TRANSLATORS: WEEK 3!

Hello bloggers! Welcome again to our weekly post! Today we, Megan and Verónica, are playing the role of translators. We are very glad to be working together along this week, it has been a piece of cake taking decisions, organising ourselves and reaching to an agreement with each other, since we understand each other quite well.

During this week, we have had some burdensome moments where we didn't know where to start because of all the tasks that we had to do, but we have been working really hard, when we say really hard it means racking our brains to think about alternatives to manage the time in doing "Un día en el cole de mi maestro", some changes in our initial ideas were needed otherwise time would catch up with us.

In the end, everything is solved and our new ideas are even more creative than the previous ones, and also by creating these new ideas we have found that they actually existed being labelled as followed:

Collage stop motion:  An animation collage is a complete reconstruction of the original animation in a new conceptual visual style that mirrors the spatio-temporal shape and distorts the input. By for example, cutting the scenario in several pieces to create a whole one as a puzzle, or giving movement to static pictures by cutting them, and moving them making several pictures in different positions. (based on: https://www.awn.com/forum/thread/1014085).

Storytelling: It can be known as the act of sharing stories with other people, it is considered a cultural and social act. Storytelling is interactive, since there is a strong connection between the teller and the audience, it is really useful due to its immediacy and impact and it is the best way to have your listener engaged in an activity like reading comprehension is. Moreover, one of its greatest benefits is that it involves action, the teller can make gestures, change his/her intonation to catch listener’s attention and even physical movements. Adding to this, it also encourages imagination amongst the listeners, when you are reading you only imagine one approach, yours, based on your own past experiences, beliefs, and understandings, however when you listen the story and see it, you also experiment the vivid images, actions, characters, and events of the story in your mind, based on the performance by the teller. (based on: https://storynet.org/what-is-storytelling/)
Adding to this, we needed to know some terms related to our friend "Harry Potty";

Sequence: A sequence is an ordered list containing serial items, or functions for achieving an action on a electrical subject. In our case, we need to establish a sequence to make Codey Rocky perform an activity, each block has its own limitations, since you have to pay attention to the symbol on the right which gives you the clue shape to know which one you can add. Moreover, there is always a primary key value, and this is incremented by another one. (based on: https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/sequence.html).
Coding: these limitations that we mentioned before, they appear thanks to this process, Coding is the process of giving a set of instructions to a computer to perform a specific task, this is also named as “software programming” or computer programming”. Furthermore, such instructions are propagated, thanks to a “computer language” in order that the computer will understand. One of the greatest benefits for children  to learn how to code is that it encourages problem solving and critical thinking skills, thanks to this dynamic procedure, they will start creating these skills when they are young.
(based on: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/6535/coding).

Moreover, another thing that was freaking amazing to discover was augmented reality! But what is it?
Augmented reality: is the technology that gives life to our physical world, adding layers of digital information onto it. The difference with Virtual Reality is that AR does not create the whole artificial environments to replace real with a virtual one. AR appears in direct view of an existing environment and adds sounds, videos, graphics to it. From our experience, what we did was colouring a template with markers and then downloading this application “Chromville Science”, it was stunning seeing that from our drawing emerged a 3d mountain and the tiny planes were also flying through the sky.
(based on: https://thinkmobiles.com/blog/what-is-augmented-reality/).

Some weaknesses that we can find in the aspect of storytelling doing the collage stop
motion is that it requires a lot of care about the shots and much more imagination than
usual ones, because the shots have to be quite precise to create the intended movement
effect. Moreover, it requires much more time than usual, because retaking will be
needed if you do not have enough experience. If we apply for educational purposes,
maybe one idea that we have had is making it even more attractive, by using famous
people connected to their interests.
On the other hand, if we talk about coding and sequences, some weaknesses is that we
have to mask language to make it attractive for children make them feel engaged with

this activity due to the fact that it requires appreciation and encouragement to
experiment. Moreover, it could be something challenging for them at first, because they
have to process lots of information but everything is a matter of practicing, step by step.
Adding to this, they will have to put into practice other knowledges as mathematics, and
some operations might be difficult for some ages, so that the first thing to consider is that
the coding activity that we propose must be adapted to their age.

We hope you like this post and make you learn new things!

See you next week!

Verónica and Megan.

JOURNALISTS WEEK 3:

Hello again readers!👋💜
We are Lucía and Patricia, this week's journalists✏🖋. Our role this days was to report our work through the social media (our Instagram account), and also to document everything here in the blog. We have enjoyed this tasks quite a lot, especially uploading stories and photos of the processes and activities to Instagram📷, it has been absolutely funny!

