Friday 28 February 2014

Analyst post

Hello, I'm Raquel and this week I'm the analyst of my group, as all of you should know my work consist on evaluate the work of my hole group and I have to put a mark to each member of my group, I also have to answer some questions.

If I think about the work that we have done this week, I can say I'm very happy and proud with each member of my group as well, because we have work very hard, making the slide shows, thinking on the topic about we were going to speak, looking for the photos to put in each slide show and so on.

On the one hand, I strongly believe that the best part of the activity was when we did the slide show about floating and sinking, because as we have studied in psychology of development, children have specific needs in each age, so we had to think how to do it in the better way to explain to the students, at the beginning we decided very fast how to do it, however, we changed our methodology a lot of times to improve it, at the end, as far as I concerned it was very interesting, dynamic, and it is clearly the better way in order to the children can understand very well what it is. Because we, as teachers in our future, will have to work very hard to prepare our class, to teach in the better way, to caught the student's attention and to be a little better everyday. In the same way, I think that there isn't a worse part of the activity because I have learned with each thing that I have done this week.

On the other hand, the worse moment of the week was when we did the storyboard to show it to Linda and to ask her if it was a good slide show, and she told us that we should change it and also that we should be more specific. In that moment we can't believe it, because we though that our slide show was very well done, we were working hard in it, therefor, it was clear that we should improve it in some aspect so, from our point of view it help us to see that is better to explain a general topic throughout a division in concrete topics, for example a concrete topic about water is floating and sinking. As we studied in Planning and also as we are studying here, we have to listen and value the critics of others to improve like teachers everyday, so we listened and value Linda's critic to improve our work. Because, if we don't listen these critics in our future as teachers we won't be able to improve. In the other way, the best moment of the week was when our stars did the presentation about floating and sinking, because we realize that our decision was right, because the slide show was very dynamic and beautiful and it was what we wanted to show. We wanted to show a good form to teach to the student, explaining this topic to show our classmates how we would explain it to our students.

This week has been very interesting, because we have learned a lot of things, first of all, we have learned how to do a good slide show step by step. We though that we knew how to do it, however, now we can do a good slide show. It knowledge is really useful for our degree, in which we have to do a lot of slide shows, and we will need it in our future as teacher because as we have seen with this activity it's easier to teach children throughout this method. Besides, we have learned what is creative common and how to use it.

In sum, I think that for the next week we should conserve these knowledge and our good relationship as a group, because it's the main thing to work in group, we also have to keep working hard.

Wednesday 26 February 2014

Curator-Farmer Post



Hello everyone! I’m Alba, I’ve got the Curator-Farmer role this week so, I’ve been compiling all the references used by the team in the differents activities fot this week: the 20 tips for doing a presentation, Creative Common and the exposition about Float and Sink. Also I helped the girls with their assignment because we always dividing the work in order to do it easier and more dynamic. I summarize all the work in a Pearl Tree, you can see it here.






http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-s=1_10864049&N-reveal=5&N-fa=10717305&N-u=1_1829700&N-p=105808717&N-f=1_10864049



And here you’ve got the references used by the team.




http://creativecommons.org.nz/


http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licencias_Creative_Commons



http://www.accuconference.com/resources/effective-presentations.aspx



http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/120Adensity.html



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



Best regards, see you next week.

Journalist Post


This week I am de journalist, María Dolores Muñoz López.

We started this task last Tuesday; we read the explanation and that afternoon we did part of the activity, we divided it, two of us did the power point to prepare and design a good presentation, others search the mean to use Creative Commons Licence and finally other three member made the power point of the presentation. That day we learnt how cite pictures which have some right reserved and the mean of icon of Copyright. While we did the task I was taking photos in which we appear working. With this work each member went at home and continues her work. Here I show some pictures of that day.

 
 

Next day was Thursday, we met to finish the work and improve the task because that morning Linda gave us some advices in class and we understood better how the task does. That afternoon we decided a specific topic related with the water and made the power point which had to present our stars. The rest of the work was finished by each member.

 

Once done it we were already to do a good presentation, we thought that will be interesting do an experiment to show our topic, which was about the objects which can float and objects which can sink. Moreover, if we were teachers, children of primary school would understand better, our explanation, with this experiment. Here you can see Esmeralda and María doing the presentation.

 

 
Here I show two pictures which are the blogs where I put a coment. The first was of our classmates, The Teachleaders and next of a spanish man called Alejandro Vera Palencia, he explains very well what common licence is.
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
I put a link which goes to YouTube, there appear our stars in the presentation of the
last Monday.
 

