ANALYSTS

Hello there! We have had the pleasure to have both Ben and Alex as the analysts for this week, so here are the questions and the reflection they had to make.

QUESTIONS:

a. What was the best part of the activity?
The best aspect of the entire activity is being able to work with children, although we haven’t actually done it yet, we are very excited and it’s kept us focused.

b. What was the worst?
Meeting up keeping in mind the limitations each person has because of work or other personal issues.

c. What was the best moment of the week (in the work of the group)?
When we drew Linda at our Friday meetup, because it was a nice break and we laughed and had fun.

d. What was the worst?
When we suddenly realized that were a week late for one of the blog entries.

e. What have you learned?
To manage our time in a more intelligent way, we’ve learned a lot about Codey Rocky, and about different platforms for augmented reality and stop motion, as well as dealing with stress.

f. What do you need to conserve -as a group- for the next weeks?
Our good relationship, since it’s helped us to deal with any issues that have come up with any teammate without fighting or getting angry. We have a really positive environment, and we will definitely try to keep that going, as it also helps us be our best version in the group.

g. What do you need to improve –as a group- for the next weeks?
Being a little more diligent and responsible when it comes to going to every class and doing everything in advance, and not leaving it for the last minute. Also communicating a little more.

h. How THIS content is related to other contents in the course and your degree?
It is very useful in how you plan complex activities for the classroom, because everyone knows how to read from a book, but not everyone knows how to plan and carry on a stop motion video within 45 minutes. It’s also really helped us grasp the concepts of Game-based-learning and Gamification, which are in trend right now, and very useful and engaging for the students.

i. Is there any evident social connection of this content (news, politics, etc.)?.
There are of course various obvious connections, but the most relevant, or important one for us is the aspect of working with small groups, as in our educational system, classes are often too large and make everything more complicated. In this blog entry we found, some of the advantages of smaller classes are laid out. https://www.methodschools.org/blog/what-are-the-advantages-to-schools-with-small-class-sizes-0
We’re certainly very happy to have this opportunity to work like this because it gives us some background and experience we will without a doubt use in our future classrooms, as well as when we fight for groups with fewer students to ensure a higher quality of education.

REFLECTION:

According to Cambridge University the use of new technologies and digital teaching methods in classrooms are "amazing learning tools – providing children with a great number of opportunities to improve their English." as well as many other subjects, a good example of these could very well be Codey Rocky, augmented reality in any form or digital storytelling as we have seen in class. Obviously there are risks to be found when employing these activities in a classroom, the digital dependency is always a fear as detailed well by this article by the Concordia St. Paul's University; but for exactly that reason it is vital that we teach children from a young age to interact responsibly with technology. "Children growing up in a supportive digital environment are learning the skills that they will need for their future studies and careers." says a representative from Cambridge English Assessments. As someone who has worked in modern classrooms I have to agree that the implementation of tech at a young age helps with children's attention levels as well as being a fun way for them to learn complex subjects.

Hello there! We have had the pleasure to have both Ben and Alex as the analysts for this week, so here are the questions and the reflection they had to make.

TRANSLATOR

Good afternoon, everyone! I am Alicia, and I have had the pleasure of being the translator throughout this week. As we have been focusing on the three activities we will be performing at the "Un Día en el Cole de mi Maestro" event, I believe we should dig in deeper into these three concepts: storytelling, robots, (Codey Rocky), and Augmented Reality (AR), knowing a bit more about their creators and the most innovative models that have been designed. Last week's translator wrote everything down on the same post the former translator used for the first time, but as we have been working on this task for these two weeks, I believe that it will be better to implement there here as well. Without further ado, let us begin!

Task 3: Preparing "Un día en el cole de mi maestro".

- getting to know various ways to use technology in class.

- forming groups for each activity: robots, augmented reality, storytelling

- reading about theories.

- practicing the activity from the students' perspective.

- preparing the lesson.

