Well, it's the turn of the analyst! Read below and enjoy with our task!

Hi bloggers! I'm María García and this week I have been the ANALYST of this activity! As you know, my work in this role is to explain you how we have worked (as a group and individually), the content that we have learned from this task and his importance to us.

 

As you have already known, we continue with the activity of Spanish Educational System. Each week, we have made different tasks with the same topic. This week, we had to organize the questions that all the groups are done for making sure that any question was repeated. Also, we reviewed all the questions, according to the survey that Linda gave us. Then, we mixed with other groups and we had to chose what questions were the best. Finally, we decided what strategy we will use for reviewing the questions to our stars.

 

The task of this week hasn't been busier than others that we have already done because we did the work of this activity in class with our partners.

 

We are working with the LOMCE, the present Spanish Educational law and I think that it is so important that we work with this because we have to know how is organized our Educational System. Maybe, you are thinking that the LOMCE has a lot of information but in the way that we are working with, it isn't difficult to know the main principles. Moreover, as future teachers it's important to know the law and how we can organize it for understanding it better.  

 

With this big activity we have worked with some tools and we have interacted with several groups from the class, that it was so good. We have worked with groups as PowerpuffTeachers, Bussy Bees or KeepCalm&KeepOrganized and I think that it was a great experience. We could see how they have worked during the past weeks and we have applied different points of view. That way to work have given us more motivation and several ideas to applying in our group. For all of us, this kind of group dynamics have taught some values as mixed all the ideas in a way what we agree, take other points of view, the importance of teamwork, etc. Because is not the same working with your own group (Powerteachers) that divide you and working with other group. It's different but in a good way. So, I think that it was the best part of this activity.

And you maybe think, there's any bad time in the task?

Well, I think that there aren't bad times because we have got on with the others groups and the task was not boring because we have worked in class and we have interacted with many people so it was very dynamic in my opinion. However, I think that it wasn't easy choosing ''the best'' questions because there are a lot of them and we only could chose 10. Besides, maybe you think that a question is great but other person doesn't think the same. So, is complex but as we have been ''a group and a half'' we have shared several points of view and we have decided ''the best'' by us. Nevertheless, if I have to say one ''bad part'' I will say that the ''boring'' part of this activity was reviewing if there were repeated questions. But we had to do because by this way we have eliminated the same questions.

 

In my opinion, we have to continue working like that because we usually have the task without problems between us and we always help each other when some of us doesn't understand something of the activity. I think that as we move in time, we are improving and now we get comfortable with the subject and with all the instruments that we are using. Although this activity may seem long, we are working a lot and the next week we will do a game that I have the feeling that it will be fun. And with this long career we are learning a lot about LOMCE and the most important thing: We are learning it step by step and I think that with the game we will remember this activity and the content.

 

One of the most important purposes that I think this activity has are knowing the law because this is not something that you study and you forget the following week. Although the law changes, now the LOMCE is the law and it is something that is in our lives right now. There are many news about the Educational System in the news and I think that when you are watching or reading something about that it is pleasant to know what are the news talking about. So, it is important to know how is our environment. Because we are going to be future teachers and what kind of teachers we will be if we are not interested about our Educational System?

Besides, this kind of activity is related with our academic life because it doesn't matter what subject you are studying, the law is applying to all the Educational System.

 

Finally, I want to say that Powerteachers have passed great times working with the other groups and that we are trying to do the best of us.

 

I hope you like our posts and that you visit our blog every week.

 

ADVERTISEMENT: Next week, we will do a game... And it will be so exciting!! So, keep attentive the next week! Our stars are working to do the best of them!!

The JOURNALIST is here to tell you everything of this week!

Hello everyone! I'm Rebeca Cascales Ribera and this week my job is being the JOURNALIST of Power Teachers!

This week, we continue working into the LOMCE topic, but specially into the questions that we made during our Easter holidays. When we finished the class of Monday, where our group with some components of Bussy Bees as Bernabé, Miriam, Yolanda and María,  checked and valued the different questions of topic 1, Linda explained us the next activity into the divided class. 

On Monday 13th, we divided by groups and some components of PowerPuffTeachers as Carmen, Lucía and Ana came with us to work together with topic 4. Our job to that class was copying every questions and if some of them were repeated, we must take the most complete and the better one. We also must check every mistake that we found.

We divided into three groups to copy some questions by separate and do it quickly, the groups were composed by Ana, Marina and Silvia; Lucía, Carmen and Marina; and Anthea, Alba and me, as you can see into the photos.

Then, when we compared every questions and we decided what of them were the good ones, the star of our group uploaded into her post and show to everybody the Topic 4's questions.

On  the other side, on Thursday 16th,  we were also divided by groups, but this time the divided group was the mine; Alba, Silvia and Anthea were with  Bussy Bees and, Maria and me (Rebeca) were with Keep Kalm and Keep Organized.

