👷 T H E T A S K

Hi ArchiLearners!!💁💁
This week we have been working in our seventh task, it was about complexity at school. In order to solve this task we have to learn the fist chapter chapter of a book ( Starkey, L. (2012). Teaching and learning in the digital age. London: Routledge).Once we have learnt it and the most important thing, after we have understood the difference among the six types of complexity we have to search to 6 different news, each of them must be related to a different complexity.
Here you have the main ideas of each complexity, we hope you would be able to understand them.

1. COMPLEXITY THEORY

• Theoretical content:

Schools are complex systems composed by different levels. This levels have open boundaries that allows the exchange of information. They are connected and they have their own set of knowledge.

• News:

The cutback in education has leave between 28.000 and 32.000 less teachers, losts in unfoldings of Spanish and Mathematics, less attention to students with special needs.
A school is composed by different levels (timetables, departments, classes) and due to the reduction of budget there are the same levels but with less teachers so, teachers have to be responsible for more levels. This affects to the complexity theory in a bad way because, less teachers mean less specialised so, now there are teachers with no knowledge in a determined area teaching a subject which is not their own.

2. THE CONTEXT OF A COMPLEX ORGANISATION

• Theoretical content:

Each school has a different and unique context based on the people, history and culture. That is the reason that explain the differing beliefs, perspectives, expectations and experiences of the differents schools. It´s worth mentioning the leadership style, as they influence how and what knowledge emerges at school as they can support an innovation, encourage their students and their staff...

This new is really incredible, you will see a miracle!!  In a conflictive neighborhood, a school had overcome the academic average even overcome the elite schools. Why? Only because this school acts as a community learning; where all people learns from students to parents, volunteers, and teachers... All people feel in school as if were in their home, isn’t that amazing?

• News:

Everybody repeats with frequency, even the director himself: “If there is silence, then something is wrong”, the doors of the classrooms are open, the classroom is divided in four groups which they have to fulfill four activities each activity in twenty minutes; so they do not get bored, they are really concentrated in their activities, they help each other developing their social skills...and per each group we can find an adult even they parents, they feel themselves useful helping children to develop their learning.( now parents are no more the teachers enemies).And what if they are wrong in teaching them? It is ok, then students will be the happiest in order to defend their point of view. Here all people, knows what is taught in school, and not only that  but all of them contribute.

It is unbelievable how an open minded perspective can change the whole organisation of school, it lets everyone to be part in that complex process.

3. EMERGING KNOWLEDGE THROUGH CONNECTIONS

• Theoretical content: At school human relationships are really important, as people can discuss and share ideas, information and innovations. Knowledge can emerge from conversations between teachers, discussions with parents, readings of research, meetings, exchange of information with others educationalists.
• News:

Now Subway or train cars look like convoys filled with people mesmerized by a bright screen, through these gadgets, we can be permanently connected. The connection has become a necessity. It has been said many times that information is power. Having all that information within reach of a click gives us the false impression that we are very well informed.

In this context, education emerges, and is a crucial element. It is about having a lifelong education that allows us to adapt to an increasingly complex and accelerated world. It is about learning to learn. And to learn to use what we have learned.

4. DIVERSITY AND REDUNDANCY

• Theoretical content: Every complex system is in constant change, as there are new ideas, innovations, events. However to avoid the chaos this new ideas have to be evaluated and trialled. That foster the diversity of practice, ideas and systems. If they become redundant they will be discontinued and replaced.
• News:
  "Aprendizaje adaptativo de inglés hasta los seis años" --> " Adaptive English learning up to 6 years old"

The platform “Lingokids” with their “Machine learning” is a new way of learning English for kids between 2 and 6 years old, because this is the best moment for little kids to learn other languages, in this case English. Their platform “Lingokids” is the only one that teaches English with fun games, personalized activities, songs, videos…

Moreover it includes English classes online with native teachers.

However, all of this new methods are also evaluated and judged by creating different ideas, practices and systems.

So, other ideas or practices could become useless or replaced, like English academies, where the lessons are the traditional ones, there are many students with you, and activities and classes are not personalized with your motivations and interests.

In conclusion, this new diversity with new innovations, ideas, activities, active methods, will replace old practices and ideas because education is always in a constant change.