Task 4: Preparing "Un día en el cole de mi maestro" (Part 2).

Storytelling: it consists of creating a story, creating an ideal environment of learning through creativity, imagination, and original ideas.

• An appealing idea is needed.
• It must be adequate for watchers or listeners' needs and skills.
• It can be used in a wide range of contexts and settings, whether they are marketing-related or education-related, and it can be portrayed in a lot of different ways, such as in a theatre-like space or by using stop-motion.

Stop-motion: it is one way of presenting a story through the motion of its elements, no matter if they are drawings or even 3D models, with the help of a camera, as the creators will be taking pictures of the elements each time they are moved.

• All the props must be done by the time the stop-motion will be taking place, as it is a complex task to do and no time can be investing in getting things done, other than taking pictures.
• The person or the people who will be moving the props will need to be extremely cautious, as the point of stop-motion is to make them seem as if they were moving naturally, thus no sudden movements must be produced.
• An edition software is needed, as the pictures will have to be put together, as well as the voice that will be narrating the story or the music that will be playing as the story itself progresses.

Robots: technology has come to have made huge progress throughout these last years, making people question whether there will be an extent to which sci-fi films will become real. The future is uncertain, and we cannot imagine how different life will be in a matter of years, as devices that have not even be created yet will be used all the time.

• While an immense amount of knowledge about robotics is needed to actually create and code complex ones, learning about code and coding at school serves as a great idea.
• Programs such as scratch work perfectly well, as they are easy to handle and work with, without requiring input and without writing actual code either.

Codey Rocky: it is a robot which was designed for children to start programming in an easy and dynamic way, learning what to do in order to make a small cat or panda-like robot move, make noises, or faces, allowing them to draw its expressions or even words or sentences into its face without all the code that would be needed in other kinds of robots.

• It was designed by Makeblock and the "Codey Rocky" set includes Codey, the robot, the information manuals and the color cards that it will be able to identify.
• Two programs will be needed to play with Codey: the computer one, which will allow us to input which actions it will be doing when we press a button; and the smartphone app, which allows us to make him move, and draw new expressions on its face. However, it is also possible to program it by using another app that is mention in it, making it quite easy and accessible.

Augmented Reality (AR): is a kind of technology that allows the user to incorporate a computer-generated image into the real world through a program. It can make the difference when teaching students, as they would be able to create their own materials, as there are a lot of apps that provide customizable templates; making the learning process way more interactive and appealing.

• More complex and expensive materials, such as AR glasses are not required to perform this activity.

Thank you so much for your time, see you next time!

FACILITATOR (24/2/20-28/2/20)

This week we focused on perfecting our lesson plans for The Day in Our Teacher's Classroom. Alicia, Charlie, and Marta worked on learning every aspect of their augmented reality app, Chromeville Science.

Molly, Natalia, and Martha explored the MakeBlock and mBlock app in order to memorize what they are planning on having the children do.

Alex, Ben, and Celia made props and a background for their stop motion movie. They downloaded the app InShot in order to put the video together.

Check out our other posts to learn more!

HISTORIAN - JOURNALIST

HISTORIAN - JOURNALIST

First of all, we would like to say which roles we have this week. The facilitator is Molly, the historians are Natalia and Marta, the curator is Martha, the translator is Alicia, the analysts are Alex and Ben and the Star is Celia.

The first day of the week that we met up was on Monday, we went for lunch and discussed what we were going to show to Linda on Tuesday and the work that we had already done by then. That day we also divided the tasks that were missing…

On Tuesday this was what happened:

We had a meeting with Linda about our lesson plans, talked about the Storytelling, and she suggested finding a new free app.

We discussed how the Augmented Reality was going. 

Linda told us not to give them a model because the expectations of the children and to instead give them the piece of paper and prompt.

We also thought about the time we would need for the activity (explaining the water cycle, introducing the app, etc.) 