• https://www.ecured.cu/Stop_Motion

We have found this article📎🖇 on the Internet that shows really well what the Stopmotion is, and it also shows clearly the differences between this animation technique and the animated cartoons, we found it very interesting as well as useful for our tasks for this week, it has caught our attention.


Regarding the blogs of our classmates, it was kind of hard to choose which one we like the best, probably because we are not a hundred percent convinced by any of them🤔. Instead, we have enjoyed certain aspects of each one. That's why we would like to name two main blogs:

- First, the Outsiders👩‍💻: https://theoutsidersrict1920.blogspot.com/2020/02/historian-journalist.html
Their way of documenting the process with pictures has been really original, since they didn't just use plain picutres, but also editet them and decorated them a bit, so congratulations!

- Second, Game of Phones📱: https://resourcesandict.wordpress.com/2020/02/25/task-4-2/
We strongky believe that they have been one of the groups who have managed to document the process more in detail and in an organized way. Keep it up guys!

That was our contribution for this week. We begin the workshops of UDCMM this Tuesday and hope everything will turn out awesome. We can't wait!🤗

ANALYST. WEEK 3

Welcome once again ladies and gentlemen!, to this little space my group and I have here as to  exercise our experience and new schemes into these little posts.
For myself, I am Álvaro, and i have had the pleasure of being the annalyst for this week, which has given me the chance to do one of the things i do best; oberving, annalysing, reflecting, and concluding.
Personally, i have dedicated a great porcentage of the time in class to watching the rest as i accomplished my duties, this as to give a more exhaustive reflection on my functionality. As far as the week has been, i believe it has given us quite the bit of experience in every way shape and form, at least as far as i have observed.

                            

If i had to make any important appointments, it would have to be these:

• For every group to consider itself a working team, certain efficiency norms must be met in order to consider it as such, since it is pointless for people to join together as to work as a unity if they cannot learn from each other, directly learn from what they are doing, making others learn with their work, or simply be able to cooperate together. Taking this into consideration, Our group has made great advancements during this week: 

                                  

•    Simply put,  we have made a brainstorming of all the methods, activities, variables and tasks that we are to include in our project in order to make it sufficiently efficient when it comes for next week´s activities, in which we will be already recieving our children for the so called "un día en el cole de mi maestro". Important to point out, our components have had each a great importance during this week as presented in the questionnaire, each presenting his/her own tasks and accomplishing them accordingly, something to be relieved about, since finding such a working environment, with good collegues to support you and give you new ideas while presenting the requested attitude towards you and your word, basically good people, is quite the scarce resource to find nowadays...

                                  

•    For this, the one sole most important factor  is indeed the organization of every thing we are performing next week, as well as the initial touches of materials that we will be using for the future, one of which is the story telling session in which we will be presenting our cinderella conjuncture to the children as for them to create their own ending for which some nice materials such as printables and models for them to create a STOP MOTION. Hope they have time to do it all in one session though.

• If i had to otherwishe pick some other "not so preferible situations" it is of course those situations in which the working environment doesn´t go as planned either due to conflict between two components of which or because of overwhelming situations for work and tasks that the groups face from time to time, that are however dealt with in no time, for such conflicts are inflicted in an environment set by inmature, ignorant subjects who won´t empathize with the rest and will do no more than just think on their own personal interests, behaviors taht disrupt the group and spoil the experience. But, that is not the case here, so there aren´t many worries on the matter.

                             

• But how can an educational activity be considered as such without actually learning something? Well, when it comes to learning, it is quite relative to deepen oneself in it, since not all of us have the same perception of this reality nor interest towards it, as perspectivism claims that is. For myself, i can securelly say that i have acquired quite a few things, such as knowledge on how others in my group  behave with themselves and their environment, since i have spent much time observing them, as well as methods to give use when it comes to activities to perform with children, creative, natural and artificial methods alike. All this together, even though probably considered as boring or unnecesary by many, to me, they are all of great value when it comes to empathy and using it, because in order to use empathy, one needs to have some minimal information on the other person, as to properly exercise as a supporter for these when the time comes or any other purpose, otherwhise, it is all but reduced to speculation. And that is how important is what i have learnt this week.

                            

When it comes to finding posible issues we may face either now or in the future, not much can be said really, we can always do more of course, we can always do better or try harder, but such a conception has its limits, for each one of us already has their corresponding context that conditions them for as much as they can do.

