📈 A N A L Y S T

This week we had a  little approach on the complexity of school, we had to read the document about it as well as to find a new which has a relationship with a specific type of complexity. Honestly very abstract ideas, which gives you  while you are reading a feeling like "Really? i am understanding properly?"  which are not meaningful to us  until we experience it somehow.

After reading the theory from which we do not understand the real message that the writer wanted to transmit, i thing everyone understood something according to his experiences, background, beliefs, language... we had to put it in common in order to make a newspaper , well we have to point out this process, why? because of these reasons we were not able to make the newspaper at time:

1. The lack of communication: We did not communicate each other in order to distribute us in six  groups, it is really unbelievable at this ages and we can not organize ourselves without the help of a third person : is that the human nature?  we need someone to be organized as a group? or they did not teach us to organize ourselves as a group??  I need to point out the fact we are used to a have a teacher giving us orders we have to follow, years ago i did not thought about it even nobody told me that, i just accepted that because i thought "It should be like this, what the teacher does he is right". But since i had to work in this strategy i realized the importance of the organization as a group at all  the levels: leaders, administrators, teachers, students, parents... we all live in society with people so we need this competence to survive. Moreover, this competence implies the communicative competence, the communication is the complex web that keeps us joined together.

For me communication is the difficult thing and the most important while working in groups. Well thanks to Allah, i listen, i see, i talk... but this does not mean i am communicating. I am saying that, when sometimes we talk to someone, we feel good when we talk," o my God! he is listening to me!"(we think).But how much we care about interactions, he is understanding me? If not. i should ignore that? or to make it explicit and to look for another simple way to explain it?

I think we are so interested in expressing ourselves that we do not care about the others, their thoughts , feelings, ideas...we need strategy for that! Personally this week i felt proud of my group while editing the newspaper, because at least we talked and we had the helpful spirit, but for the next time i hope no to let this thought to control my mind " How happy i am , i am talking and they are listening to mee!!! i am saying something important ,that's all i did my job" but i want to think" They are hearing to me?, how i can make sure they got my idea, how i should to express myself" I am really amazed by these thoughts they come to my mind, i never thought that reflecting about this stuff will be useful. (Please if you had similar experience comment this post! Tell me , i am the only lady who thought about it).

2. Who we are?: We did not know each other properly, for me at least it was the first time doing something (the newspaper) in common with my great mates , i did not even their names and while working i needed to know them, i felt curiosity but we did not have time to do it, i do not know if someone will dare to ask without a pretext of common work. I thing it is crucial to know each other in order we can work , why i am saying that? because my group of the second year, we work together 10 timed better and more effective...the question is ,  why? because i know them, i feel like in my home when i am with them, they know my personality, my thinking, expression, me as well i know them. For that reason we understand each other, i hope to do the same with my mates in organization.

3. Lack of social abilities: the problem is that since we are in school we learn how to work individually but we do not learn how to make our mates work as well. For sure, keep it in mind, for sure all people are not going to work the same in a group , not becase someone is doing effort more that others but the fact is we do not have strategies to help our mates who are blocked  to work, and then we think that they are irresponsible persons as a consequence we lose touch with them and we work individually complaining all the time( what do you thing? please comment, i am interested in your perspective).I just wonder, how we can make all the member of a group interested in the work and they feel an important part of the group. I just wonder, there is a science which teach us how to motivate our mates to be  a part of the group? We just complain about " I worked the most, it is not fair that at the end we have the same mark! " But the problem is in us not in them, in order to be aware of that we should put ourselves under a microscope in order to change ourselves to offer a positive environment for others so they can work in their way as a part of the group. Why ? very simple, because we can control our behavior but not others.

Click here to see the newspaper we did.

📖 T R A N S L A T O R

Hello Archilearners!! 🙌

I´m Dolores and this week I am the translator of ArchiTeachers 👷🔨

For this task we have worked with the concept of Complexity and this are the 5 keywords:

• COMPLEXITY THEORY: Schools are complex systems that involve many people, ideas, beliefs and a specific context. They are composed by different levels.
• LEVELS: They have their own set of knowledge. They are connected between them and they have open boundaries where information and ideas are exchanged.
• CONTEXT: The unique and specific context that surrounded the school. It is influenced by its people, history and culture. And makes each school special.
• CHANGE: Every complex system is constant change, as there are new ideas, events and innovations.
• NEWSPAPER EDITOR: The person in charge of compile information and news in order to make the newspaper.

I hope you can understand our work reading these 5 words!!

See you soon!

Have a nice week 🔨👷

👷 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

📂 F A C I L I T A T O R

Hi workers! 🔨I am Carmen Díaz 👷and this week I am the facilitator.