When it came to the robotics activity, we thought that maybe there would be many people and some of them might be bored and we could do some activities for them like playing with mblock making sequences  that aren’t directly working with Codey.

An important thing to take into account is that we all needed to know how to use Codey, not only the ones that designed the activity, also we needed to try the activity with the group.

Another thing that we didn't know is that when you are in charge of the activity you are the star.

On Wednesday we didn’t meet because we were preparing the debate.

On Thursday in class we panicked a little bit because we realized that we were late for some things that we were supposed to post on the blog on Thursday so we lit a fire under our butts. 

On Friday we also met to finish all the tasks and put in common the answers that we had and the things that we forgot to do. 

All in all it was a very eventful week but we still managed to do everything required of us, THE PICKLES WILL BE VICTORIOUS!!!

ANALYST

Questions:

-What was the best part of the activity?

We had to work on our own, because Linda wasn’t here, so it gave us a chance to improve  on our independence. Although we came to the university, we separated into groups (depending on the task we had to undertake); each one did their best to make sure that the project went smoothly.

We think that it helps us to have in-depth knowledge about our roles and what we had to do in every task.

-What was the worse part of the activity?

From our point of view, the fact of Linda wasn’t here was also a really big issue. We did the task by ourselves but all agreeing was very difficult because we dont currently live in the same town, so working together was a hard task. However, we talked everything through politely and always respecting context and the situation each member was in. 

Some of the members of the group didn’t say anything about how they were developing the tasks and if they needed some help so it was a little disconcerting to not know exatctly how  everything was truly going until the end of the week.

-What was the best moment of the week?

The best moment of the week was when Alex’s grandmother told us the story that we are going to perform in our storytelling. From my point of view, I think that it was a touching moment because I love listening to my grandmother and even my mother telling me some stories about their childhood. When I was young, maybe 6 or 7 years old, my grandmother told me a lot of tales every night before I went to sleep so it reminded me of those moments.

Also, I really liked the part in which we decided all the props and backgrounds to make the story real. I love making crafts and this was a moment to develop our more creative side!

-What was the worse moment of the week?

On Wednesday our group had a big problem. One of our members didn’t come to any of the meetings that we had, and didn't say anything in our WhatsApp group so we were worried about him. First, we thought that he was ignoring us, but then we understood that the situation was harder. He had personal family problems so he couldn’t tell us anything. We were very worried about him. In the end he told us what he wanted to do and we did it for him instead.

-What have you learned?

We have learnt how to code a robot (Codey Rocky) and also how augmented reality works. It was a difficult task to do due to the fact we hadn’t ever done anything related to that so it was really challenging.

We also have learnt how to work together, because last week was a little messy, and this week we have organized ourselves better, but we need to continue improving.

-What do you need to conserve as a group in the following weeks?

We should keep making as many improvements and changes as possible to our way of working as a group, but something to conserve is the determination that the group members have. They work hard in the challenges eventaking on some of the work they do is not their part, they only do it to help, feeling part of a group instead of caring only about their own work and their own result.

-What do you need to improve as a group- for the next weeks?

As we said, we have to be more organized and be more involved in the task and not leave all the work for the last minute. Also, we think that some people should be more conscious and do their work on time and attend classes.

-How this content is related to other contents in the course and your degree?

I thinks that robots, augmented reality and digital storytelling are directly related to ICT due to the fact we need to use technology and robots are direct uses of tech  and seeing as this subjectis based on how to teach ICT to our pupils and how to employ ICT's our daily lives as teachers.

-There is any evident social connection of this content (news, politics, etc.)?
These are some of the main aspects that we can see in real life as teachers and our relationships with ICT:

- Adequacy of the requirements at the level of student development and personal abilities.

- Adaptation of the contents to the previous knowledge of the students as initiators in the construction of the new learning.

- Adaptation of materials to allow manipulation, discovery and creative transformation.

