Hello, my name is Pepe and this week I've been the journalist.
Regarding to the dynamic of the weekly work, our group, which is called ‘’The Superstars’’, had to think about and choose five ideas which take place in education and make a drawing of all of them.
In order to carry out this task, the different members of the group did not meet up physically at the same place, but each member developed and searched for the ideas mentioned above using their laptops and connecting each other through skype. The half of the group searched for different ideas by using internet and social media (facebook, different webpages…). Once this part of the group found seven ideas it was shared with the rest of the group mates, and then, between all the members of the group discussed all of them and picked the ones that could be suitable for the task we had to perform. After that, the drawings were made both by hand and by computer by the other half of the group.
Now here are presented the titles of each one of the ideas, a brief explanation of the meaning of the drawings and the pictures:
The title of the first picture is called ‘’when could I speak?’’. It stands for the image of the students who have lots of ideas inside their mind, but they are not allowed to convey them. And later, in higher grades, the students are forced to participate, but their minds are empty of ideas. Therefore they do not know how to answer.
The second picture is called ‘’Parents’ Attitude Toward Teachers’ Negative Critics’’. It is about a student who has had a wrong behaviour (misbehaved) and the teacher punishes him. In this situation the picture shows how there are some parents who support teacher’s position, whereas other parents support their son’s behaviour blaming the teacher about the sitution.
The third picture is called ‘’Why be different has to be a problem?’’. This picture stands for the isolation and laughter that have to be endured by people who do not think in the same way than others. This kind of people feel rejected and excluded out of the social life.
The fourth picture is called ‘’Learning like a parrot and forgetting like a fish’’. This idea is about the students who memorize a large amount of information in order to throwing it out in the exam. But once the students perform the test, they forget all about they memorized, so that there has no been a real-significant- learning.
5 The fith picture is called ‘’Let give more liberty to the children’s creative soul’’. The idea which is presented in this drawing is that teachers do not let students show their creativity. They teach them in a mechanical way.
In the same way that our group did, so did the rest of the classroom groups. A classroom activity was held between all the groups of our class, and all of them had to take their pictures printed to class in order to share their ideas. This activity was carried out in the following way:
-
The stars of the different groups were in charge of presenting and explaining to the whole class the meaning of the pictures which were picked (and made) by his/her group.
- All the pictures of the different groups were placed in different parts of the class, sticked in the wall without any title.
- Next, once all the pictures were located, the members of each group (except the star) were assigned to guess the meaning of the chosen pictures by other group. Between all of them and helping each other they had to think of the possible meaning that each picture had, writing down their answer in a piece of paper and sticking it above or next to the picture that they think could match. They were allowed to get help from the star of the group, but without conveying the real meaning.
- Next, the same process was repeated, but this time with different students, to see whether their thoughts about the pictures matched or not with the thoughts of the previous students.
Here are some of the comments that were made by classmates from other groups about the pictures of our group.
- And finally, in the last part of the activity, the star of each group had to show the comments made over the pictures of his/her group, and next explain to the whole class the real meaning of the pictures.
Now here are presented the different pictures of all groups that were shown during the activity:
Blog/Website outside the class
This week, searching for any interesting subjects about education, I came across with the topic of ‘’Keeping your blogging students safe online’’. This blog helps to raise teachers’ awareness about the risks that students can find when they both blogging and use the new technologies.
