GUIDE ICT AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

CONCEPTUAL MAP'S COMPARISON: LOS GOCHOS VS. OTHERSIDERS (Ana Rallo)

 LOS GOCHOS'S MAP

                                  OTHERSIDER'S MAP

First of all; here we've got the maps that are being compared. 

On the left, we can find Los Gochos' map, where we could understand without any problem what is inclusive education. They divide inclusive Education in four different branches; cooperative learning, innovation, educational communities and classroom environment.

On the right side we can find our group’s map, where we decided to divide inclusive education into six branches; attitude, life (equals to education), cooperation, individuality, 21^st century generation and the important role that students should have.

If we start up with the comparison, we could think they are really different, but if we go deep into it, we’ll discover how in relation they are, I mean, of course they are in relation because they are about the same topic. In the case of Los Gochos, they spoke about the importance of cooperative learning, that, thanks to it, we can have a better result on inclusive education. In our case, we wrote about the cooperative learning in our branch of cooperation where we divide the branch into two more branches named relationship, which means how school should get in contact with students, parents, teachers and communities; all interconnected and the other branch about teamwork where we thought about the importance of having support from your groups and obtaining different ideas from the different people existing inside your cooperative group. We also thought about the relation of cooperative learning, of course, with education and life. We connected life to education because of the importance the education has in our life as we spend many ours inside school.

They spoke about innovation where we talked about our generation, the 21^st century one. The importance of rewriting the curriculum and adapting it to our nowadays society was shown in both maps. Also we could find how both groups thought about the importance of teacher’s formation and how we all should be open minded; one concept that wasn’t written down in our map and should.

When talking about the educational communities, they told us how important they feel the roles are inside and outside and they decided to give a huge space for it, something different to our case. As I have said before, about roles, we just spoke when talking about cooperation and maybe we should have thought of giving it a bigger importance.

Something I find different is about the individuality. We, Othersiders, gave a huge importance due to our group’s logo and differences. We included our logo on the map because of its meaning we explained in class on our first presentation, and we thought we couldn’t explain this in a better way than using our own logo.

Finally, I wanted to congratulate Los Gochos’ team because of the fourth branch; classroom environment where they spoke about how important is respect and some other values inside and outside the classroom. Also I wanted to say, they made a really great job because of the creativity of the map.

CONCEPTUAL MAP'S COMPARISON Los Gochos vs Othersiders (Marta Alonso)

Los Gochos’s conceptual map gathers all the information about inclusive education in four grate points which are Cooperative learning, Innovation, Classroom environment and Educational Communities. In contrast our conceptual map is divided in more branches where the main points about the same topic (inclusive education) are written.  They focused the importance in just four points and we did it in more branches dividing the main concepts for a better explanation of terms.

One of our branches was cooperation, as concepts inside it, we mixed other two:  teamwork which is the way students work in inclusive education and share their ideas and the relationship between different structures as students, parents, teachers who collaborate in the creation of the educational community which is searched in inclusive education. Los Gochos gave lot of importance to the paper of each structure inside the educational communities. In the school’s role they include the curriculum changes for students needs and we included this point inside the branch of the generation of 21^st century where we related the need of including ITC in the curriculum so this is followed by the curriculum change and the teacher’s formation.  They also include inside the student’s role different capacities as active role, responsibility and autonomy. We gave more importance to the aspect of individuality understood as the authenticity of each student without ha having in mind the social, physical o ethnic differences and the contribution all them can make gathering their capacities.  They select a bit of this context about respect, integration, equity, diversity inside the great point of classroom environment and also include teamwork as our team.  We selected as a very important point the attitude that inclusive education defends for student’s life in two main points. We explained concepts as tolerance, respect, equality and the main role that the students receive because according to inclusive education everything should revolve around the student. Students are who need to solve the problems in a common way and the teacher should prepare their classes according to each student necessities.  We also gave lot of importance to the point of view that inclusive education has about what education is for children. Education is part of their life so the main objective is learning things they will need for the future in an educative environment full of real experiences such as their lives. Los gochos did not give importance to this point. In contrast we did not add deep information about family’s role in this type of education which is something really different from traditional education. It is so different because they have an active participation in the school offering their help and above all is so important the trust they give to teachers which do not exist in most of the schools. Gochos selected as an important point cooperative learning as the methodology to follow. Inside this branch the included the main tools for classes such as helping each other, dialogue, individuality  concept we gave extra importance), engagement.  Finally the see inclusive education as a mix of innovations related the adaptation to the society where teachers and students are always improving. (We covered this point inside 21^st century generation).

SOFA SESSIONS REVIEW (Pablo Fuentes)

I couldn't attend to this presentation becuase I was hospitalized but my team mates can tell you what you need to know about Sofa Sessions work!

FERNWEH REVIEW (Pablo Fuentes)

I think that this group despite the problems they had at the time of meeting outside the class, worked fine and showed us their perspective of cooperative learning. The presentation was pretty good and the website they created looks cool.

Talking about the beneficts of cooperative learning is a good way to motivate the group to work as a whole.

 The activity using the jigsaw method needed to be a bit more explicative because I found myself lost at some point but I think they will improve this because they will be more puzzled with the time and the works.

Also I saw a difference between the parts of the group that knew more about the topic and the ones that need to improve this aspect.

Courage guys!

EDUCATION LEAGUE REVIEW (Pablo Fuentes)

I'll start talking about origniality.

This group was by far the most original of all the presentations.
They showed us how can we use coperative learning to perform as a group and the activity they did was fantastic. Separating the class in three groups(Agile, porters and helpers) calsifing what those groups are specialized in and then grouping those mixed for a coperative work.

They definitely showed us how can coperative learning matter so hard in acrosport, and all the group performed as one highlighting the importance of trsut in your partners and the satisfaction of a well done project.

About the content of the presentation I think it was focused from a different perspective, not from the theory but from the practice.

Really good work from their part.

LOS GOCHOS REVIEW (Pablo Fuentes)

I think that Los Gochos made a really good work, but we could see in the presentation who was the head of the group by far. I think that is kind of a mistake from them because in a coperative learning all the parts of the group should use the same amount of time when they are exposing, and when I say this I don't mean that they didn't work outside the same amount of time.

The content of the presentation was very good explained despite they couldn't put in practice the technique they selected to show us how we can work as a group. But that is not their failure, I think that it's a mistake that some groups are able to do their activity and others don't, this should change in the next classes because for me, it's unfair, and it's not a fault from the group.

In terms of originality the activity was good but other groups were more original I would say.
 The presentation was well organized and the parts of the group were able to reply the questions from the teacher by themselves, without needing the help of their partners because all of them knew about almost everything.

REVIEW TRAVELCHERS (Pablo Fuentes)

We could see that the group was organized, maybe kind of nervous because of the pressure of having all the class taking notes in front of them but they did good.

Because they met a lot of times it was easy to see that they were cordinated, performed as a group and they made a good use of the power point using interesting videos like "the lion king" to show us what group work is.

They overcome the pressure coming from the questions that were made by the teacher helping each other when they needed to, and the content of the presentation was very clear and organized.

For all of those reasons our group thinks they deserve and 8.5 and we hope they keep working as they did in this presentation that made us understand what cooperative learning is.