- Adequacy of tasks through cooperative work to strengthen social relations within the classroom.

HISTORIAN-JOURNALISTS (2/10/20-2/21/20)

Hello everyone! Welcome back to our blog.



We started off this week by assigning roles for each group member: Charlie as the facilitator, Natalia and Marta as analysts, Celia as the curator, Ben and Martha as translators, Alicia as the star, and Molly and Alex as historians. On the first day that we were given the activity, we were given a Codey Rocky to try out. We used all of our class time to experiment. Molly downloaded Makeblock and mBlock on her phone and the group learned how to drive, make faces, make sounds etc. Charlie connected Codey to his computer, and we learned how to program more specific tasks.

Throughout the week we did not have class with Linda, but we communicated through WhatsApp in order to create a layout of all of our lessons. We separated into different groups (Story telling- Alex, Ben, and Celia Robots- Molly, Natalia, and Marta Augmented Reality- Alicia, Martha, and Charlie). The story telling group planned on making a stop motion movie about little red riding hood. They will create props for the children to manipulate. They will also have the children create their own script, then put it all together to make the movie. The robot group will show the kids how the Codey Rocky program works in the computer, then let them explore. Later, they will explore how to make the rectangles and triangles. This group will make sure everyone knows how to use Codey Rocky. The augmented reality group will first explain the water cycle. Then, they will introduce their app Chromeville Science. The group explored the app and made sure they knew how to use it for the kids.

Thank you for reading!

STORYTELLING

Hi guys!

The story we're going to tell you is a more up-to-date and feminist version of "Little Red Riding Hood", which we call "Little Rude Riding Hood".

This story was made up by Alex's Grandmother who told it to her around the age of 7.

It goes like this:

Did you like the story? Which version do you think is better? Why? Could you tell us the 5 facts that you think are the most important?

Great! Now we are going to make a stop-motion, in order to do this we are going to need these materials as decoration, these drawings that will be the characters of the story, and a phone to make the photos and record the voices.

First, we are going to distribute the roles, some of the studetns will be characters and some will be crew (director, cameraman, props specialist...etc.)

Perfect! Now we will begin with the photos, those who do not have characters will move the toys so that, when gathering all the images, they seem to be moving and while those who do have a role will record the voices.

That's it! Then we'll edit and put everything together and it will be an Oscar-worthy storytelling!

We hope you enjoyed this activity and learned something new at the same time.

AUGMENTING THE WATER CYCLE

Good afternoon! I am Alicia, one of the Pickles! We are eager to show you the thrilling activities we have been working on throughout this last week. As each pickle was in charge of one of the three main tasks: storytelling, robots, and augmented reality, there will be a different post for each one of these projects. Aren't you excited?

Now, without further ado, I will take the lead and introduce you to the wonders of working with augmented reality or simply "AR", putting it short. In order to portray a realistic and accurate perspective, I have been taking a couple of pictures while I was following the process, so it is easier to explain everything I did, although it is actually a simple and quite entertaining task that students will find themselves happy with.

First of all, we should begin by introducing our topic: "The Water Cycle."

The water cycle explains the different forms of water that can be found within nature, along with the processes it follows to position itself in one or another stage, explaining how water evaporates from rivers, seas, lakes, oceans or streams, rises into the atmosphere, where it condensates into clouds, only to fall once again as precipitation either as rain or as snow, Once the cycle is complete, it will repeat itself an infinite amount of times. These three main processes are evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.

Moving onto the actual work, we were asked to use augmented reality to explain the phases of the water cycle in an amusing way to the students that will be with us in a couple of weeks. Now, it would only be normal for us to find ourselves completely lost at the thought of being unable to perform the task since personally, I had never worked with augmented reality before, but it was a relief to find out that we would be using a tool that makes it so much easier.Chromeville Science allows us to choose one of their templates and paint them as we please, making it extremely easy to personalize our materials, just as the students will be doing in no time. Of course, a water cycle template was conveniently placed among all the other samples.

