Sir Ken Robison, ni más ni menos que Sir nombrado por la Reina de Inglaterra en el 2003 y que dice cosas como «La gente piensa que es una excentricidad decir que la escuela funciona como una fábrica, pero es cierto.» Momento de reflexión.
Lo revolucionario de la educación ahora es volver atrás, ¡muy atrás! Yo diría que los métodos con los que empezaron los primeros filósofos a difundir lo que pensaban. Quedándonos en lo básico, hablar en grupo, discutir ideas, experimentar. Lo que hace unos años habría sido una locura ahora parece ser lo correcto. No dejemos a los alumnos individualmente, sentados durante horas, desconectando de lo que les decimos. Si todos no aprendemos igual, ¿por qué les enseñamos a todos igual?
Volviendo un poco al artículo de Ken Robison que me ha llevado a escribir esta entrada, el dice que «si defiendes la alfabetización y te importa que la gente aprenda a leer y a escribir, no te limitas a dejar libros a su alrededor a ver si muestran interés.» Si de verdad quieres conseguirlo dejas a un lado lo que no funciona y te pones en busca y captura de aquello que es necesario para mejorar lo que tienes, aquello que va a hacer que esos alumnos muestren interés.
Segundo momento de reflexión. Y si todo pasa porque ya no enseñamos a sentir ni sentimos la enseñanza. Y si el problema es que no miramos los recursos que tenemos alrededor para estrujaros al máximo. Y si es más cómodo seguir haciendo lo mismo que hasta ahora. Y si lo que no queremos es esforzarnos día a día…
Y si queréis leer el artículo de Ken Robinson del que hablo, aquí os lo dejo. ¡Hasta pronto!
¿Estamos realmente informados? Ha sido la primera pregunta que me ha surgido nada más terminar de leer varios artículos relacionados la infoxicación. Es un término que no conocía como tal, pero sí el fenómeno. Hace ya un tiempo que considero que internet nos ha abierto no una ventana, si no que nos ha quitado el techo hacia la información.
Saber cualquier dato esta en nuestra mano a golpe de click. Pero, ¿nos hace esto estar más informados? Vuelvo a la pregunta inicial porque creo que es algo que debemos reflexionar. En mi opinión no completamente, y si pensamos en algunas profesiones en particular, absolutamente no. De hecho cualquiera diagnostica sin título de doctor, pero con título de experto en Wikipedia. En este blog su autor realiza una reflexión acerca de la infoxicación y la importancia de aprender a encontrar la relevancia en la información que buscamos.
Centrémonos en la enseñanza. ¿Toda esta avalancha de información es realmente positiva? Personalmente creo que nuestros alumnos muchas veces se encuentran abrumados por la cantidad de recursos que internet les ofrece, y no saben qué leer y qué no. Por eso, una de las opciones que creo que más posibilidades nos da es la utilización de blogs como en este otro artículo se habla. Como podemos ver, los blogs nos ayudan a organizar toda la información y así acceder a recursos realmente relevantes e importantes.
Por este motivo, las herramientas que yo recomendaría serían esta misma, WordPress o cualquier otra con finalidades parecidas. Otra de las herramientas que me parecen muy cómodas es Symbaloo, ya que nos permite organizar todos nuestros recursos y es un programa muy intuitivo. Aquí adjunto un vídeo que nos da diferentes consejos para evitar la infoxicación.
Para continuar con el tema de los entornos PLE hemos realizado un estudio de la actividad de una comunidad educativa en Twitter. En mi caso ha sido sobre el Grupo Sorolla, una cooperativa que reúne varios centros escolares en la Comunidad Valenciana.
Bueno, en la pestaña «About me» ya hice una breve descripción del objetivo de este blog y a qué me dedicaba yo, pero en esta pestaña me extenderé un poco más y me centraré en otros aspectos. Soy graduada en Estudios Ingleses, y profesora de inglés de secundaria, y desde el año pasado centrada en ampliar mis conocimientos en nuevas tecnologías.
Respecto a mi huella digital cuento con este blog, un poco parado en la actualidad, centrado en experiencias relacionadas con la clase invertida o ‘flipped classroom’. Por otra parte, mi cuenta twitter rosasbescolano y mi canal de YouTube, roosbe, donde he subido vídeos relacionados con el máster que estoy cursando actualmente.
