deeper than we think, and we need each other for doing so. Do you have an opinion on it? Let me know, thank you.

Ana Mª Sánchez, T8T journalist.

THE JOURNALIST II: SYNTHESISED C-MAPS

Report on #SOyER1314 synthesised C-maps

T8T has decided to gather here the six synthesised C-maps that were assigned to the whole bilingual group:

• Topic 1:An overview on the Educational system.  

By: Education Rush Hour. 

Supervisors: T8T (Isa, Laura, Paz & Sandra).

             (It will be uploaded when E.R.H. mends the link...)

 

• Topic 2. The Primary school: aims, its role, education policy and legislative references.

By: GiveMe7.

Supervisors: Little Ants (half group).

• Topic 3. Organistation of Primary education: geografical accessibility; admission requirements & choise of school; age levels & grouping of pupils; organization of the school year.

By: Hide & Seek.

Supervisors: Little Ants (half group).

• Topic 4. Organisational variations & alternative structures in Primary education: rural schools; itinerancy & non-regular schooling; bilingual teaching; distance education.

By: The teachleaders.

Supervisors: Step by step (half group).

• Topic 5. Administration at institutional level of non-university institutions: pepadogical, organizational and resources management.

By: Brainstorming

Supervisors: Step by step (half group).

• Topic 6. Governance at institutional level of non-university institutions: the leadership team; collegial, teaching and participation bodies.

By: C’mon Tutankamon.

Supervisors: T8T (Alba, Ana Ruíz, Ana Sánchez & Raquel).

We  would specially like to mention "C´mon Tutankamon", who did a conscientious work from the beginning, but whose work is now much more concise & clear than before: they considered all the supervisors suggestions, took the strong points of the others groups and kept the best of their own C-map.  GiveMe7 one seems to be really complete and clear aswell. We need more time for analysing the rest of the C-maps, but they look really well. Well done guys.

It´s time now for personalizing the C-maps after our personal study!

Thanks #SOyER1314,

Ana Mª Sánchez, T8T journalist.