In my group, while I was looking for the whole questions of Topic 1 into the class' blogs, they divided the whole cards into three groups to be quickly. We take the best questions of every groups and we decided the good and complete questions to the next session activity. 

On Monday 20th, we had hadn't any homework those weekend, so we didn't know what we were going to do in that class. Linda came and asked the coach or the trainer of each group the methodology that we're going to use to study the topics. Then, she told us that we had time to study and we had the three hours to prepare our next weeks' stars.

In this role, another important task apart from telling the weeks' story, is recommending two blogs, one of our classmates and another of Education. So, my blogs of this week are the following:

To start with our classmates' blog, I'm going to recommend the PowerPuffTeachers one. I have been seeing every blog of the class and this was the one which strikes me because apart from the name that I really love, the design of the blog is very feminist and very beautiful.  I have to say that the organisation is very good too. On the right side, we can see a welcome to everybody who visit them, a photo of them, the visits with a map, the Twitter, every posts separated by months or by role and their names. As I have read, it's a very interesting role and they are working hard and do it as better as they can. I hope you keep like this and I have to congratulate you girls!

 

 URL: http://thepowerpuffteachers.blogspot.com.es/

On the other side, I'm going to speak about an Education blog called "Sentada en un pupitre de Primaria". I have been read it and it's a very interesting and complete blog. To explain better, it's a blog where you can find some resources of Primary Education. The design is very entertaining because is for children. The organisation is the normal one, in the right side you can find the Creative Common Liscence, the Practices 2.0, the email, some books' sales, the visits, Twitter, Facebook, Scholar calendar, everything that they have uploaded by months and by topic and finally, the ISBN of the blog. And in the upper part, there are some options as their information. Then, the lasts posts are very interesting too, for example resources to have better orthography, some tools for doing comics, some books' recommendation, etc. I hope you visit this blog because it can be useful for ourselves in a future and for everyone who want to use it.

URL: https://sentadaenunpupitredeprimaria.wordpress.com/
 

I hope you really enjoy with us and with our posts. See you soon bloggers!

Be careful! The BOSS is here, now!

Hello bloggers!

My name is Rebeca Cascales Ribera and this week, my role has been the FACILITATOR again. The facilitator has to coordinate the group, distribute the different roles and control that the whole group have worked properly and if it is any problem, try to solve it. He also must guarantee the quality of our blog and if someone comments, he's the responsible of answer.

The roles of this week are the same of the first week, we all have passed into every roles. So, the roles are the following:

FACILITATOR: REBECA CASCALES RIBERA

JOURNALIST: MARÍA GARCÍA ZAMORA

ANALYST: ANTHEA CLEMENTE SHARP

TRANSLATOR: ALBA GARCÍA SUBIELA

CURATOR-FARMER: MARINA CREVILLÉN FERNÁNDEZ

STAR: SILVIA GARCÍA MARTÍNEZ

To summarise the week, we started when Linda explained the week's activity and the facilitator, me in this case, decided that we would do a draw to divide the 6 topics and each one of the group would do 4 questions of its topic. 

The Tuesday 24th of March, we met in Anthea's house to do another subject's project and when we finished, I did papers with the numbers and each one achieve her topic. The topic's distribution is the following: 

TOPIC 1: Marina

TOPIC 2: María

TOPIC3: Silvia

TOPIC 4: Rebeca

TOPIC 5: Alba

TOPIC 6: Anthea

We decided that the questions must be done on Tuesday, and if we have any question, ask to Linda in class.

On Tuesday, we would read every questions of every member of the group and we would tell our opinions. If some question must be changed, we would change it. But, the topic 5 didn't be uploaded on time and our classmate Alba couldn't have it for this day, so she would ask for it and the next day we would have her questions, we would comment it on Whatsapp. 

Then, I would print it during Easter holidays and I would bring it the next day of class. 

Moreover, working in group is a pleasure from day one. The truth is that it is difficult but we have understood it properly, so that always comes out all right in the end. We help each other and that makes us feel confident for future projects.

To conclude, we really enjoy writing posts and telling our stories and anecdotes. We hope you enjoy as much as we do it!

Let's tell the story of the week!

Hi bloggers! I'm Anthea, the journalist this week. As you already know, my work consists on telling the day by day of the group and, at the end, recommend two blogs: one of my classmates and another one from outside, but related to education. 

The activity this week was about doing two mind maps connected to the Spanish Educational System, each one about one topic, ours were 1 (An Overview of the Educational System) and 4 (Organisational Variations and Alternative Structures in Primary Education: Rural Schools, Itinerancy and non-regular schooling, Bilingual Teaching and Distance Education).