If i were to perfect something from our group, it would be trying to add the capability of not falling to stress and personal problems, but i recognize that such thing is tremendously hard to accomplish, this due to personal experience. However, it is perfectly posible, so that means that our group can be even more efficient, not by spending more time than we already do, but by bastly improving our already efficient working methodology.
                                         
All we have done during this week has also had an important wealth in educational values, many of them related to our feats here in Resources and ICT, some of the connections made here are directly related to the designs that ACAD presents , as well as the technological part that TPACK that is responsible for our usage of technologies and content development. We also looked at complexities that we constantly take into account as not to spoil our work, and so on. For the rest, we are continiously inmersed, even if unconsciously, in the rest of contents we have seen during this course, such as behaviorism, constructivism, the cognitive stages for children, equity-related theories and more to where they came from.

All in all, every thing we have done has a grade of importance, and even if not considered good enough, it is still good material indeed, born out of pure effort and sweat, for that is the meaning of efficiency, despite the result, the procedure has to be well spent...



Signing out, Álvaro.

CURATOR FARMER: WEEK 3

Hello guys!!🙋 We are Fátima and Marina and our role this week has been curator farmers.


This week we have been working on the task "Un día en el cole de mi maestro" as the previous week.
Our work as curator farmers has been to gather the links and sources that we have been researching to complete our activities to become real professional in all the topics and make them even more dynamic and special💅😜.

For storytelling activity we've looked for information about a type of stopmotion called animation collage, in addition to selecting the standards of learning of the decrete that are evaluated in this task.

Moreover, for Codey-Rockey activity we have learned a bit about coding and for augmented reality we have been searching more information about its definition to understand it more and make an excellent performance.

Despite our explanation, to organize the tools and the sources where we have searched such infomation we have created a mind map.

Finally, it is worthy to mention that our experience has been gratifying since we have realized that demonstrating from where the information has been collected is an important element within our job. Besides, this role has served as a reminder to consider essential to put together several knowledge apart from develop critical sense in order to identify the suitable and true information.
See you soon with the maxium energy and fun!!!
                                                                       
MIND MAP:
https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_ktB5_oI=/

WEEK 3's WORK: JOURNALISTS

Hi readers!👋💕 We are quite busy this week continuing with all the activities for the next week ("Un día en el cole de mi maestro"). Here are some photos📷📸 of our progress...

This week, as you can see, we have been preparing all the materials for the next week's activities. We have cut all the masks for the children, the backgrounds and settings, the printables for the characters, etc. 

We have also been working on the summary of the "Cinderella's" fairytale, practicing with the Codey Rocky, and designing the route that it Will have to follow.

We are working very hard, but there are a lot of things to be prepared yet, so let's go!💪

FACILITATORS: WEEK 3

Hello everybody and welcome back to our amazing blog. We are Lorena and David, week 3's facilitators 💁😀

As facilitators we are in change of supervising the work of our group and organizing the different tasks and we can say, without doubt that managing our group has been amazing 💞. It is a blessing working with such creative and collaborative people that make the work funnier.

This week has been a very busy one 😐. The task 'Un día en el cole de mi maestro' is already here so we are doing many things so the presentation would be the best of all times. Our first task is the stopmotion so we are focusing a lot on this task. We have chosen Cinderella's story so we are preparing some very interesting maks that you'll see sooner on this blog or on Instagram account: 8plushalf 📱

Also to be sure that the presentation would be perfect, we have make a trial to test if everything was OK because it is by doing things when you realize if something is wrong. Because the quantity of materials and little tasks was enormous, we divided the different tasks between the members of our group. The list of things to do was endless: preparing the printables for the story, choosing the settings, creating the ID badges for our students, understanding how the app for the stopmotion works,etc. But, thanks to God, we are nine people so the division of things facilitate the task
✌

This is one of our lovely ID badges. They are fantastic, we know it 💪

Next week, we also have the robot's activity so we've been preparing this one as well. For this activity we need to prepare a circuit through which Harry Potty, our baby 👶, could run. The name of our son has a clear relationship with the Harry Potter's books so as the circuit would have. We cannot reveal more details now but we can promise you that you would be very impressed 😉. Besides preparimg the circuit, we have been also discovering how to codify Harry and how to explain it to our students beacuse it is such a hard task 

We really believe that we are enjoying this task very much because, althought it's a lot of work, it would be very satisfactory when we present it to our children and we consider that they'll love it as much as we do 😍👱👧




Please leave a comment if you have enjoyed reading this and see you in future posts to check the evolution of our work. 👋💙💚💛 

WEEK 3: ROLES

Hello! Here we are on another week of work, these are the roles for this week:

Journalists🔎💬📂: Lucía and Patricia.

Facilitators👔🔋: Lorena and David.

Translators✏: Verónica and Megan.

Curator Farmers🤠🐮: Fátima and Marina.

Analyst👁👀: Álvaro.