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgZMNJimYUc&feature=youtu.be
 

 
 


Translator Post.

Hello! I'm Rosana and this week my role is Translator. I have choosen the following five words as the most important words about this activity:

1. - Creative Commons: It is a non-profit organization headquartered in California, United States, devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to and to share. The organization has released several copyright known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. 

2. - Slide show: It is a presentation of a series of still images on a projection screen or electronic display device. Each image is usually displayed for at least a few seconds, and sometimes for several minutes, before it is replaced by the next image. A slide show may be a presentation of images purely for their own visual interest or artistic value, sometimes unaccompanied by description or text, or it may be used to clarify or reinforce information, ideas, comments, solutions or suggestions which are presented verbally.

3. -Flickr: It is an image hosting and video hosting website, and web services suite. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, and effectively an online community, the service is widely used by photo researchers and by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. Flickr offers users the ability to either release their images under certain common usage licenses or label them as "all rights reserved". The licensing options primarily include the Creative Commons 2.0 attribution-based and minor content-control licenses – although jurisdiction and version-specific licenses cannot be selected. As with "tags", the site allows easy searching of only those images that fall under a specific license.

4. -Slideshare: SlideShare is a Web 2.0 based slide hosting service. Users can upload files privately or publicly in the following file formats: PowerPoint, PDF, Keynote or OpenDocument presentations. Slide decks can then be viewed on the site itself, on hand held devices or embedded on other sites. Although the website is primarily a slide hosting service, it also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars. SlideShare also provides users the ability to rate, comment on, and share the uploaded content. SlideShare was voted among the World's Top 10 tools for education & e-learning in 2010.

5. -Storyboard: Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence. The storyboarding process, in the form it is known today, was developed at the Walt Disney Studio during the early 1930s. The process of visual thinking and planning allows a group of people to brainstorm together, placing their ideas on storyboards and then arranging the storyboards on the wall. This fosters more ideas and generates consensus inside the group.

References:
1. - Creative Commons: 
2. - Slide show: 
3. - Flickr: 
4. - Slideshare: 
5. - Storyboard: 

I hope that you learn a lot with this! See you soon!

Stars Post- Esmeralda and María

Hi! We are Esmeralda and Maria, the stars of this week. The last Monday, we presented an exposition about a topic of primary school, one of the properties of the water- density and objects which float, and objects which sink.
Our topic, as we have already said was about water. On one hand, when we explained why objects float, we put a cork and a leaf on the surface of the water and we could see how they do not sink due to its low weight material. On the other hand, we could see how a coin and a stone sink when we put them on the surface of the water.
In our presentation we decided to do some experiments because we think that it is an effective method for children to learn in a more interactive way. Sometimes students have to accept what the teachers told them without any reason for believe it. So, if we prove as the same time that we teach them it will be easier for them to memorize and internalize this content.

Here you can see the presentation we used last Monday:


Also, you can find each photo of our presentation on flirck.com. We have uploaded it because maybe some of you find our photos interesting so, you can download and use them.

During the presentation, we used a set of slides to illustrate our ideas. We used some tips in order to make the slides more attractive to the class. For example, we tried to use only one sentence in each slide and we tried to put only one image in each slide but including their respective creative common licences. Moreover, we acquire new tips about how to make a presentation properly. Summarizing:

- Images must occupy the entire size of the slide in order to make them more impressive.
-When we do some experiments is better to accompany them with professional images. 
-At least, it is better to use big letters than use bold letters.

Finally, with this activity we learnt that doing a presentation is a good way to show children why learning is not boring. In addition, we learnt a lot of other group's presentations; for example we discovered that it is very interesting teaching through a tale and also that we can do a type of game in order to facilitate the internalizing process of the content.

We hope you enjoy it! 



Esmeralda and Maria. 

Facilitator Post

Hello, I am the Facilitator of “The Little Ants”, Blanca, during the third task. This week I could learn about the Creative Commons, new information with the steps that we must follow when we have to do a slideshow and things about the water, floating and sinking (the presentation of the topic that the group chose).
My role as facilitator consists of dividing and coordinating the members of the group. I have to tell each person what they have to do. I have to solve the problems and help other members with the incidents that emerge during the week. Then, I have to check that everything uploaded to the blog is well done, correct the spelling and answer the comments. I have updated some things in Twitter.
The role of each person during this week was:
  • Journalist: Mª Dolores. She has commented in the blogs of the other groups and has taken photos and has made some videos while we were working.
  •  Analyst: Raquel. She has answered some questions related to the topic of the week and she also has evaluated each member of the group.
  • Translator: Rosana. She has to choose the five words which have been the key to understand the topic and she looked for information about them.
  • Curator-farmer: Alba. She has made the PearlTrees and has compiled the references that we have used.
  • Stars: Esmeralda and María. They were in charge of explaining to the whole class the slideshow that we had prepared about the slideshow of the water.
  • Facilitator: Blanca.