5. Balancing randomness and deterministic order

• Theoretical content: The resulting changes are a balance between randomness and a deterministic order. Randomness create pressure for change within the system (innovations, ideas, events) and the deterministic order create pressure to remain the same (routines, values, processes).
• News:

“A TEACHER FROM XXI CENTURY CANNOT TEACH AS ONE FROM THE XIX CENTURY”

As the title points out, this article is about the balance among the traditional values and routines and the innovations that teachers want to introduce in the classroom.

This article is about a very young teacher who gives lessons throughout the “inverted class”. It consists in two main parts, the first is the theoretical part which is discovered by each student at home, that is, this teacher upload videos in Youtube about the content for next class and students should work on them, as well as, on podcasts. The second part is about practice it by exercises, thoughts routines or even theatres proposed by him in class.

To sum up, the content remains the same but the difference is on the methodology used to work on the content. With this new method we can see that there is a balance between the traditional way of teaching and the innovative one, as he only takes pride of new educational resources as ICT for obtaining a positive balance and results but using the same theoretical foundation. Moreover, the administration doesn’t support too much this idea of innovation as he breaks with the traditional way of teaching. As a result, we can realize about the loss of expression of creativity and the lack of motivation on students.

6. Complexity theory and change in schools.

• Theoretical content: In most of the cases the changes that are introduced at school end up being eliminated because children do not take  advantage of them. Maybe, the main reason why this happened is because teachers do not use ICT in a correct way but they only use it as simply tools and resources, so they do not take advantage of all the benefits that it provides.

• News:

"NOT ALL PARENTS AGREE WITH THE USE OF TABLETS IN SCHOOLS"

This new talks about the introduction of new technologies in school as a way to improve learning, but it is not  what really happened in most of the cases. For example, in the school, San Pedro de Gava in Catalonia digital boards were introduced in kindergarten, primary and secondary education and after a while they must be removed from kindergarten because they were overstimulated so they are not too good to teach little children, it is preferable that they learn using their senses and experiences. On the other hand, most of the parents believe that the introduction of ICT is directly related to improvements in their children's academic performance and it is not the reality. Although, with the use of tablets and computers in the classroom children have a big amount of resources that could not be good because probably most of the content that they find on internet could not be understood. Moreover, in the schools ICT are not used in a correct way because probably it is only used to search information and really it offers a lot of opportunities that are not used. In most of the cases, teachers used ICT but they do not change their methodology, they are using ICT but they do not take advantage of it.

If you want to read the complete news, here it is the curator post where you can access to all the news: http://architeachers.blogspot.com.es/2017/03/c-u-r-to-r_23.html

NEWSPAPERS:

1. I am MªÁngela, and on Wednesday I worked at the complexity theory, so you can see our work hear in the link:  

2. I am Rajae Aguili , and i invite you to  click here  to read this incredible newspaper, i hope you enjoy it!

3. Mª Ángeles Alonso, the Star of this task, was working in the third newspaper, you can read it here:

https://issuu.com/architeach3/docs/periodico

 4. I am Carmen Díaz and I worked with different members from all of the groups in chapter 4 “Diversity and Redundancy”, my announcement is the first one, (“aprendizaje adaptativo de inglés hasta los seis años”).
You can read the fourth newspaper here:
https://issuu.com/beatrizgonzalvezmoreno/docs/newspaper_fish

 I have to say that we lost too much time exploring the different pages to create a newspaper, that is why we had to run a little bit.
 Moreover, we were a lot in the group so it was impossible to listen to everyone.
They did not have a summary with them or the relationship with chapter 4, so they had to spend a lot of time doing this too.
 Finally, some of them did not really know the relationship with their news, so it was a bit mess. I did not like the organization this week…


5.  I am Maria del Mar, the curator this week. I was on the 5th editorial working on the Balancing Randomness and Deterministic Order, you can read more about this experience in my post of the week, after prepare very hard the newspaper, this was the final result:

• EDITORIAL  Nº 5  http://es.calameo.com/read/005119066793852acfc93

6. Our ArchiTeacher, Carmen Albaladejo, was in charge of the Complexity theory and change in schools´newspaper. Here are the links in which you can visit it:

https://joom.ag/NfgW

https://joom.ag/5fgW