This week we don't need a star so we haven't assigned this role to anyone in our group. Let's continue working!❤👋

JOURNALISTS EXPERIENCE WEEK 2

Yet here we are again ladies and gentlemen, it is us, the week two journalists Marina and Álvaro, and we are here to explain you our personal experience as journalists, let us see...

To begin with, as with every other role that has to be performed by each member of the group, we have been eager to experience this new role so called historian or journalist, that basically revolves around informing on the groups progress and explainning the methodologies used, and as such, we have had quite the share of fun taking the photos, keeping track of any news on the group´s work and so on.

We have also had the opportunity to witness some other groups work such as our partners from pickle rict (https://picklerict.blogspot.com/?m=1) which though didn´t give use to many images or general techniques for making the act of reading more dianmic, they still properly exposed their ideas, giving the sensation of them knowing what they are doing.

TRANSLATOR: WEEK 2

What’s up?? It’s David here, this week playing the role of: TRANSLATOR 🔠📝

This time, my work has been to elaborate a list of the five (5️⃣) main aspects of the task, defining and explaining those that, from my POV, have been the most important ones in order to develop the task in a correct and efficient way. ‼️‼️

Another way to contribute to the team, has been to help in the brainstorming stage, and elaborating the task written report alongside my colleagues. 🧠⚡️🌩

As a translator, I’ve been challenged to clarify the weaknesses of our project as a question,  so here it is.  

What issues have we faced during this week? ⁉️

As I have experienced, the main difficulty of this task is not the task itself but to comprehend and understand what are you working with (Codey Rocky or Augmented Reality).  🤖📸🎥

Once you have realized how these thnigs work, then the rest of the task will be much easier for you. 

So, summing up, the biggest problem that has appeared when we began working, was that, at first, we had no idea how this things worked out and it was quite difficult for us to find out 😰🤔, but with teamwork and cooperation, everything is way more easy. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧🙇🏻‍♂️

Hope you enjoyed this week’s work as much as I did!! 😀😀

See you next time 🥰🥰

ANALYSTS: WEEK 2.

Here we are again! We are Lorena and Verónica👩👩‍🦱, and along this week we've been taking the role of analysts!.💬

This week has been a peculiar week since we have had to work on our own without the supervision of our teacher Linda, due to the fact that she was taking part in a course.

It's been rather difficult to pull up our socks!😪

However, we must say that we have been working hard to at least prepare a well organised and accurate planning for the coming session "Un día en el cole de mi maestro!".👬👭

As a group, we have had some difficulties in setting timetables to work together, but this is something that even with lifelong friends usually happen. 📅

Adding to this, it has been difficult to focus on the three different assigned activities, we have had so many creative ideas and thus even more doubts. We have to say that it is very helpful to be working with people who are in your same level of creativeness, but we hope that our ideas won't be floating in the air and can be put into practice, reality and effort is needed.😉🦾

According to the work done by the different roles, we have to say that stars on this week were not necessary, since we didn't have to speak in public or present any task.❌

Firstly, our facilitators 🔝🔋 were very involved in their duty, they were on their feet, taking charge of dividing the tasks in the more equitable manner, there were many things to be considerered, but they have thought in every detail to have everything under control, even setting the timing!. ⌚

Our lovely journalists 🔎  took charge of keeping our blog updated and not only there but also on our instagram account, they were present most of the time sharing ideas and dividing tasks between them both.

On the other side, the curator farmers were 📋 in charge of compiling all the information sources we have been using, such as some websites we have visited to understand how to use our 'Codey Rocky',
ideas for the stop motion or some other web pages that explain how to carry out the augmented reality. Apart for their role, they have been also collaborating with us in other many tasks, looking for information and making our work easier to do.

 Moreover, the translator has chosen five key terms, he has also described them and answer the questions concerning to his duty.

The best part of the task was knowing that we are going to work with children 😄. For the majority of us, it will be our first contact with our future profession. Also, the activities are quite interesting; we have enjoyed a lot discovering augmented reality, we felt like we were children again. Our robot, 'Codey Rocky' is now like our baby, we even rename it, now it's "Harry Potty", a very appropiate name for our child👶. We enjoyed learning new things about how it works and every little step of him was a pride for us. Lastly, the stop motion was also very riveting and we thought about the huge variety of materials that we would be able to use.



The worst part of the task was having to work without the teacher. The complexity of this task require us to do our best and in some cases the instructions were not much clear so we had to ask the other groups or search for information on the internet, something that draw out the process 😕

The best moment of the week was when our baby Codey Rocky started to work. Watching something as simple as him saying 'hello', singing or walking was something very exciting to stare at. A little step for Codey Rock is a huge step for 8 plus half !🙈 In addition, the moment that our mountain in augmented reality come to life was impressive.

