Facilitator - María Mula Pérez

Hi everyone! I´m María and this week I have the Facilitator role. As we know, the last week our task was to investigate about permanencies and differences between LOE and LOMCE and all related with educational system according to this. Linda, our teacher, gave us six topics with the most information we needed. We had to realize a “mind-map” to remark the main ideas and the most important aspects. Finally, in class everybody worked together to elaborate a complex map with the ideas each group had extracted.

This week the activity is the second step of the last week. Now, we had to develop some questions basing on these mind-maps. The condition was these questions wasn´t very obvious or easy, because the next activity will be to realize a “game”, in which the stars of each group are going to participate. The winner will be who was able to answer every question, and the reward will be a white letter for the exam!

To elaborate our questions, we divided ourselves in pairs or three persons group:

-          - Esmeralda and Blanca have been the responsible to develop the two and three topics questions.

-          - On the second hand, Raquel and Rosana have taken of four and five topics questions.

-         -  And finally, Alba, María Dolores and me have elaborated the first and the last (six) topics questions.

This morning we have collected the questions of every group in the following way: we have put all our questions in order piling up in six groups, which correspond with the six paragraphs our teacher gave us the last week. Then, each pile or topic has been delivered to each group, and the three remaining groups have been the supervisors. We have chosen eight question of everyone, and these will be the representatives of the topic one.

After holidays we will have the game! Good luck everyone!

Stars Post

Hello everyone! We are María and Alba, the stars of these weeks of The Little Ants and we want to show you our conceptual maps. First of all, we have to say that we decided to do a very complex map with related concepts in order to show all the ideas reflected in the documents about the current law of education LOMCE and its changes respect the previous one, LOE.

Each group has to work in two different topics respects LOMCE and its changes. Our topics were the Organization of Primary Education and Administration and Governance at Local and/or Institutional Level II.

In our conceptual map about the Organization of Primary Education we showed from the organization of the school year, the classes per day students have, the differences of admission requirement among private and public schools, the geographical accessibility, to the role of tutors, how them oriented their students, the addition of a second foreign language with the LOMCE… This work has helped us to understand better the reality of schools nowadays, how they work, and also the adaptations to the students’ necessities.

Our second topic was based on “Educational administration and governance”. We have divided our mindmap in two areas. The permanencies and the changes.

The first point is based on on the curricula. We want to explain that the original curricula emerge from the state, then it pases to the authonomous communities and finally it arrives to schools. Along this process, the curricula suffers a Our second topic was based on “Educational administration and governance”. We have divided our mindmap in two areas. The permanencies and the changes.

-          On the first hand, inside the permanencies we find a very important topic through which develops the rest of the points, Educational Institutions.

The first point is based lot of changes, so we can deduce that it deteriorates somewhat.

The second point mentions the areas of educational institutions, which are pedagogical and curricular organization, organizational management and management of resources. In addition, educational institutions can induce experiments, forms of organization and working plans (this is the third aspect).

Then, we find that educational institutions have The School Board and The Teachers Assembly.

 Finally, the three following points explains the plans of schools (values, objectives, etc.).

-          On the second hand we find the main changes. We illustrate school autonomy, which develop pedagogical resources and the changes in the curriculum (common contents, different teachings and minimum teaching ) and the influence of government.

Last Monday, the day of the exposition, we had to work with other teams and supervise that they put their marks correctly; we really enjoyed working with Give me 7. We thought they did a very good work in their conceptual maps so we let them to mark their own work very high.

This week we had learned many necessary things for us when we become teachers, and we want to continue learning. We are encouraged to work very hard; it is the only way to reach our goals!

Best regards.

By: María Mula Pérez and Alba María Velasco Martínez

Curator-Farmer's Post.

Hello! I'm Rosana and this week I have had the Curator Farmer's role. This week we have done two conceptual maps about two different topics: 'Organization of Primary Education' and 'Educational Administration and Governance'. I have done the pearltree about it, and the reference of it is: http://pearltrees.com/p/cRcqX 

Furthermore, I put here the references that we have used for this task:

1. BOE (Boletín Oficial del Estado). Martes 10 de Diciembre del 2013. (Núm. 295. Sec. I. Pág. 97858)
2.  CCOO Enseñanza. ¿Cómo será el nuevo sistema educativo LOMCE? (Diciembre del 2013)
3. https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Organisation_of_Primary_Education
4. Comparación LOMCE-LOE. Ley Orgánica 2/2006, de 3 de Mayo.
5. https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Administration_and_Governance_at_Local_and/or_Institutional_Level

To sum up, I would like to say that we have learned a lot of things while we've done the conceptual maps.

Facilitator Post

Hello, I am María Dolores, the facilitator this week, with this role I have to be on charge of the blog, for example answering the comment of people, also I have to organize the dynamic of the group, each member was on charge of one aspect of the activity. The activity this week was about the laws, LOE is the past education law and LOMCE is the current, our mission was to note the changes between them.

The roles of this week are the following:

·         Alba and María: they are the stars, but they didn´t have to present because, on Monday, we joined with other groups to complete one of the topic of the conceptual maps which each group had to do for the activity.

·         Esmeralda: journalist she took photos and she had to do a diary to show our work, also she had to comment to other blogs.

·         Blanca: she is the Analyst, she will show some aspects of the work of this week, good and bad experience, the problems in the group…

·         Rosana: curator-farmer she is on charge to do the pearl-tree and to note the references which we used to search information.  