The work of my colleagues was wonderful this week. I am very happy with the coordination of the group.
This week we had to make three slideshows. In order to understand better the concepts I thought that it would be better to divide us and make the slideshows in pairs. So I told Rosana and Mª Dolores to do the slideshow about the twenty basic tips that we have to follow to do a good presentation. Then, I told Esmeralda and María to do the slideshow about the Creative Commons. And finally, I do the slideshow with Alba and Raquel of the topic related to a content on Primary School (in our case, the water-floating and sinking).

We decided to present our slideshow about the water with objects on live. With this we thought that the presentation will be more believable.

I have to say that each member of the group had their activities in time. When we finished our slideshows and all we have to do, each person explained to the whole group how was the experience, what we have learnt and so on. In this way all people of the group have an idea and know everything of the topic in the subject of School Organization.

I also have to solve the problems that happened. For example, on Tuesday 18th of February, we started our slideshow about the water, but the next Thursday we talked with our teacher and she told us that we must focus in one specific aspect of the water so we change it. We decided to do the presentation about floating and sinking, which was a topic more definite.
Other problem that occurred was that we were thinking in objects which sink and which float and we think that the best objects were a coin, a leaf, a stone and a cork. Then, we realized that we have not got a leaf, a stone and a cork, so I and Raquel went to the street in order to find the objects. I really enjoy this experience!



I hope you have enjoyed this post! Thanks for reading it. See you soon.

Task 3 (Telling Stories: Free Resources and visual presentations)

Hello everyone! This week we have worked in three different things. First of all we learnt what is Creative Common. Well, it consists on that you keep your Copyright and you may allow people or not, to copy and distribute your work (music, videos, images...) but only on the conditions you specify, and it has different types of licences, depending of the author’s desires. And sometimes the different licences combine with other types of licences. So, if you are going to do a public exposition with slides, you have to be careful what media you use for it.
Here, you can see the photos we took and we uploaded to Flickr:

Also, other task for this week consists on doing a Power Point showing the 20 essential tips for do a good presentation. In our opinion, it was very interesting and we think that can be very useful for us in the future because, as you know, we are students of Education Primary Degree and we have to do many expositions along the course. So, it is very important to know how to do a good one and interesting for your public. You can see our work here:

Other thing was choose a topic which was taught in Primary Schools and showing it for our classmates. It was the most interesting thing in our opinion. We tried to do it dynamic and original so we chose the flotation. We did different experiments with objects such as a stone, a leaf or a cork, to check its flotation in a container with water. We thought that it is easy to understand a topic if children see it in a visual way and applied to their real life. Also we taught concepts as the volume or the density but in a funny way, not just by head!

Name: Leaf floating
Author: The Little Ants
Source: Flickr.com
License: Creative 
Commons By 2.0



Name: Cork floating
Author: The Little Ants
Source: Flickr.com
License: Creative Commons By 2.0




Name: Coin sinking
                                                      Author: The Little Ants
                                                      Source: Flickr.com
                                                      License: Creative Commons By                                                       2.0


Name: Stone sinking
Author: The Little Ants
Source: Flickr.com
License: Creative Commons By 2.0


We are learning so many things in this course and important resources for us as future teachers. Now we use Slideshare, PearlTree, Blog… we think that it is important for teachers and Education innovate, you must be connected with the preferences of your children. So, if they spend all day with their Ipads, tablets, smartphones… Why can’t we teach them using it in order to motivate them?


We are motivated to continue learning and working hard. Hope you enjoy our work! Best regards.

Friday 21 February 2014

Translator

Hello! I´m María, the translator of this week, and I think that to understand very well this topic, we would have to know some terms:
- I think we need to know what exactly a MAP, because this word appears a lot of times in this work. A map is a graphic representation of a portion of the earth's surface. The map has metric properties, this means that they can take measurements of distances, angles, etc..
In order to know the world and supported by the philosophical theories, maps today are part of a key source of information for understanding the world.