The worst moment of the week was the coordination of all of us for a meeting 😟 .The fact that we are 9 people with busy lives makes this task more complicates, but thanks to God, this week we have found some hours where we could use our time to the greatest advantage.

This week, we have learnt plenty of new things. First of all, the use of the robot was quite difficult but little by little, we started to understand how it works and now we are able to do many things with him 😛. Lastly, using the app for the augmented reality opened ourdoors for future applications in our lives.

The best thing of our group and something that we have to conserve for the rest of the weeks is that the implication of our members in the task is quite similar. Even each of us is playing a role, we are all helping each other, facilitating the process of carrying out the task 😊. It's difficult to find something to improve as a group for coming weeks, but if we have to point out something it would be that we should read more carefully the task sheets because they may contain some of the information we need instead of asking without reading beforehand👌.

The content we are studying is related with many other courses. From example, the storytelling was something that we had already done for our subject Planning for teaching, but actually we have been doing storytelling since we were in the school, maybe for creating a theatre or representing a daily situation. The use of the robot and the augmented reality was something new for all of us, since we have never worked with these types of tools but that is the purpose of our subject, to learn new things that would make us better prepared teachers 🎥🏆



This content has an important relationship with our lives. Nowadays, we live surrounded by technologies (machines which cook, cars which drive on their own, etc) so we have to be informed and updated with the new gadgets which are appearing.

These technological breakthroughs will, not only facilitate our role as teachers, by making learning more resourceful and dynamic, but also they will make us feel closer to our students since technology is quite present in their lives, and connect faster and creatively the contents or subject matters with technology as well as integrating them in pedagogy.

Aren't you suffering a déjà vu?

(https://www.javiertouron.es/tpack-un-modelo-para-los-profesores-de/)

We hope you like it! See you in the next post! Don't forget to leave a comment! ✅

Verónica and Lorena 💞

CURATOR FARMERS: WEEK 2

Hey guys!! We're Patricia and Lucía, and this week we've been the curator farmers👩‍🌾👩‍🌾

Since we're working on the project "Un día en el cole de mi maestro", our job was to collect all the different sources we've used to inform ourselves about the activities and to inspire us and give us ideas💭

We must admit it was a bit hard at first to make clear to our colleagues that they had to write down every source they used. I guess we're all used to looking for things on the Internet and not even being aware of it. But they did quite good👍🏼

We have looked for materials mainly for the storytelling (we chose Cinderella), for the water cycle (in order to understand it ourselves and be able to explain it to the kids) and to help us figure out how to use Codey Rockey (yes, that's right, it hasn't been as easy as we thought it would be😅).

Although it is true that we looked for inspiration in some sources, it is fair to say that our team is made up of extremely creative people 👩‍🎨👨‍🎨 with original ideas that, we hope, we'll make our activities in this project unforgettable both for the children and for us.

Here you have our references in APA:

Akçayır, M., Akçayır, G., Advantages and challenges associated with augmented reality for education: A systematic review of the literature, Educational Research Review (2016), doi: 10.1016/j.edurev.2016.11.002.

Aula virtual UM/ Resources and ICT/ Un día en el cole de mi maestro. (2020). Retrieved 21 February 2020, from https://aulavirtual.um.es/portal/site/5438_G_2019_N_N/tool/b2a38ee5-5bc4-4cba-9e32-c2dd51da1fc8?panel=Main

Bernard R. Robin (2008) Digital Storytelling: A Powerful Technology Tool for the 21st Century Classroom, Theory Into Practice, 47:3, 220-228, DOI: 10.1080/00405840802153916 

Codey Rocky de Makeblock. (2020). Retrieved 19 February 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoqF8_j5YDg&t=135s

Computational Thinking in Education: Where does it fit?. (2020). Retrieved 21 February 2020, from https://aulavirtual.um.es/access/content/group/5438_G_2019_N_N/Bilingual%20Group/Un%20dia%20en%20el%20cole%20de%20mi%20maestro/computationalthinking.pdf

El ciclo del agua. (2020). Retrieved 20 February 2020, from http://nagusia.berritzeguneak.net/gaitasun/docs/competencias/ciclo_agua.pdf

Perrault, C. (2019). Retrieved 21 February 2020, from http://bibliotecadigital.ilce.edu.mx/Colecciones/CuentosMas/Cenicienta.pdf

Ruiz, M. (2018). El ciclo del agua (Primaria) - Web del maestro. Retrieved 19 February 2020, from https://webdelmaestro.com/ciclo-del-agua-primaria/

Stopmotion La oveja negra. Basado en el cuento de Ítalo Calvino. (2020). Retrieved 20 February 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbPkpBSlFMg&t=4s