As always, I must say that my group members are really hard working people, so we are all always thinking in ways of working which avoid losing time 📚. And every architeacher thinks, give opinions and ideas, so I was not a real boss, we are all bosses.
After hearing every idea we chose the best one!👇

Despite knowing our task Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, some of us stayed on Friday a few minutes to talk about the roles of the task, because we had a little problem; Dolores told us that she could not stay with us on Tuesday, so we decided that she will be the joker.
We more or less decided which role will do everyone.

When we knew the task, we decided that as we needed to find six news and we are seven, Dolores would be in charge of reading the document “The Complexity of Schools” and then she will make us a summary in order to work faster on Monday. She read and made a summary instead of searching for news.

So, Dolores brought the summary and we divided the chapters with a raffle, one chapter for everyone except Dolores. Moreover, each of us (except Dolores), read again their part in the document and search for news related to it.

We decided that we were not going to stay in University for doing this task because it was not necessary.

Afterwards, each of us will put the link of our news and a little summary for us so we can understand it, and then the relationship with the document. So, with only reading the summary we could understand everything easily and quick.

Next day, in class, everyone explained their news to the rest of our group (just in case 😅)

Finally, we all knew every news and the relationship with the document, so we worked hard in an easy and faster way.💪🙌

 Personally, I think that this role really fits me, because I am always trying to think in new ways of doing things, and I always try to help everyone who needs an explanation or my help. I consider myself a person with character, so I enjoy leading people and it is something that I do unconsciously (give suggestions and ideas, or tell them how they could improve something, or things like that but always with tact and in a positive way). 😅 So, I could consider myself a constant facilitator 😎. 

🌟 S T A R

Hi everyone, I am Mª Ángeles Alonso and I am the Star of this week. Hope you enjoy it ☝.

This has been my second time being the Star, but is has not been as my first time.

At first I prepared a paper with all the news of Architeachers' group because we thought that I (as a Star) would have to explain it to the rest of the groups. But it was utterly different, because each member of the group had to work with other members of other groups. 👷⭐🐟✨💮...

Unfortunatly, we thoght that 2 hours would be enough for doing a newspaper with all the news related to "emerging knowledge through connections".

In this task, the two Stars🌟🌟 of the working group had to be like the facilitators too. According to my experience, each member of this group explained me his/her new and then I wrote it in my laptop (in Spanish) and when I had all the news, we started translating into English. But when we finish it there was no more time so, I had to finish the newspaper at home.

Our first mistake was that no everyone had a laptop so, we did not take account that if we use Drive appllication, we could work faster because each one could wrote in English their new and then explain orally to the rest of the group. 😵

The second mistake was not our (my group) fault, and the problem was that not all the members of the groups came to class so, we had to wait for some members to came to our group in order to listen his/her new.

But here is the newspaper 💪📰📰:

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

📃C U R A TO R

Hi guys, my name is Maria del Mar Fernández and this week I will be the:

This week I was very excited because I didn't not experience already this role unlike the role of Facilitator. Moreover, I love this role because by the time I discover new sources of information, I contribute to avoid plagiarism. From my point of view, plagiarism is a very serious fact that should be more policed from the beginning of the secondary education.
In my case, I always try to do my best and I love when people recognize and congratulate me whenever I do something, independently if it is wrong or right, and for this issue I would love if people who inspire themselves or even use something literally of my work quote me.
Regarding to this week, it was very easy for me to find all the quotes and then make the conceptual map, so I felt very comfortable performing this role.

This is how the entire conceptual map looks  which includes all the references used till now.

Concretely my part as a curator: 

On the hand, I was in the editorial nº 5 with Marta and Marina from Starfish, Jose from Fishers in the River, Irene from Spacers, Paula from FlowerPower, Emma and Clara from Spiky Teachers, Maria from Wildcats, Andrea from Superstars and Mitchy from Ladies and Gentlemen. We were asked to do a newspaper, as the rest of the editorials, and I have to recognized that we worked very well as we finished the work on time despite the problem to upload it to the web 2.0. 

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

📷 J O U R N A L I S T

Hello everyone! 👋🏽 I am MªÁngela and here I am here another week more to talk you about the task that my partners and I have done it during this week with the same enthusiasm as always, we hope you like it! 
During this week I have been the journalist of my group, and to do that role I have taken photos to the works that we have been doing.

On Friday, our teacher Linda uploaded to the virtual classroom of our university the documents we necessarily have to read and know to do the task. 

On Monday she explained what we have to do, to us and to the rest of the class.
When we understood perfectly what we had to do we started to work. 🔨
We divided our work among the 7 participant of our group. On Monday afternoon we each did our part at home. 
On Wednesday morning we all meet to explained the rest of the group our part so we can understand and know the work.
During the class we distributed our 2 ours into make a newspaper. One member of each group should do a different complexity. 
We didn´t have time to expose it, so on Monday the stars will expose it. 
On Monday I will complete this section with more photographs. 

Here you have some pictures about the seventh task!

 

 

Have a good weekend, and see you on Friday archilearners!