·         Raquel: translator, she had to extract the five most important aspects of this task and definite them.

·         María Dolores: I am the facilitator, I show here my work.

This week we had to read the links which Linda put and then we had to explain the changes in LOE which is the past law in education and the current which is LOMCE. According to this when we read the topics which Linda sent us we divided our work, María and I had to extract the main aspects in the 6 topic, Administration and Governance at Local and/or Institutional level II, whereas Esmeralda, Blanca and Alba extract 3 topic, Organization on Primary School. Rosana and Raquel were looking some web 2.0 to make our conceptual maps and with the main aspects in the laws they were on charge to do the conceptual maps.

With this activity we have known better the laws about education and we can make our own opinions about what is more adequate and if the changes are correct for students.

In short, the work was essay to do because we work very well together. However, I have to recognize that at first we didn´t know exactly what we had to do and we fell overwhelmed but finally we read the links which Linda send us and we understood better. Once do the work we realized that was easier to do than we thought at first.

But this task hasn´t finished yet, this is one of the parts of the game, with the rest we are going to continue during the following weeks.

Journalist Post.

Hi readers! I'm Esmeralda, the journalist of this week. This is an interactive role which consists of collecting some photos and commenting other interesting blogs related to the topic we are working on.  While the members of the group are talking about the ideas, planning how to carry on the new task or doing the mind map, I have to take photos of that process.

I have also commented on one blog from people of the class, and other blog from outside the class. Si here you can see the comments:

This one is from the blog of Hide & Seek:

This second comment is posted in a blog from another student. He posts his reflections and thoughts about his classes on his personal blog and I have found interesting his viewpoint   of the topic:

Also, here it is the link of Pablo's blog:

 http://pablodidacticblog.blogspot.com.es/2013/10/what-have-we-learnt.html?showComment=1396366486156#c3174045173056578302

And here you can see some photos of our work during this week:

On 26st of March, the group started to organize the ideas of how to carry on the new task of the week.  We started to read the instructions of the task in class and this afternoon we worked on the two topics. 

On 27st of March, we continued working on class and we started to make the comparisons between the actual educational law (LOMCE) and the previous one (LOE). We decided to divide the work in order to find more information easily.  

 

On 28st of March, we organized the ideas on the concept map. Firstly, we did it in a draft and then, we did it on Examtime, the tool that we chose to do the concept map.

 
  

On 31st of March, we worked with Hide & Seek and with GiveMe7 unifying the concept map of each topic and putting marks to the different concept map of the groups. 

As a result, I have enjoyed very much this role because it is more interactive than the others. I have taken different photos and I have worked with people of other group which was really interesting.  We shared our different points of view about the topic and we made together a concept map summarizing the information of the different concept map that we had.

We tried to do the task carefully and we put a lot of effort on it. We tried to understand the law and we tried to synthesize all the aspects in an easy way.  

See you!

Analyst Post

Hello! I’m Blanca and this week I have the role of Analyst. I have to evaluate the work of every member of the group and make a reflection about the task. This week we started the part of the subject of Educational Resources and the task, as you know, consists on the changes in the Spanish Educational System.

This week we have to compare the two lasts laws, LOE (Ley Orgánica de Educación) and LOMCE (Ley Orgánica para la Mejora de la Calidad Educativa). At first, I found this task a bit difficult because it was the first time that we deal with this kind of laws. We saw it in the subject of Planificación de la Acción Educativa, but with this task we really understood how it is.

On the one hand, the best part of the activity was to analyze, examine and vote three conceptual maps and do a new one with all the information. With this, we realized how to be critical, new perspectives and ways of thinking and madding conceptual maps. We also learn that this subject is more than learning content; we have to develop new competences by our own with assistance of our teacher. For these reasons I think it was the best part of the task.

On the other hand, the worst thing is that it was a bit difficult to put the marks of the conceptual maps of the classmates because each member of the group thinks about different aspects. But finally we take into account everything and we carried out with our work. Moreover, we should encourage more comradeship among classmates to be better in class.

With this task, we have learnt the main differences between LOE and LOMCE. We understood how was and actually is the educational law of Spain and the main characteristics. It is a very important thing for our future as teachers because we will use it all along our work. We also learnt with this task and with the other ones, how to work cooperatively and with autonomy organizing our own ideas of the differences between the laws with conceptual maps. I think it would be very easy to us understand the laws with conceptual maps which contains the important information. But one thing I want to remark, how we are going to use all these knowledge we are acquiring in our future work as teachers?

I think we need to conserve our dedication and implication with every task. We do our best to improve every week. In my opinion, I think we are very united with an objective: learn as much as we can!

As far as I am concerned, we have to improve the presentations of our tasks because we are always nervous. We have to speak louder and put more enthusiasm in everything we do. Although our work is well done, we can improve!

The content of this task, as I said before, is related to the one we learn on the subject “Planificación de la Acción Educativa”. Then, I have to say that the law is going to be present all along our future as teachers, because we need to know the framework in which we are going to develop children’s knowledge and our own knowledge too. We are going to deal with this content the rest of the degree.

In my opinion, there are some evident social connections of this content in the recent protests we saw in television because of the new educational law, LOMCE. This situation entails people who is in favour or against of it. For example, I think it is a bad implementation that they remove music from the subjects of Primary Education. It seems to me that it should remain compulsory.

I have found this post in a blog of a school which consists on what I have explained before: http://ampapaulofreire.blogspot.com.es/2014/03/manifestacion-por-la-musica-en-la.html

Greetings!