Vera, C., & Camilloni, I. (2020). Retrieved 21 February 2020, from http://www.bnm.me.gov.ar/giga1/documentos/EL002315.pdf

We hope you enjoyed our post, see you! 😋


MIND MAP:
https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_ktB5_oI=/

FACILITATORS: WEEK 2

Hi again! This is Megan and Fátima here.  😊😊

This week we have taken on the role of being facilitators together. 👭
We have to begin saying that we LOVED it. Bearing in mind that we are both bossy boots, we really enjoyed having permision to supervise the team and tell people to pull up their socks if necesssary. 😇😈

Firstly, at the beginning of the week we organised what days we were available and had possibility of meeting up. We must say that this was a complicated job, due to the fact that this team is full of very busy people. When we finally agreed what days were best for everyone, then we could concentrate on getting our minds working brainstorming some ideas on the Project: "Un día en el cole de mi maestro". 😀👐


                           

 Secondly, once we planned  approximately how much time was needed for each activity, then we split the tasks between the group. We would like to highlight that both of us facilitators agreed that ALL the members of our team had to be experts on every activity, so although we split some tasks we made sure all members were updated on every task.
We can't turn a blind eye to the fact that we reached every aim we previously planned for each day.
Previously, we made very clear  that  when we met up as a team everybody, individually, must have read the documents on the LMS about the activity we were going to focus on that day. 🔎
In addition, we have realized that having such knowledge of our members' roles facilitates communication and an understanding and plannification of the tasks apart from achieving a perfect group dynamic based on cooperation.

Although this week has been hard work as facilitators because we had to plan out three different activities on which some of us hadn´t experimented before meaning we had a lot of content to go over, we managed to help eachover and create great activities that we are sure the kids will really enjoy and learn from.

The organization was fundamental for the development of the planning for the next three weeks but we handled it easily, keeping on top, not getting overwhelmed and negotiating with the others. We have created a new knowledge as a product of our different opinions and imagination ability, being able to learn how to interconnect our personal ideas and bringing about our intended objectives. ✨📚

Last but not least we congratulated all the team for their hard work and we hope we upgrade each week.  💛😄


As facilitators we believe we have nailed it! 😜

JOB DONE! 💁💁

JOURNALIST: WEEK 2

Welcome dear readers, today, on week 2, we are presenting you the development of this last week:

As far as we have gone, we have properly advanced with our present project. Due to the fact of our teacher not attending class for the week, we have assisted as to continue with the task at hand! 

Here is our loyal team working hard!

As for what we have actually done, we have proposed a series of ideas for story telling, such as the usage of Cinderella as our story, giving it some interesting twists, such as exchanging functions between Cinderella and the prince.

Given that for some difficulties, we couldn´t get our hands on the robots, we have still advanced with virtual reality idea and features, giving form to some good-looking drafts:

This while also proposing new materials for 

children to use such as printables and so on.

WEEK 2 ROLES

Hello everybody!!👋In this post we are going to talk about each one of the roles in our work this week🙊

Journalist/Historian💯🔎: Marina Ruipérez and Álvaro Ramos
Facilitator/Administrator🔝🔋: Megan Higgins and Fátima El Mnari
Curator/Farmer☆★: Patricia Caja and Lucía Alarcón
Translator🔠🙋: David Romero
Analysts💬: Lorena España and Verónica Cano

We are looking forward you see everything we are preparing for this week💥, let's hope you like it!

Until next time!
💙

ANALYST: WEEK 1

Hi! My name is Fátima and I am the Eight plus half’s analyst.

In general, I have to mention that we have been a well coordinated group.

We have learned not only about the subject contents but also about how a group works. 

First, 6th Thursday was the day that our teacher presented us the task (TPACK-ACAD).
The facilitator divided the roles and then each one of the members’ group searched information
about TPACK and ACAD, completing the document with the five questions that the stars would
have to expose the following Tuesday. Once we understood the main concepts and how these theories
can be represented and explained to our partners, we thought about the preparation of the physical
project💪🌈. 

This day the internalization of the ideas of such methods and the creation of the project was possible
thanks to the team work and the cooperative environment which arised👫.

I have observed that doing brainstorming and sharing our different points of view was essential to
become an effective group apart from seeing others perspectives and be more motivated and creative💬💭.

Moreover, I considered important our ability of distributing tasks. It is shown when we had to divide the
parts of the physical project. In our case, ones did the puzzle pieces, others the decoration figures and
the facilitator did the title and brought the cardboards.

What we liked most of the activity was the moment of constructing the project. We enjoyed that time
pasting the puzzle pieces and overall observing the final result, identical to the idea that we expected.