Como ya he dicho, desde el año pasado estoy centrada en investigar y aprender más sobre metodologías innovadoras como flipped classroom y BYOD. Sin duda, este año he podido profundizar más en estos temas, y espero continuar haciéndolo en los meses que me quedan.
En una de las últimas asignaturas (Gestión TIC en el aula) estamos trabajando los entornos PLE (Entorno Personal de Aprendizaje) y aquí dejo mi diagrama.
As it can be seen, active methodologies like the Flipped Classroom are not completely viable without technology. At least, we can admit that it makes teaching easier.
Making a compilation of the ones that have been already commented we have the following:
Edmodo has been one of the greatest discoveries of this year. Its simple use and the advantages it offers as a tool make of it the perfect application for teachers and students.
Another one which is definitely useful for active classes is Blendspace.
It allows you to create your lessons in different ways, facilitating the elaboration of material for our flipped classrooms.In addition, there is available a wide range of already done classes, so if you are beginning to implement a methodology like this, and you are lost where to start, this may be a good starting point.
Moving on into more specific applications, I would like to add Kahoot!
This application helps the teacher in the elaboration of quizzes or questionnaires, in a superb wrapping, that is to say, in an absolutely engaging and appealling way.
Apart from the questions, you can add to them videos, photos, songs, you can decide the time students have to answer, they can work individually or in teams… The options are infinite, and that is why is a perfect tool to introduce in our lessons.
It can be use to review, to remember some concepts or even to evaluate.
An application similar to this one is Socrative, but personally I prefer Kahoot!
This three are only an example of how useful technology can be in our classes. But, nowadays with the internet and all the technological progress, it is impossible to imagine the amount of applications and webpages that are out there waiting to be discovered. My advice? Take your time, explore and you will find something interesting.
Mindomo has been one of the tools we have been encouraged to use in the subject Didactic Resources In Teaching English and Literature. It is a software which facilitates the organisation of ideas in mindmaps.
Just from the beginning it is abolutely easy to use. You can choose among four different templates.
Once you have chosen one, you only have to follow simple steps to build your mindmap. Apart from the template, you can choose all the details: colours, font size, amount of titles and subtitles…
The one I have made is based on my TFM, summarising the main topics and its subtopics.
Having said that, I have to say that this is just one of the numerous programs focused on presentations, such as Prezi or the very well known PowerPoint. However, Mindomo provides you with one tool that the other ones do not have, an online support service. Absolutely, this service is one of its better tools,
In brief, Mindomo is the perfect software if you need to do a presentation or just to organise the ideas of some project. The best way of seeing it, it’s just trying, so if you have an opportunity, give it a go!
One of the first professionals I found in using Flipped Classrooms techniques was Salman Khan. His project began as something simple and not too ambitious. A cousin asked for help with some Maths problems, and through a e-mail server he was able to explain her each lesson. From that point on, more people aroun him asked for similar help, which pushed him to record himself and start in YouTube a channel of explanatory videos, where everybody had access to them.
His project started to spread, becoming one of the leaders of virtual education, and in 2006 he created Khan Academy. Nowadays, Khan Academy is a web page which collects those explanatory videos, specialised in subjects like Maths, Science, but including algo History or Art History. The motto appearing just in its front page is ‘The only thing you need to know is that you can learn any thing’.
The experiencies of people familiarised with this web page are definitely positive. It is not only beneficial for students, but also for teachers and parents, who can find here a support to some difficult lessons.
This is how its interface works:
As we can see, there is a menu perfectly organised where you can select the topic you need help with. This one is the Spanish version, as they are trying to translate everything to the major languages, but currently the English web page is more complete and with more explanatory videos than this one.
Its creator, Salman Khan, offered a speech to TedTalks where he explains his project and the way he pretends to teach.
Spanish schools are facing nowadays one of their most important problems, the school drop-out rates. Being one of the highest in Europe, it represents one challenge to our current educational system.
RTVE publishes one article explaining Spanish position in the European rankings, explaining the possible future provisions.
After reading this, I wondered about the possibility of implementing a method as the flipped classroom in all the levels (primary, secondary). Undoubtedly, as teachers we would have to face numerous problems, and the disadvantages this method has. Nonetheless, I believe it would bring much more benefits to our students, engaging them to our classes and tasks, avoiding school dropping-out.