At first, all I did was mess around with the app. Tiny pins would pop up signaling different parts of the template and once I clicked they would display the name of the element in question. However, it was kind of a sad-looking, blank template, so I chose to paint it as the activity for the smaller ones suggests. These are the photos I took while I was creating my own, little island:

There we go! A brief definition was also added, as well as the names of the three main phases, and this was the outcome:

And last but not least, here is a video of how it looks when using the augmented reality app:

Click here!

Thank you so much for your time! Please, stay tuned.

HISTORIAN-JOURNALIST

The first day we started this assignment was February 6, when the teacher explained to us what to do.

The first thing we did was read the document that Linda uploaded to the virtual classroom to divide the roles and understand each other. Once this was done, we began to organize what each of us had to do:

• Alex, in the role of facilitator, explained to each of us our task and helped those who needed it.
• Marta and Natalia chose the star role and in class they chose the materials they were going to use for the oral presentation (a pastel blue cardboard of many colors).
• Martha, with the translator role, and Molly, with the curator role, searched the Internet for documents that were useful for the work.
• Alicia, being an analyst, created the blog, and Charlie, who also has that paper, helped distribute the papers and wrote the work.
• Celia, along with Ben, in the role of historian-journalist summarized everything we were doing.

On Friday, after class, those who could gathered to do the work. They bought all the materials for the presentation.

• Molly and Martha already brought the information that was needed for part of their roles.
• Alex helped organize everything and Charlie and Alicia were answering questions.
• Together they started the brainstorming and created the poster.

For the poster they first thought of drawing a big cloud from which drops of water would fall and at the end they would join in a big drop to make it a metaphor of TPACK, and under that drop a flower that grows due to the use of technology. That idea was discarded and we decided to draw a cloud from which drops would fall, which would be the three elements of the TPACK and with examples of each of them. For ACAD, the idea was a sun and, together with the rain, both form a rainbow.

On the day of the presentation, the class distributed the tables and left a space for the journalists and another for the facilitators and the stars explained their posters.

Our group was good, Natalia explained it very well and Marta made the distinction of ACAD being the context of emergent learning.

Linda liked our poster because of the metaphor.

The rest of the groups also did a fantastic job. Some had very little writing, others introduced new concepts and others had a lot of text, but all explained it very well.

In conclusion, this work has helped us to get to know areas that we didn't have much knowledge of and, although each one had a role assigned to them, we helped each other when we needed to and so we were able to do something great

Finally, we have chosen as our partners' blog the one of the group called eight plus half.

Their blog is fantastic! Everything is very well explained and with the photos and drawings they have uploaded everything is much better understood. We are very happy to have such hard-working classmates!


      Kings College Alicante "Google Refernce School"

Firsts are always exciting, and now it's Kings College Alicante’s turn to feel that rush, as they are the first school in Spain to be recognized by Google for their ground-breaking work introducing technological advancements into their classrooms. The school has been named as a “Google Reference School” after they implemented Google's new educational programs into their teaching methodologies.

“This recognition is not fortuitous and summarizes the great work of our students, teachers and managers who have been devoted to technological innovation in the classroom from the very beginning”, explains Carlos Lázaro, director of Digital learning at King's College. The School has been working on this project for the past 4 years and they don’t intend to stop now, they are keen to continue improving and introducing a range of digital solutions in order to improve students' learning.

The "Google Reference School" certification allows King's College to gain exclusive access to Google’s educational tools before their wider launch, to receive visits from other schools interested in the implementation of educational technologies and to be able to host events by Google and the educational society.

"We feel privileged to be part of the Google community and with them we will continue working so that all students have access to technology in an effective way for learning and that allows them to be safe and responsible users, promoting communication, independence, adaptation, collaboration and significant progress." Concludes Carlos Lázaro. 