I should point out that everyone learned upon their role, acquiring aptitudes essential to the performance
of the group. For example, the journalists got practice using instagram and discovering how blogspot
functions, the curator farmers worked quicklier converting the sources on APA format and the stars
faced the difficult situation of speaking in public. Moreover, the facilitator learned how to distribute tasks
adopting the suitable measures to every member.

What is more, this team work has taught us that the reciprocal support is very important even an
indispensable instrument that fosters the connection of the members, supplying the own knowledge of
each one of us. 

The concepts that we have tackled are related to technologies, methodologies, knowledge and team
work. These terms are familiar to us because in educational action planning we also have studied
(as in TPACK) that the content knowledge has to be linked to the pedagogical and technological
knowledge to bring about the learning outcomes in the students. It is not what we teach, it is how and
where such contents are taught.

In addition, the terms that we have approached are crucial to become an effective teacher, since we
should adapt to our pupils circumstances and needs, knowing about the content selected, what tools
we can use to facilitate their learning and in what way we should explain such knowledge. So, TPACK
and ACAD provides us a new and broader approach for applying individualized teaching techniques.

However, what I would stand out is that working in group gave us the opportunity to practice and get
used to the school’s institution and, thus, improve as teachers.

The team work that we have carried out is the one that we will execute in a few years with our colleagues
having to create activities jointly and having to demonstrate our abilities of delegate and allocate roles.

In my opinion, to continue being coordinated and working as we did we should stay as connected as now,
sharing our personal opinions and being critical analysts at all parts of the activity.

Finally, I would say that although we have specific roles each of us have contributed collectively to both
preparation and accomplishment of the activity, respecting and helping each other with their task.

HERE IS THE FACILITATOR!: WEEK 1

Hi!👋 My name is Patricia Caja and this week I have played the role of the facilitator👌 in our work group, which we have called “8 and a half”. 


As you know, my function this week has been to supervise and organize the tasks between the members of our group.


I have to say that it has been quite easy due to the fact that we have work very well as a group, the organization of the tasks has been made by all of us in a collective way, I am quite happy with the way in which we have cooperated during the week.


The task of this week consisted on preparing a presentation  about the TPACK and the ACAD paired with a visual mind map which represents well all the information of our presentation.


 Firstly, we reunited all the information to answer the 5 questions of the presentation, secondly we designed the mind map, we considered that the form of the puzzle🧩 was quite original. Then, we divided the work and we decided which of us was in charge of each piece of the puzzle or the mural, and finally the day of the presentation, our stars Álvaro and Marina shined as real stars! They presented our mind map with a lot of effort and enthusiasm👍, we are very proud of them.


I believe we all have enjoyed this task, it has taught us new methodologies of teaching, and we have worked in a more dynamic and cooperative way than normally. Finally, I would like to thank to all my mates for working as hard as they have throughout all the week💕, and to remind all of you that all of this has just started, we will continue making an effort in every task during the rest of the year!😜

TRANSLATOR: WEEK 1

Hey everyone!!🙋🏻‍♀️🤗 I am Lucía and this first week I have been the translator🔎 That means I had the job to select the 🔝 five key terms related to our activity about TPACK and ACAD, and define them with my own words🤔. In addition, I had to create a question about weak points and application of those frameworks 💭

I must admit I found a bit hard at first, since I had to use different words from the ones my colleages had used and deeply understand the matter to be able to express it by myself. But that helped me to comprehend this topic better, as well as to reflect upon it.

Without further ado, here you have my part for this week:

1. Five core terms of this week:

- TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge)

Teachers might find some difficulties to use digital technologies in the classroom, since their use can be wider and not as simple as, let’s say, text-books. In addition, most teachers haven’t been properly taught how technologies could be used to improve learning, so they simply don’t take technologies into account (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). Nowadays, technology plays an important role in every aspect of our lives, including education. That is why learning how to incorporate technology into our teaching and classroom activities will be a key factor for us in the future. Here’s where TPACK comes in.

TPACK, which stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, is a framework that tries to explain the knowledge a teacher needs to possess to teach effectively, integrating technology into their teaching at the same time (Koehler & Mishra, 2009).

TPACK revolves around three main components: content knowledge (knowledge the teacher has about the subject matter he/she is to teach), pedagogy knowledge (knowledge the teacher has about how the learning processes work in their students, as well as methodologies) and technology knowledge (which allows teachers to use technologies to fulfill tasks), being these three fundamental for teachers’ effectiveness. That being said, possessing knowledge about these three areas is not enough; all of them need to be interconnected in order to be applied successfully in the classroom environment (Koehler & Mishra, 2009).

