LAST PROJECT

INCLUSIVE SCHOOLS

This technique is related with integration. To get it, it’s necessary the collaboration of parents and the teaching children in values. This collaboration is based in trust because children should take in count parents when they have problems and they should have an open mind to understand them, in this way teacher should have the capacity to realise on possible problems that should appear in a class. The role of teachers and parents are so important to children because they are their references.

We have some barriers too like the attitude of teachers and students or the methodology and resources that some centres have. Sometimes we don’t realise in the fact that some ways to work are excluding either with the capacity of some of them or the knowledge or resources that they could have. I like too much the idea that they expose that is something like:

“…all of them are barriers because of the attitude of teachers because if you caught something state, without the thinking that you could change, it will be a barrier but if you think how to solve this difficulties and the way to change it to get a better result or an advantage, this barriers will disappear.”

In some school there are quizzes to know the abilities  of each teacher to have a support for others teachers, this means that if you needs help with some concept, material or activity you can know people how could help you.

In this technique the difference is consider as a quality. This is the idea of one of the authors that talk about this, Gordon Porter.

One of the ideas that I consider so attractive and important is the difference between inclusion and integration. It could sound the same but there is a difference that is the clue of all; relationship. One thing is to put together all people that this is integration but if their talk each other and they try to understand them, they have a relationship and this is inclusion. These ideas are developed by Mel Aiscow.

Some schools that put this in practice are O’Pelouro and Amara Berri, both in Spain.

MY CONCLUSSION: I think that this technique should be in all schools because it’s necessary to inculcate some knowledge or values in children to avoid problems like bullying.

ICT LEARNING DISABILITIES

In a general idea this is focus in the usefulness of ICT to integrate people with some difficulties. They talk about autism, Down’s syndrome and motor disabilities.

            AUTISM.

They don’t understand the relationships that we have so they feel quite strange, like been in other planet. The socialization of them is so complicated because they talk a little bit, their thoughts are different; they don’t ask like their classmates. Another difficulty is their imagination because they don’t have so much developed. For all this difficulties, this group take two ways to teach trough to improve them and get a solution: tablets and games. Its will works as a support to have a real integration and to develop the initiative that they need to have more imagination or to starts relationships.

            DOWN’S SYNDROME.

These people are more distracter than other ones because of the illness. They are excited about the world and they wanted to know everything, they are so curiosity people and this is the reason of this distraction. Also, as autism people, their initiative could be more develop. To improve or solve these difficulties, they propose use cameras and whiteboards to transform the information in a more attractive one and to get all the attention of them to avoid distractions. Their memory could be improved with different memory activities or games that could be develop for all the class.

            MOTOR DISABILITIES

Children with these problems have either physical or motor difficulties or both. The main difference with the other ones is that these people is so intelligence, have capacities like be focus on something, understand feelings, communicate… but they need a help to move or to express all the things that they have on their minds. To get it, it’s so important the use of computers or laptops and it’s a good idea to complement this with music or other stimulus. In this way the technology, in my opinion, lends them to have a better life in general not only in school because they have more mobility and independence and this helps to be comfort and to have a better adaption.

MY CONCLUSSION: We should look for all the possibilities of new technology because some of them could be the difference of understand both lessons and people and get a group where all are integrated and include.

LEADERSHIP AND SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS

As a little summarise, this concept develop the idea of the relation between leadership and the success or effectivity of schools.

Why is important leadership in schools?

Leadership is important not only in schools but also in all factors of our lives. We can relate this concept with “organise”. Leadership is basically one of the main factor to get a good develop of school because it’s necessary have a person or image of order, I mean, we have the necessity of authority that organise, order and solve all the problems that we could have. This image is usually represented in the headmaster. Normally he is helped by teachers, secretaries… and so on. The most important thing is that these people look for the best develop of the school, so they think in the improvement because they take very important decision that could intervene directly in children and the educational system – and with that in the future of the country because if children are bad educated, they wouldn’t know how to invest or wouldn’t have the capacity to create something to solve future problems-.

What are the main characteristic of a leader?

To get all the ideas developed before, it’s necessary to have the best leader and its should have some specific characteristic like:

•      Been a pedalogycal expert. It’s so very important that they know children, not only their capacities but also their needs. Some problems that we have here in Spain with the educational system is that its done by people who don’t know nothing about children, schools, or education, they only know the things that are in book and it’s not education.

•        Been like a businessman. In contrast with the last idea, all this necessities need an order and been studying by another point of view different to the teacher’s one to know some values like the real effectiveness, usefulness… taking into account all the factors: number of children, localization of school, mentality of the culture, government…

•          Been as an organizer. Because of the necessity to know where is all the information, what are the things that schools need and their priorities, the formalities that they need to work with different methodologies or techniques…

With all this characteristics a leader will be the best becoming the school in a effectiveness one.

MY CONCLUSSION: To have the better result we need to have all the points of view and all different opinions, not be focus on one think although this is only focus on children.

WAYS OF LIVING TOGETHER IN THE SCHOOL

The theory of this project is divided in three parts: school meditation, program to support peers and archeology of feelings in school. And to close this item they choose a school called Kiva, who I will talk about it later.

