WEEK 9 JOURNALIST

Hi everyone! I’m Lucía and I was this week’s journalist🙋🏻‍📸 Let me tell you what we were up to this week…

On Tuesday 21st, we were presented task 9: we would have to do an infographic based on a text about competences teachers need for a digital world💻👩🏻‍🏫👨🏻

We agreed to all read the text “Holistic Teaching Competence for a Digital World” (2018) by Linda Castañeda, Francesc Esteve anda Jordi Adell 📖, and to do some research about infographics, so that the following day we could properly discuss how to approach this new task.

On Wednesday 22nd, we did an initial videoconference to discuss and distribute tasks. We decided to look for inspiration and examples of infographics and then to meet again on Saturday morning, to properly begin the design of our infographic.

On Thursday 23rd, we had a session that was a bit different to the ones we usually have. All the groups were arranged at a specific hour in order to be given individual feedback about our work to date. Regarding our meeting (at 9.30), we were told to improve some aspects of our blog: for translators not to do copy-paste, and to quote it if they do; for curator-farmers to show all the sources in a common conceptual map, so that we can come back to it any time we need it in the future; and for all of us to try to do better reflections on our blog entries. In addition, it would also be highly advisable to work as a group in a more united and coherent way.

On Saturday 25th, we agreed the structure that our infographic would have, as well as some icons we wanted to use. We all (through screen sharing) discussed what program to use. We started with Visme and the changed to Canva, which in my opinion was a great success. We then started to look for infographic templates, but we weren’t convinced by any of it, because we thought none of them was creative enough. That’s why we decided to create our own infogrraphic from scratch. This probably took more time than it would have taken if we had gone with a regular template, but it was definitely worth it, since the final product turned out to be both professional and original💪🏼

On the afternoon of that same day, Álvaro and I started with a draft. It didn’t look bad, but we would later change the structure all over again, so that text wouldn’t be as charging.

This is our initial draft: 

We then spent Sunday afternoon, Monday morning and part of Monday afternoon trying to leave our infographic as stunning as possible. Vero had some really great ideas to make our infographic engaging and meaningful, such us including the city skyline and Steve Jobs figure on the middle. Here you have some pictures of the process 📷:

And this is the final product:

We couldn’t be more happy about the final result!! 😊

On Tuesday 28th, the big day arrived. Our stars⭐ Marina and Lorena had to present our infographic to our class, and despite the initial nerves, they did absolutely fantastic. They only had 2-3 minutes to explain it, but they managed to go over all the important aspects of the process we followed to create the infographic, explaining the color choice, metaphores included on it, the selection of information, etc…

As for the blogs of our classmates, we would like to highlight the one of Game of Phones. We especially liked the idea of portraying a road in their infographic, as a metaphor for the journey that it is to become a digitally competent teacher. Their infographic was also visually attractive and not too overloaded, which helps understand the topic. Here you have the link if you want to take a look at it: https://resourcesandict.wordpress.com/2020/04/23/facilitator-task-9/

As for external sites, I found an interesting article on a website about the use of infographics in education, which is really interesting and appropriate concerning this week's task. Among other things, the article deals with the benefits of infographics in education and how they can be used both by teachers and students. If you're interested in reading more about it, here you have the link: https://www.copypress.com/kb/infographics/the-benefits-of-infographics-for-education/

As for my personal thoughts about this week, I think it has provided me with interesting and useful new concepts, both theoretical and technological.

Regarding the theoretical aspects, reading the text “Holistic Teaching Competence for a Digital World” (2018) has enlightened me in order to better understand what a teacher needs to be competent not only using technology, about also living in a world where almost EVERYTHING has become technological. There is one specific aspect that has caught my attention and that I would like to highlight, and that is “the ability of teachers to use ICTs to enrich classical methodological models” and the importance of a teacher’s understanding of “the implications of the new methodologies that are inseparable from technologies” (Castañeda, Esteve and Adell, 2018). Based on that statement, I would like to remark the importance of integrating technology applied to education into our basic set of competences as future teachers, since this will be needed to think of methodologies and strategies including technology in the most natural and efficient way possible.

As much as I found useful the theoretical concept, I absolutely enjoyed the technological one: creating an infographic. I think that it has helped me improve my skill and knowledge about editing and designing, and my ability to learn how to use technological programs in an autodidactic way. Learning how to LEARN in an autonomous way, without needing anyone else to teach us something, is one of the abilities that I value the most and that, in my opinion, should be encouraged through all our lives.

That was all for this week😉. I hope you enjoyed both the documentation of the process and my personal reflection.

See you guys! 😁



References:

Esteve, F., Castañeda, L., & Adell, J. (2018). A Holistic Model of Teaching Competence for the Digital World. REVISTA INTERUNIVERSITARIA DE FORMACIÓN DEL PROFESORADO-REIFOP, (91), 105-116.