Firstly, on Monday, after Linda explained the work for the week, the facilitator divided it so that we could start doing the project. Afterwards we decided to meet on Tuesday, because it wuold be better preparing the information and having clear ideas before we start working. In this way, we could save time the following day by having everything read.

Secondly, on Tuesday, we were at the library completing the mind maps for being able to show them to Linda on Thursday, in such a way, we would have the chance for correcting the mistakes we could have committed while we were doing them.

We thought that it would take less time, but the reality is that we can say that we closed the library... as you can see.

We wanted to do what we had though at the beginning, so we had to spend all the needed time there. But it doesn't mind, we make the effort and we did almost everything.

Finally, on Monday, we had to work with the star of the group Busy Bees (Ana) and a half of the group Keep Calm and Keep Organized (Elena, Noelia and Ángela). This day, we had to look what was right and wrong of the topic four's mind maps and mark them by using an online questionnaire provided by the teacher. In addition, we had to complete the Busy Bees' mind map.

Now, the second part of my role. I have to choose two blogs.

The first one is... the Busy Bees' blog!!! This group has a very fun, organised and clear blog. It's understandable and  easy to read and find last posts.

Congratulations guys, you have a really good blog. I enjoy reading your posts and... what's more! Not only the post, but also seeing your expositions, which are great! Go on working like this! Good work.

Blog's link: http://busybeestakeiteasy.blogspot.com.es/

And to conclude mi post I want to recommend an educational blog which talks about the education in Latin America and the Caribbean.

There is not a quality education there, so in this blog they fight for it, they want children to receive a good education. For this reason I can't stop admiring them. Maybe they won't achieve anything, but they try. An that's what has made me suggest to you the blog.

Blog's link: http://blogs.iadb.org/education/

Hello everybody, the translator is here!!

Law: It's a system of rules which are enforced through social institutions to the correct govern behaviour. The two laws we have worked this week are LOE, which is the old one and LOMCE which is the one we have now and which changed in order to improve the previous one.


LOE: Is the state organic law which regulates the Educational system in Spain. This law cesed to be valid when the government approved the LOMCE.


LOMCE: LOMCE is the " ley organica para la mejora de la calidad educativa ", is also known like Wert's law, which modifies the LOE in some aspects in order to have a better education.


Educational system: An educational systems contains everythings related to education, like school resources, educational laws, but this educational systems only have state schools.


Organization: Is the way through which one, people divide and organise the things. In many cases like in the case of education, the organization was governed by educational laws.


REFERENCES:

Law. (n.d.). In Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/law

Organization. (n.d.). In Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/organization?s=ts

Education System (2013, August 29). In The Glossary of Education Reform. Retrieved March 24, 2015, from http://edglossary.org/education-system/

Ley Orgánica para la Mejora de la Calidad Educativa (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 24, 2015, from http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_Org%C3%A1nica_para_la_Mejora_de_la_Calidad_Educativa

Ley Orgánica de Educación (España) (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 24, 2015, from http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_Org%C3%A1nica_de_Educaci%C3%B3n_(Espa%C3%B1a)

Analyzing not only the LOMCE, but also how we work!

Hello bloggers! I'm Alba García and this week I'm the group's analyst. As you know from previous weeks, the analyst is in charge of analysing how we have worked as a group and also as individuals, and also what we have learned.

The task we have had to do this week has been about the Basics of the Spanish Educational System. We have analysed the LOMCE, which is the new Spanish educational law. As it has been recently introduced, we only knew some aspects of this law, which actually were very few. As future teachers, this activity has helped us to know how the situation will be (if the law stays the same) when we arrive to the classrooms, what we will have to face and deal with. It is true that educational laws don't stay the same for long, but even if they change some aspects of it are likely to stay the same (as it has already happened between the LOE and the LOMCE, for instance), so it is never a bad idea to know about them beforehand.

It is vital to know about the law, about what will be demanded and expected from us, and what we will have to do with our students for them to achieve their best in the current educational system. This also happens in any other job. This way, any employee will have to know the business' rules and what will be expected from him or her so that person can perform his or her best in the role they are performing at work. We can't just act freely. In order to succeed, we have to stick to the rules  and try to don't go beyond them or otherwise we will have to face the consequences of not doing what we were supposed to do.

Thanks to this activity we have also realized that we don't have to read the hundreds of pages a law contains, but we can instead look for official websites which offer an understandable and complete summary of the law we want to know about. Besides, this can also be done with thousands of other topics. This way we won't have to spend too much time reading a document which we hardly understand because of the complex vocabulary. 

The best part of this activity was, without a doubt, getting to know how things at schools are nowadays, as they are very different from when we were at school (which wasn't long ago). Otherwise, we wouldn't have had the initiative to read a document about the new educational law and know a bit about it. On the other hand, the worse part of the activity was having to read so many documents, especially for topic 1! But, luckily, as we are six members in the group we divided the documents between us so it wasn't as tiring.