-          School meditation: it is based in the reality that is schools are many problems related with discrimination and the diversity in classrooms. The most known is bullying. One solution is creating the role of the mediator, a person who listen all the problems and talk with the different parts to get an agreement. With this, children, helped by teachers, could solve their own problems.

-          Program to support peers: this is related with mediation and solved problems. This is the cooperation between teachers and students to get the objective of the last one.

-          Archeology of feelings in school: this is a metaphor of the feelings in schools. Is developed by Miguel Angel Santos Guerra and he divides this process into 5 steps: discovery, excavation, indagation, protection and esposure.

One of schools that develop this technic is Kiva that has an anti-bullying program developed in the University of Turku.

MY CONCUSSION: This process should be developed in all school around the world because bullying and problems like that could affect so much both in children and their surroundings.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Nowadays there are many people that don’t know how to express their feelings. This is something that this technique couldn’t understand and for this reason Rafael Bisquerra and some authors defend the idea of educate children in feelings.

The main difficulty is that we don’t have in schools some subjects or activities that develop these concepts. This is the first thing that we should change. Children when are babies and they can’t talk, express their feelings crying or laughing but in our society there are some children that have still done it. This is something that shows the importance of all this theory.

We should introduce a subject where children learn how they feel and demonstrated but also feel empathy to have the capacity of understand others and how to manage these feelings.

Many people don’t know how to put this theory in practice but this group develop this part. Some ideas that they proportionated us were:

-          Talk everyday with children about their feelings, they could be done through images, emojis, colours… it’s not necessary that they open they harts because some of they could be shy or embarrassed.

-          Do activities to understand each feeling and things that could affect our mood. Make some plays where everybody has a role and a feeling and they should act like this.

-          Try to develop the empathy doing same games where they should guess how others feel. We could do it in a funny way created new feelings like when you are sad but happy and the same time. One activity is called walk on my shoes and it works when there is argue and teachers try that children feel the feelings of the other person.

All this ideas are related with multiple intelligences because it’s necessary that children develop the emotional intelligence to feel all this.

We should relate this project with ways of living together one because if se introduce these concepts in cooperative learning we get the idea of avoid bullying like in this one.

MY CONCLUSSION: I think that this is very important but not also in schools, at home too. Children should learn how to manage all feeling to have as lees problems or argues as possible understanding other people.

ICT AND IMPROVEMENT SCHOOLS

This project reminds me the subject of the first part of the grade that was communication and sociocultural ways.

The main idea is related with the use of new technology or ICT in schools. This topic is very current because technologies are too new and there are different ideas about it.

Many people think that are horrible and are a distraction for children and they don’t use so much, only for play sometimes or something like that. These people don’t know the opportunities that technologies offer like we have said before with people with disabilities for example.

This has many advantages that we develop then better but there are some disadvantages too. If we don’t know how to use them we could get a counterproductive result. Nowadays all children are digital natives so teachers should know how it works perfectly to teach a high level because they will understand it because of the fact that they born with this. I think that this is the biggest disadvantage because people who is studying to be teacher have subjects to develop this concepts but people who is teacher need this knowledge so a solution will be organize some courses to develop all this items.

Some advantages are the fact that units with I-pads, apps or different electronic tools are more dynamic and motivators, children enjoy more when they are playing and they associated this tools with play, children with problems or disabilities could improve their knowledge at the same time and with the same rhythm when use them, they can keep all the book on it and in this way the bags will be lighter, children could create their own games, quizzes, knowledge… with different apps that exist…

This group give us some apps that we could use in class like zombies vs maths, crash class, duolinguo, babble… but it is a good idea to use robots too because this could be programmer in many different ways, to play, solve problems, do something… and children could programmer them too.

One school that use this tools and technologies is Tamajar’s school in Vallecas, Madrid. They use I-pads instead of books and they have better results than others.

MY CONCUSSION: I think that new technologies are the best think that society could develop but we should be aware because it’s very important know how to use it. A teacher with a good knowledge about it is amazing but in the contrary is so dangerous.

COMMUNITY LEARNING

This is our project so I will develop in a simple way because it is explain under the posts.

The main idea of this technique is get the best relationship between teachers, students and volunteers. Its necessary have in mind some concepts: communication, coordination, cooperation and collaboration. There are quite important to improve all these relations.

We know what are teacher and what students because they always exist but it’s not usually talking about volunteers. This people could be parents or not but they want to work with children or to help teachers because they want or they have the vocation but they have never developed as a job.

We have three steps:

-          Dream: it’s like a brainstorming. All the members of the school say the possibilities or ideas that there could be developed in school.

-          Priorities: the process is take all the ideas an punt in a list taking into account the necessity, possibility, importance for children or school…

-          Working committees: make different groups to work in each idea to develop in the best way. They should solve all the problems that could appear but not alone, they have the support of al school.

MY CONCUSSION: I think that this is a way to understand that the school is not only for children or teachers; the school is something more because from there we have the future of the world. The community should be involucrate in schools to get the best an develop as much as possible.

FINAL CONCLUSION

With this project I realise that if we don’t change education is because we don’t want because there are a lot of methodologies and techniques. Some of them are more complex but others are quite easy and you only need collaboration and motivation.

Beatriz Martinez Isidro