It's time to analyse the week!

Hi bloggers! I am Silvia García Martínez and this week my role has been the analyst!

As probably you have seen in the other posts this week the task has been based on “The dark side of the textbooks” a topic that, in my opinion, has been very interesting and has helped me to know other perspectives and realities about one important instrument for all the teachers currently. But we are going to go step by step.

From my point of view I must say that the best part of this activity has been to do the comic, in part because we have learnt a new tool that we can use in our future to do more interactive and fun classes considering that, like we can see in the blog Macinstruct and as The Washington post’s article explains, the comics can be used as a new method for teaching, taking into account the popularity that they have among the children.  In addition, apart from this reason, the other important factor that has influenced me to say that the comic has been the best part of the week (and I can say that this has been the best moment in group of the week too) is that I loved how we coordinated to do it. That moment was wonderful because we did a brainstorming without to try it, simply, we started to give our ideas spontaneously. In the same way, as we did not know how to use the tools from the web 0.2, we had to help each other and to work together, an aspect that was very funny because we have to investigate and to do a lot of tests that we enjoyed a lot.

By contrast, all the activity was not totally perfect and, although I think that this has been one of the best and funnier activities that we have done until now we have had some problems too. The main problem and the worse part of this activity has been that on Monday 09^th, when we tried to send Linda the link of the web page in which we did our comic we could not do it, above all because we did each vignettes separately in order to can print it in a bigger size. I think that this has been the worst part because after a great week we felt a bit overwhelmed and worried because we did not know how to do it. In my opinion our fault was that we did not think that Linda could want to see the entire comic on the web 2.0. In the future we must try to be prepared for these things and not feel overwhelmed about them, above all because we are going to confront this type of situations (as in our career as in our daily life) so we must learn to deal with them. When I talk about the work in group I am proud to say that this week we have done, in my opinion, a very good work even if we cannot meet all together, because in that situation we have been capable of divide the work and do all the same amount of work (more or less).

So, as I have said, one of the most important things that I have learnt is how to use new tools that can help us in our future. But other important thing that I would like to emphasize is that, thanks to this activity, I have learnt that the textbooks, an essential instrument in education currently, maybe are not so good or indispensable as we have always thought. With this I want to say that with this activity I have realized how (at least in my opinion) the textbooks always have been seen as a tool that is going to be always there, even caused that the students (and not only in primary school) do not pay attention to the teacher because the things that they must know for the exam are in the book. And I must recognize that I understand them, if the teacher is only going to ask you the contents that are in the book and, above all, if he or she only is going to repeat the things that are in the textbook (and in some occasions you must give thanks if he or she changes a little the words), why are you going to pay attention? Besides, thanks to this activity I have learnt more reasons for thinking that, maybe, it is time to find an alternative for the textbook, an alternative cheaper, that must be an accompaniment for the teacher, not a content that they should accomplish. But, above all, I think that the main characteristic that this instrument must have is that it has to allow to the children to participate in it, it must be interactive and enjoyable (as much as possible in each subject).

Taking into account all that I said I think that we already do a good job as a group and we must conserve it in the next weeks to continue doing the activities with the same motivation. In my opinion to work in group with a good environment is essential to achieve good activities and I think that we are doing a good work in this aspect. However, I think that there are always things that we can improve as, for example, that we usually have some things to do until the end of the week, and in some occasions, only a person or a few of us must finish the activity because we cannot do together considering that we do not have enough time or only a member of our group dominates the tool that we must use, so in my opinion we must be more foresighted in some aspect and always that it is possible in order to improve and to work always the same in all the aspects. In addition, if we do not learn to use the different tools because (as we have not time) if the same person always do it in order to finish earlier, the rest of us are not going to learn suitably something that can be essential for our future.

Now, to finish, I am going to analyse the connection that the content of this week can have with our degree or with the social life. From my point of view and as I have said before this task can be essential as to our degree as to our daily life as well as it has helped us to understand that we cannot trust in all that we see. With this I want to say that thanks to this activity we have learnt that there are other methods for teaching and that not all the traditional instruments are goods for learning. In this new century the technology has progressed a lot and this, in combination with our imagination, must serve us to develop new techniques that help us to do more participative the classes as well as to save money, to recycle… In the same way this activity has helped us to realize that the content of the textbooks are not confident, a reality that, in my opinion, we can also apply to the TV, the newspapers and so on because in many occasions they are influenced by a determinate ideology, religion or even politic. So we must be very careful and critic with all these things in our daily life.


References
Thacker, C. (2007, August 3). How to use comic life in the classroom. In Macinstruct. Retrieved March 10, 2015, from http://www.macinstruct.com/node/69

Mui, Y. (2004, December 13). Schools turn to comics as trial balloon. In The Washington Post. Retrieved March 10, 2015, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59964-2004Dec12.html