ANALYSTS

During this week, the analysts were told to assess everyone's work and write their marks down into a rubric. Furthermore, there were several questions that had to be answered in order to review the group's progress and organization. Thus, today, we'll be explaining what we have been doing lately. We are Carlos and Alicia, and without further ado, let us begin.

a. What was the best part of the activity?

We think that the best part was the satisfaction of finishing the project. We wanted to make an original project, but sticking to the requirements given by our teacher. It was a heavy and difficult task to do, but thanks to the help of the ones who attended the meeting, it came out nicely. And also, we cannot forget the wonderful job our stars did in the speed learning session with our project. They did their best at doing a pleasant presentation, facing to the classroom as we kept walking and listening to our colleagues.

b.What was the worst?

Honestly getting everything established and everyone coordinated was the worst part. Alex did a magnificent job being the facilitator, giving each and every one of us some work to do, but issues started to pop up. Some people didn’t come to the meetings and the project sessions, which difficult the work for the others because we had to take more roles and responsibilities meanwhile they DID merely nothing. We understand that is the first group task, and that we are not very used to this dynamic, but some partners felt a burnout due to lack of commitment. Our first real meeting was last Friday, and we said that we were going to be working on the project, in order to finish it before the weekend because we have other tasks from other subjects. From the nine members of the group, only five appeared, even though we had already spoken in our WhatsApp group about meeting up, and then Alex had to leave us for some time due to her job. So basically four of us spent most of the time working on the project, which came nicely but with a lot of effort. We were brainstorming about how to design our information map in an original way and was difficult which one to choose, also coming up with the main points we wanted to present.

c.What was the best moment of the week (in the work of the group)?

Were we to highlight a specific moment of the week, we would probably choose last Friday’s afternoon, as we decided to meet to get most of our work done, thinking about the main ideas that should be taken into account and portraying them in a creative way. We are certain that it was because of the fact that most of us had not worked with one another yet, that we also took this opportunity to have lunch together that day, and we believe that this caused our bonds to grow stronger. Moreover, we are positive this was what let us kept moving forward towards our goal, and it has also served as a chance to discover which improvements could be done in our future works, thus creating a clear picture of our position right now, regarding our weakest, but also strongest parts so we know what do we exactly have to work on in order to fully show what we are capable of. However, not only did we enjoy the lunch part of the day, but also the whole afternoon itself, as everyone who met did their best and worked very hard to accomplish the task they were assigned.

Moving onto the practical part itself, the best part of it was how we began to portray our ideas and conclusions onto the poster’s design. It took a large amount of work, as we hoped to acquire an original perspective without restricting ourselves to the most commonly used information maps.

d. What was the worst?

The worst part of the activity was the lack of commitment that some members showed, not attending the meeting and barely completing their tasks, leaving the remaining members hanging without getting to know how would the task be taking place, as after several brainstorms we had yet to find an idea that convinced all of the members who attended that meeting. Thus, for us, the meeting did not suppose a problem at all, as we managed to put our schedules in common and be efficient with the time we had. Its difficulty arose due to the issues we came across when determining how to combine both TPACK and ACAD’s main elements, as well as their interactions with one another. Nevertheless, it was exactly due to these complexities that we were able to achieve a deeper knowledge about the subject matter. There is not much to point out, really, besides the fact that if we had been more people, we had probably ended the project sooner.

e. What have you learnt?

As a result of the project, we have comprehended the main characteristics of both understanding framework, TPACK, and ACAD, regarding what should and should not an effective teacher do and know to generate meaningful learning in their students. Whereas TPACK focuses more on the relevance of its main three elements: technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge, ACAD’s main points are set, social and epistemic elements, focusing on the way teachers create lessons instead of the tools that are used, as it happens with TPACK. Nonetheless, it is possible to work with both, as they optimize the way that students can take advantage of the classroom by having an innovative and holistic work experience which includes both the necessary tools and resources and the compulsory content, curriculum, teaching styles, and methodology.