Let’s use an example: a teacher might be skillful with computers, but he/she won’t be able to use that knowledge in the classroom if he/she doesn’t know how to use technology to support what they teach (Technological Content Knowledge) or how technology can influence and improve teaching and learning (Technological Pedagogical Knowledge). Likewise, it is not enough for a teacher to know a lot about a subject if he/she doesn’t know the best way to transmit and teach those concepts to students (Pedagogical Content Knowledge).

The combination of all the 3 areas results in Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). 

In conclusion, TPACK’s purpose is to help teachers integrate technology into the classroom to reach the highest effectiveness (Koehler & Mishra, 2009).

- ACAD (Activity-centred analysis and design)

ACAD (Activity-centred analysis and design) is an approach for analysing and designing learning environments, that places the most importance in activity

(that is, learning through doing things), but it should also be taken into account that activity cannot be fully designed. Instead, activity is determined by external elements that we can try to shape (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014).

In other words, we cannot control exactly what emergent activities will turn out to be, but what we can do is influence them through design, taking into account three main components: tasks (epistemic design), structures of place (set design) and organizational forms (social design) (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014).

By influencing the three dimensions of design (epistemic, set and social), we can get closer to achieving our intended learning outcomes (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014). 

- Set design

Learning always takes place somewhere: in classroom, online… Set design is basically the planning of how the physical environment for learning will be organized. That includes the space (like the classroom), but also the tools, resources and artifacts. For example, the board, tables, books, computers… All of them contribute to physically establish the activity and obviously have an effect on how the learning will develop (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014).

- Epistemic design

Epistemic design is the part of design that consists of suggesting tasks to the students. In order to design these tasks, teachers research, plan and must make several decisions, suchs as selecting what will be told to the students about the task, deciding the order and time in which the content should be presented to the student and so on. The epistemic dimension relates to knowledge-oriented structures of the learning process (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014). 

- Social design 

Social design is the dimension of design that focuses on organizing the social structures that will exist during the activity, or put another way: whether students will work alone, in groups, teams; which roles will be given to each participant; who will be do each part of the activity (work division)… It is all about the distribution of people (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014).

2. Question: 
a) Are there any weak points in these two frameworks (TPACK and ACAD)? 

TPACK:
- When talking about TPACK, it is usually represented with 3 circles, each one for a domain of knowledge: technology, content and pedagogy. The 3 circles overlap, creating other areas. But in real life, in a practical classroom situation, it is not always so easy to differentiate aspects for each area, especially the ones that are combinations of others (Technological Content Knowledge, f.e.). Put in another way: it is simple to define the combination areas, but not as easy to identify them in a practical environment.

- The technology, pedagogy and content knowledge are seen as separate or isolated domains, when reality is much more complex. It is like an obsession to categorize everything.

- Another important point, which could be seen as a big limitation of this framework, is that it doesn't take into account an important agent of the teaching-learning process: the student. It just focuses on knowledge the teacher must possess, which isn't the only aspect that determines the effectivity of using technology in the classroom; the context should also be taken into account (the school environment, the students' characteristics…). The TPACK framework might be seen as too teacher-centred.

ACAD:
- One of the critiques of ACAD used to be that it didn't consider the context in which the activity took place, so the authors later added this concept to the framework by drawing a dotted line.

- The fact that activity is seen as the center of the learning process might not work for every type of student. Working through activities has definitely its advantages, but I don't think it should be the only way. Students might feel lost at time, because an activity-centred approach puts the students in a situation where they must take decisions continuously about everything, and for some ages it could too much to handle.

b) And how could they be best implemented into a practical environment?

It is easy to talk about all these concepts and ideas theoretically, but what can actually be done to apply all of this into a practical environment?

As for TPACK, the main proposal could be to implement technological education applied to the field and to pedagogy in the education of future teachers, so that they will be perfectly capable to use technologies in the classroom with no problem and not being afraid of them, as it has been the case for years.

Regarding ACAD, teachers should be made aware of the importance of planning and design for lessons, helping them identify through which aspects they can best influence the activities in the classroom. They should think about what set design best fits the activity, what task could be better for the activity they want and what social design (working alone, in groups) is more appropriate for the activity in question.



As for my experience with my colleagues this first week, it has been a pleasure to work with them. It was a little complicated at first to organize the work, since we are nine people (that's a really big group), but things are getting better and I can't wait to see what the future holds for us!

See you around!!🤩😎


References:

Goodyear, P., & Carvalho, L. (2014). Framing the analysis of learning network architectures. In L. Carvahlo & P. Goodyear (Eds.), The Architecture of Productive Learning Networks (pp. 48-70). New York. NY: Routledge.

Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1), 60-70.