But apart from this tremendous articles, talking about how bad our students perform in the exams, why not caring about them just as people? Why not teaching them the best we can? Why not showing the pleasure of knowing just because?
On our last session of the subject Didactic Resources In Teaching English and Literature, we split the session in two halves. The first one was devoted to the introduction of different aspects of English culture through the tecniques we had learnt. Afterwards, the blog had to start, therefore we spent the last hour commenting the activities our mates had developed and with the blog.
To begin with we formed teams of four people, and we chose a magazine. There were different kinds of magazines, more focused on culture itself or literature. The one we chose was called Best of Britain,where there was an article talking about Beatrix Potter and her house, which seemed engaging depending on the point of view we gave to the activities.
This is the article we chose
Finally, my mates and I decided to divide the whole activity intro three main tasks aimed to be worked as pre-teaching, actual teaching and post- teaching, and at the end we built the following didactic unit.
Pre-teaching activities
This is a pre-teaching step that will introduce students to the main activity that we are going to do.
1. Looking at these pictures…
-In which part of England do you think this picture is located?
-Who lives in that house?
-Who is that woman?
-How can you relate all this pictures?
2. The teacher is going to read the biography of Beatrix Potter. You have to listen and try to write as many details about her life as possible(Name, date and place of birth, most interesting facts about her life, death…)
Actual teaching activity
Students have to be divided in groups of 4 or 5 people. The objective of this activity is to create a story using the fragments given. They have to look for information about Beatrix Potter and her work, specially the Peter Rabbit Tale.
1. Complete the Peter Rabbit.
ONCE upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were–Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter. (….)
MR. McGREGOR was on his hands and knees planting out young cabbages, but he jumped up and ran after Peter, waving a rake and calling out, «Stop thief!» (….)
BUT Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail had bread and milk and blackberries, for supper. (….)
Post-teaching activity
We would use this simulation as a post-teaching activity. We think that once students have come across the history of Beatrix Potter they would be able to deal with this scenario. It would be a team activity to work in class. Students would be divided in teams of 4-5 people and what they have to do is to start a debate from this topic. After the discussion, we would ask the teams to get to a conclusion and present it to the rest of the class. Here is our scenario:
“You are a woman English writer. You live in England in 1900 and you are struggling to make a living because of your job, the editors do not want to publish your works.
The situation of women in England is now starting to change, even though you cannot vote, you have no access to higher education and there is no equal rights between both genders. You are making great efforts to have your work published but they are in vain: you do not find support and your savings are about to end. Despite the fact that you belong to a wealthy family, you do not want to ask your parents for economic help.
What would you do to publish your books? Do not forget to talk about:
-Having a pseudonym
-Convincing the editors
-Gathering with other women writers
-Moving to another country
In brief, what we wanted to do was to work some literature through engaging activities, not just the typical ‘read the book and we’ll comment it at the end’ which tens to be absolutely discouraging. We tended to compile the techniques we had learnt, not only in this subject but in other ones of the master. And also, the tasks were designed so that all the basic skills were practised.
Seeing other topics and activities my classmates had developed and posted in Edmodo, I personally believe studying literature during secondary education should be compulsory. It is not only a matter of acquiring culture, but also growing and opening our minds as human beings.
Meanwhile we were doing this activity I remembered a video one teacher showed to us, which is the perfect summary for this topic.
The Guardian published yesterday (17th May) an article entitled: «Schools that ban mobile phones see better academic results», talking about research carried out in the UK, specifically in Leicester, Birmingham,London and Manchester about the effect of the use of mobile phones in schools/high-schools.
According to the specialist who did this study «students aged 16 improved by 6.4%.» The increasement of mobile phones in our current life has arrived to schools. In the UK is something absolutely noticeable, where 90% of teenagers own one.
Undoubtedly, technology has burst in teaching, and personally I believe the best option is trying to take the most profit we can as teachers, teaching its different uses and the proper use of it. Sadly, one of the most widespread beliefs is the technology literacy of young people, but when it comes to use it to do something different from social networks, they show their complete lacks.
In brief, I do not think the banning of mobile phones is the determinate factor that makes students improve in their studies. On the other hand, it is true they spend a valuable time just checking their phones, while they could do another things.
Our best card as teachers is implementing and introducing technology and its gadgets in our classrooms, making them as useful as possible.
Flipping rosa 