http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapa

- The second one is CARTOGRAPHIC PROJECTIONS.
A cartographic projection is a graphic representation system which provides an appropriate relationship between the points on the curved surface of the Earth and a flat surface (map). These points are located on a network of meridians and parallels. 
Map projections are necessary for creating maps, but, however, all map projections distort the surface in some way. Depending on the purpose of the map, some distortions are acceptable and others are not, there are therefore different map projections.
We have studied the Robinson projection, the Mercator projection and the Azimuthal projection, and we have seen how there are a lot of opinions about what is the best to represent the reality. For this reason, we know that there isn´t a perfect cartographic projection without failure.

http://icaci.org/files/documents/ICC_proceedings/ICC2001/icc2001/file/f24014.pdf

-The third is DISTORTION. This word appears a lot of times in this activity, so I think that it is important to know its meaning. Distortion is the deformation of the original state of something, in this case of the maps. 
Accurate criteria for evaluation of cartographic projections are based on numerical values of local distortion in the variety of individual points in a map.
Distortion refers to lengths, areas and angles, and its value is changing point by point continuously.


-One of the most important terms in this work is TREASURE HUNTS. Treasure hunt is an activity engaged in students learning of English. This isn´t a really complex task, they have to find the answers to some questions which are given in the content of a set of links selected previously by the teacher.
A treasure hunt includes some elements: the first one is a short introduction to explain the topic. Second, it includes a set of questions that students have to respond. The third one, there is a reflexion about all information obtained. Then, treasure hunts gather some links of the websites where answers will be. And finally, it has an evaluation of the completed task.
Treasure hunt is a flexible work model because it is not necessary that all these elements appear on it.

http://www.isabelperez.com/webquest/taller/treasure.htm

- In this activity we also have worked with MEDIA. The communication channels through which news, entertainment, education, information or promotional messages are disseminated. Media includes all broadcasting and narrowcasting medium such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, billboards, direct mail, telephone, fax, and Internet. Media is the plural of medium and can take a singular or plural verb depending on the intended meaning.

Wednesday 19 February 2014

Analist post


Hello! I am María Dolores, the analyst this week, here I show my work.

What was the best part of the activity? The best part in this second task was that we have learnt that in the past there were people who had different thoughts on how was the world, Robinson, Mercator and Azimuthal showed us their projections and their visions of the Earth in different ways. Also we could have seen the impact which has the media on children and the importance of children to distinct between reality and fiction.  Finally, this weekend we have learnt which a “treasure hunt” is; this is useful to teach children in a fun way.

What was the worse? When we arrived on Monday and teacher told us that we had to do another activity, we have to recognize that, at first, we were impacted. But finally, we realized that this was useful for us because we share our work with other member of other groups who had the same role as each member. So, this helped us to understand different point of view of different parts of this task.

What was the best moment of the week (in the work of the group)? The best moment this week was when we compared the different projections, this was interesting. But the most was when we considered the activity which we could teach to children about treasure hunt. We said different activities and it was funny.

What was the worse?  We had some problems to know what treasure hunt was because we didn´t find the definition, and each members of my group said different things. But finally we saw some examples on the internet and we understood it better.

What have you learn? We have learnt the different point of view of each man, Robinson, Mercator and Azimuthal on how they saw the world. It´s interesting see that some countries are different from actual maps which are habitual for us. Also, the big impact of media on children and how can it influence them, for this reason they should distinct between the reality and fiction. Finally, we have learnt what a treasure hunt is; this is a fun way to teach children some content.

What do you need to conserve –as a group- for next weeks? We need to conserve the cooperation which we have, we work very well together and we have rarely had an argument, I think that this is so important to reach a good work.

What do you need to improve –as a group- for the next weeks? May be, the organization is one of the things which we have to improve because sometimes one of us start with a thing which other member have to do.

How THIS content is related to other contents in the course and in your degree?   This course we won´t see anything related with geography but, next year we are going to study a subject relevant with this, so there we may see something related with this three projections. One thing which I have studied in sociology of education was the impact of mass media on children there; we learnt that TV is one of the most important.

There is any evident social connection of this content (news, politics…)?

Here I can connect this content with a politic aspect, for example: in three projections we can see that some countries are bigger than other, the cause can be because the author wanted to stand out some important countries.

Another social connection, is the impact of media in children, they see TV and other mass media which can influence their behavior: as we said on Monday “Sponge Bob” is an important character for them. In other kind of programs is important that children learn to distinct between reality and fiction because in some cases the violence is so common.

Tuesday 18 February 2014

Curator-farmer post

Hi! I am Esmeralda, and the role I've had this week on TheLittleAnts's group was the curator-farmer.



