Gema's FINAL POST

Wanderlust team talked about SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING.

This topic was about the importanvce of feelings in the classroom. In their presentation they gave too many importance to Rafael Bisquerra’s idea which says that maths and language has the same importance as feelings so they will make children express themselves, prevent negative emotions, etc.
They also talked about methodology, how they would take Rafael’s idea to put it into practice. They would talk everyday with their pupils to know how they feel and how they feel with their partners.
They told us that this topic was related to multiple intelligence, topic that we have studied in educational psychology. Everyone will develop the emtional intelligence so they purposed to organize an “intelligence week” where children will feel different situations and they have to say how they will feel in each one.
Also, they explain that this have relationship with cooperative learning in which they underline the presence of bullying and that we have to stop with it. If children know how their partners feel and they work with them, we could avoid too many bullying cases.
Finally, they talked about empathy, about how to work with it in the school with activities like ‘walk in my shoes’ that consists on feel on the situation of the other person when there’s a conflicto.
Another point that it’s importan ton this topic is the importase of parents and teachers.
In my opinion this presentation was one of the most usefull for our future.

Moderns Students talked about WAYS OF LIVING TOGETHER IN THE SCHOOL.

Their topic was compound by four parts:

-          School mediation. In this part they talked about boullying cases that we can find nowadays, violence and exclussion and who will be the mediator and which problema will he/she solve.

-          Program to support peers. The key pf this program could be the importance of dialogue and active listening. This program is related to ediation, how to solve prooblems, etc. It is about voluntary participation and promote responsabilities.

-          Archeology of feelings. This was another important point which is about a book that makes a relationship between archeology and education. It is divided in five parts r steps that has to be followed: Discovery, indagation, excavation, protection and exposure.

-          Kiva’s school. This final part is about a finish school called Kiva which Works with bullying and tolos for avoid cases of this problem.

As a conclusion they said that mediation is the principal part of the students assistance program; kids have to control their emotions (in my opinion. For this, kids will need parents and teachers help, as Wanderlist team said); and, finally, children are always gonna feel safe because always there would be someone who protects them.

Cronicas Viajeras topic was about ICT AND LEARNING DISABILITIES.

They talked about children with disabilities and how technologies could help them to improve with their disabilty, to introduce and be more sociable, participate and cooperate with society, etc. The disabilities that they talked about were autism, down’s syndrome and people which have motor disability.

-          Autism. They talked us about tablets and camera to make more able their disability which make them problems of socialization and difficulties with language, control their thoughts and imagination.

-          Down’s syndrome. People which have this disability has problems with distraction and they don’t have too many initiative. The technologies that will help people with down’s syndrome are whteboards and some games like sing star, pictogram, etc.

-          Motor disability. This disability includes physical and motor difficulties so they feel unadapted. For this disability they recomed technologies like music using an MP3, or computers and laptops.

This topic for me was very interesting because in a future I want to be teacher for children which have disabilities.

Another team was Amigos del Football who talked about INCLUSIVE SCHOOLS.

Inclusive schools arethose which key is the respect and recognition of the different students that there could be and how they are organized to be on equality of opportunities.
We need to have an idea very clear: INTEGRATION IS NOT THE SAME AS INCLUSION.
Some characteristics that our partners explained us about inclusive schools are:

-          Diversity, hetereogenety and interpersonal relationships.

-          Equality of opportunities.

-          Create and educational community.

-          Parents and community participate and cooperate in the school.

Some authors that share those ideas of inclusive school are: Gordon Porter, Tony Booth or Gerardo Echeita.
On the inclusive schools we can find some barriers like: contradictory regulations, diversity and didactics.
The strategies for having a good inclusive school are: inclsuive cultures, inclusive policies and inclusive practices.
As a conclusion of this Project they told us that ‘change is possible if everybody Works and cooperates’.

Team Perk spoke about ICT AND IMPROVEMENT SCHOOLS.

First of all they talked about the difficulties that there could be and the advantages of ICT in the schools because nowadays we can find too many teachers, for example, that don’t know how to use new technologies so they don’t apply them in children learning. In the relationship between teachers and ICT they talked about: digital natives (which sometimes know more that their teachers about technologies), digital divide and future teachers.
Then, they talked about social learning in schools remarking: the use of social networks, internets and their tolos and solutions.
They talked about some tools like: applications, ipads and robotic which nowadays are being introduced in schools and learning.

Another group was the Unknowns who also talked about INCLUSIVE SCHOOLS. They defined them as a process that society has to develop ensuring the learning and participation of all the students, teachers, parents,… the hole community, according to diversity. Also, for explain that concept they take the ideas from the same authors as ‘Amigos del Footbal’ because they have the same topic to work in.

The general ideas about inclusive schools are:
-          Education is for every children. They have the same opportunities.
-          Education is focused on multiculturality.
-          Inclusion. This system is addapted to everybody.
-          The main concept of this type of school y ‘learn together’
Those are just some ideas that I can remember but they explain some more.
According to this ideas, they explained us the objectives. Those are, for example, promoting dynamism and interaction between institution and promote the equality of opportunities. Also, they explained some benefits of inclusive schools that could be:
-          Develop friendships.
-          Create an school based on respect and belonging.
-          Involve the parents in the school.
-          Appreciate diversity.
-          Etc.
Finally they explain some barriers as ‘Amigos de football’ (policy, didactics, etc.)

The last group I’m going to talk about is Musical Chairs, they couldn’t explain their topic in class but they told us some things about it. Their topic was COMMUNITY LEARNING.

It is about the coordination between teachers and pupils in the classroom. With this method they try to make about the school something that is not appart from society and that needs cooperation because it’s something very important.
In their Project they talk about voluntaries that are those one’s which doesn’t have a title of being teachers but that go to the school and prepare some meetings, help the teachers at class, etc.
To have a good coordination is necessary to have collaboration, compression and cooperation between all the members of the school. This process has three parts:
- Dream. This consists on thinking about the possibilities of improving the school: methodology, etc
- The second one is about is to choose those purposals those which are more necessary or important. Those that are esaier to come true.
- The last one is put them into practice and solve the different difficulties that we can find.

In conclusión, all this topics including mine (the explanation is on an individual post) are very importatn to take in account because in a future we should know about all of them. As I said before, for example, the most important for me are inclusive schools and ICT and learnin disabilities because, in a future I want to work and teach children with learning disabilities.