Nevertheless, not only have we got to know and understand useful structures we were unaware of and that will help us for sure in the future, but we have also had the opportunity to work with new people and have a first impression regarding how will the group’s development be.

f. What do you need to conserve –as a group– for the next weeks?

We should definitely make a lot of improvements and changes, but something to conserve is the determination some of our group members have. They feel passionate about working hard in all the challenges that will come and caring about the outcome of each project and each member of the group, feeling part of it instead of caring about their own work and the result for themselves.

g.What do you need to improve –as a group– for the next weeks?

In order to exploit our potential to make use of all opportunities for improving and designing quality tasks, we believe it would be essential to work the cooperative part of the work. In other words, the members should keep getting involved with the task, and whose who did not must improve that aspect, as it is crucial for working in groups. Perhaps, it would be great to establish what is each one of us supposed to do and have all the individual research and investigation work done beforehand, by a specific moment, so if any changes need to be made we can get to them sooner and finish them faster. It was due to this that we came across some issues when reaching out to one another, as some roles could not be completely fulfilled without another member’s previous work.

Therefore, we believe it is important to be diligent and coherent with our work, letting others know when we are having problems with our own, smaller parts, knowing that as a group, it is our duty to give each other a hand as not only would we achieve a better outcome, but everyone would also acquire a better understanding of the matter, filling the remaining gaps they previously had with their team members’ help. This very same concept of a “team” shall also be taken into account more frequently because this time, most likely because it has been our first time working on a task which has been designed using the following this methodology, we stuck ourselves to our roles instead of seeking a more holistic view of the project.

After all, there are a couple of elements of the utmost importance when working on teams, these being trust, conflict management, commitment, accountability, and focus on the result. The roles we had been assigned did cover the basis of the organization we had to follow to present a well-suited work; however, it was vital to develop these attitudes so we could work at ease along with everyone else. For instance, the trust might be the most important one, bearing in mind that it has a direct impact on how well are the members getting along, noticing whether there some arguments going around and knowing how to solve them if there actually are some; although I am glad to add that this has not been our personal experience, yet. It is worth mentioning the huge role commitment plays here, as your team is always relying on you, and knowing how to link newer knowledge to the practical and previous one, as well as traditional knowledge with ITC and innovative ideas. And of course, having fun is always great, but not if it is getting in the way and taking away time that could be invested into actual working time, as it is counterproductive. This is something that we should definitely work on.

h.How is THIS content related to other contents in the course and your degree?

Last semester, in Educational Planning we have already talked about different strategies and methodologies that teachers should use in the classroom to optimize their teaching experience, such as Problem-Based Learning, Game-Based Learning, etc. It is related to TPACK because it is related to the teacher and the knowledge of their contents.

i.Is there any evident social connection of this content (news, politics, etc.)?

There certainly is, as nowadays we cannot simply ignore the huge impact that technology has had and keeps having on all levels, and especially in the field of education, where children must acquire a set of basic knowledge about these innovative resources in order to keep track of this globalized world we live in. As a result, educators must get familiar with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) that will be used within the classroom. For instance, there might be problems when the teachers lack of base knowledge; perhaps when they do not know how to portray their knowledge or the content itself. This makes us realize that it is also important to learn how to use them right and that you are never done studying teaching, as it shall be conceived as continuous, lifelong learning, as students change just as we do, and as the world, we live in does.

Furthermore, there is a strong connection between this topic and politics, as well as how much it is said by the news tells us about it, and the rate of authenticity. The lack of veracity arises because of the large amount of fake news that is spread around the globe. For instance, not going further than Murcia in order to set an example, if an educator designs an amazing lesson in which they will be discussing “x”, then they will have to ask the parents or legal tutor for permission because of the “Parental PIN” measurement that has already been established here.

Thank you so much for your time, see you soon!