 This week our work was about Cartographic Projections and Treasure Hunt. Some of the most important cartographic projections we've studied were Robinson's projection, Mercator's projection and Azimuthal's projection.  My role of this week consisted on organizing the majority of information in a Pearltrees so; here you have the link of my work:

You can have a general idea of some of the most important cartographic projections whit the Pearltrees I've done. Also, you can find the example of Treasure Hunt we were working during the week.


We researched more information in order to add additional information to the link that the teacher gave us.

References:



Journalist Post

Hi, dear readers. I am Blanca and this week I had the role of journalist. This role is very interactive, because when the members of the group were giving their ideas for the presentation, were talking about the new task or doing the poster board and the Pearl Tree, I had to take photos and videos of that. I enjoy this role very much.
I also had to comment other blogs from people of the class and a blog from outside the class. These were the comments:
  • The first of all was in T8T’s blog:



  • The second one was in The Teachleaders’ blog:



  • The last one was in a blog from outside the class. The blog is from a girl of Chester and she did a Treasure Hunt with people of her city:




I have to add that the Treasure Hunt I like the most was the one of the group called "C'mon Tutankamon" which consists on an activity with the parts of the house and the media they chose, the power of the photoshop which can distorts the real perception of the kids.

Here you have some videos and photos of the work I have done during the week. I hope you enjoy it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJEARahL1BA




On 11st of February, the group starts the new task of the week in Organization class. The group was giving ideas of the election of the countries. In class, we decided to do the comparition between France and Mexico. 
We continue after lunch in the classrooms of work at the Faculty of Philosophy in order to try to make a progress in the presentation.We started doing the comparision between the different projections, here you can see the facilitator of this week, Rosana.


Here we have our stars of the week preparing their presentation on Tuesday 11st in the afternoon (Alba and Raquel).


Then, we started to express our ideas in the poster board. In this photo you can see a member of the group, María, drawing and doing the final details of the poster.
On Wednesday 12nd of February, the group study a bit what we had learnt these days and think in things we can add to our task.

On Thursday 13rd of February, we continue

our work in Organization class. We have most
of the work done. We asked some cuestions
to Isabel in order to check that our work was
being well done.








The following days we continue with the task in our houses because each member of the group were in our respective cities. In that way, we asked our doubts through Skype or Whatsapp.


On 17th of February, we have the presentation of the groups of the class. The teacher distributed the class in groups depending in the role that each person have:







These are some pictures of poster boards of the groups in class.





Here you have some photos of the presentations about the topic of the week: Cartography maps, media and treasure hunt.




I like very much the topic of this week because I have learnt new things I did not know. An example of that it is I did not know that with the different projections, the countries have distinct measures. In this way, since we are young, we learn in an inappropriate way, in my point of view.

This week we did the task faster, although we hardly had time in class. We already had more practice and I hope that in the next few weeks it keeps better. I also have to add that some projections in the task, such as the Azimuthal Projection, have very few pages where to find information, but I think we could resolve it.

Best regards!

Monday 17 February 2014

Facilitator post.

Hello! I'm Rosana and this week I'm the facilitator. This role, as Raquel explained the last week, consists on organize the work of my group. I must divide, organize and coordinate the work of each member, encourage the dynamic of the group and help to the members with their problems. And finally I also have to conserve and secure the blog's quality, answer the comments, correct the spelling, etc. Like the past week, the star role have been divided between two people. The role of each person is:

~The facilitator: Rosana Sánchez
~The journalist: Blanca Puche, she must comment in the blogs of the others groups and, furthermore, she must to take photos and videos of our group while we work.
~The analyst: María Dolores Muñoz, she has to evaluate the work of the group, that is, have to answer to questions as: what was the best and the worse part of the activity, what we have learnt and so on.
~The translator: María Mula, she has to choose five important words about the activity and explain them with her own words but also with scientific resources.
~The curator-farmer: Esmeralda Martínez, her role consists on do a compilation of the references used in the activity, and has to do a Pearl-tree.
~The stars: Alba Velasco and Raquel Lorenzo, who have the most important role. They have to represent in class the activity done during the week, with a poster.

This week all the group has been working hard and I'm very glad with my classmates because they demonstrate their effort and their responsibility.

As facilitator, I said to each member of the group when they had to have the work done, because we needed that the activity was done in time for the stars prepared their presentation. In this way, we had done the poster and the whole activity on Thursday, leaving to the stars all weekend for prepare well the presentation. Furthermore, I helped to my classmates when they had any problem or they didn't understand something.

And, finally, this week I have been monitoring the twitter and the blog. This afternoon I published the post about the activity of this morning in class, about cartographic maps.  Besides, and for last, I worked with my mates in the mindmap used in the exposition.