As a group we almost always tend to agree on what we are going to do and how we are going to do it. However, sometimes we discuss a bit because one of us thinks that doing a different thing is better, but I suppose that happens in every group and it will also happen when we become teachers at a school. This week's activity hasn't been a problem with that aspect, as we all knew how the programme we were going to use (Cmap Tools) worked and we all had a common idea of how we could do the conceptual map for each topic. 

Furthermore, dividing the big group in two smaller groups of three members each was a great idea as we could work on both topics at the same time and profit better the time. But not all that glitters is gold. As one of the topics was longer that the other, one of the groups had to read and analyse more information than the other group, but overall we all worked hard on the topics we had to do.

 Because of that, although we tend to work well together, something we could improve on is looking well at the documents and what the task is about before dividing the work among us, as at first sight it may seem longer or shorter than what it really is. This way, we will make sure that the work will be divided equally between us.

To finish with I would like to stress the idea that for doing our best we have to know what is expected from us and how we are expected to do it not only in the professional aspects, but also academically. And remember, you can always improve what you do. The sky is the limit!

Here is the CURATOR - FARMER!

Hi bloggers! I am Silvia García and this week my role has been the curator-farmer.

The activity of this week has been based on the creation of a Mind Map about two topics related with the LOMCE. In our case, the topics which we have worked have been the topic 1(An Overview of the Educational System) and the topic 4 (Organisational Variations and Alternative Structures in Primary Education). As this activity has been focused on looking for information, we have not got images or music that we must reference, but here you can find all the websites and books that we have used.

Jefatura del Estado, . (2013). Boletín Oficial del Estado. Retrieved from https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2013/12/10/pdfs/BOE-A-2013-12886.pdf

TOPIC  1: An Overview of the Educational System

BOOKS:

Eurydice – Facts and Figures, . (n.d.). Organisation of school time in Europe Primary and secondary general education 2014/15 school year. N.p.: Education and Training. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/documents/facts_and_figures/school_calendar_EN.pdf

Eurydice – Facts and Figures, . (n.d.). Recommended Annual Taught Time in Full-time Compulsory Education in Europe 2012/13. N.p.: Education and Training. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/documents/facts_and_figures/taught_time_EN.pdf

Eurydice – Facts and Figures, . (n.d.). The Organisation of the Academic Year in Europe 2014/15. N.p.: Education and Training. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/documents/facts_and_figures/academic_calendar_EN.pdf

WEBSITES:

Educational Support and Guidance (n.d.). In Eurypedia: European Encyclopedia on National Education Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Educational_Support_and_Guidance

Funding in Education (n.d.). In Eurypedia: European Encyclopedia on National Education Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Funding_in_Education

Management and Other Education Staff (n.d.). In Eurypedia: European Encyclopedia on National Education Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Management_and_Other_Education_Staff

Mobility and Internationalisation (n.d.). In Eurypedia: European Encyclopedia on National Education Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Mobility_and_Internationalisation

Ongoing Reforms and Policy Developments (n.d.). In Eurypedia: European Encyclopedia on National Education Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Ongoing_Reforms_and_Policy_Developments

Organisation and Governance (n.d.). In Eurypedia: European Encyclopedia on National Education Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Organisation_and_Governance

Overview (n.d.). In Eurypedia: European Encyclopedia on National Education Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Overview#top

Primary Education (n.d.). In Eurypedia: European Encyclopedia on National Education Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Primary_Education

Quality Assurance (n.d.). In Eurypedia: European Encyclopedia on National Education Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Quality_Assurance

Teachers and Education Staff (n.d.). In Eurypedia: European Encyclopedia on National Education Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Teachers_and_Education_Staff

TOPIC 4: Organisational Variations and Alternative Structures in Primary Education

WEBSITES:

Organisational Variations and Alternative Structures in Primary Education (n.d.). In Eurypedia: European Encyclopedia on National Education Systems. Retrieved March 17, 2015, from https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Spain:Organisational_Variations_and_Alternative_Structures_in_Primary_Education

DEFINITIONS:

DICTIONARIES:

Law. (n.d.). In Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/law

Organization. (n.d.). In Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/organization?s=ts

WEBSITES:

Education System (2013, August 29). In The Glossary of Education Reform. Retrieved March 24, 2015, from http://edglossary.org/education-system/

Ley Orgánica de Educación (España) (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 24, 2015, from http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_Org%C3%A1nica_de_Educaci%C3%B3n_(Espa%C3%B1a)

Ley Orgánica para la Mejora de la Calidad Educativa (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 24, 2015, from http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_Org%C3%A1nica_para_la_Mejora_de_la_Calidad_Educativa