COMMENTS ON FINAL PRESENTATIONS - Marta Moyano

Ø  INCLUSIVE SCHOOLS

     This topic was developed by two groups. The first one. Amigos del Football, was focused on the main authors and their theories. The second one, Unknowns was more focused on the development of this theories and putting them in practice.

Amigos del Football

They started giving the difference between inclusión and integration. The integration process is related with culture and with creating a multicultural environment. The inclussion process is about creating an environment of diversity of culture, abilities, etc.

As I have mentioned before, this team was focused on the main authors of inclusive schools and their theories wich are the following:

•   Gordon Porter stablish thatt education must be based on equity and quality and effective use of resources.
• Tony Booth supports the supportive comunities and improving schools for staff as for students
•  Mel Ainscow taleks about the inclussion process, “measure what we value rather than value what we can measure”.
•  Gerardo Echeita defend the  idea of changing the cultrure and the poilicy in the schools and putting inclusive education into practice.

There were several barriers for the effective introduction of the projects of inclusive schools. The main barriers are the policies stablished and and diversity (attitudinal and conceptual), didactics (teaching-learnig). There is a close relationship between the second and the third barrier: there exists different types of teachers with differents ways of thinking and teaching so here is the point were the project of inclusive schools (where teachers have to work in the same direction and in the same way as a group) breaks.

Apart from this, Amigos del Football mentioned the strategies for the construction of an inclusive school, wich were:

•      Create inclusive cultures
•      Produce inclusive policies
•        Evolve inclusive practices

Finally, they putted us two videos from two different schools.

This first one was O Pelouro School. The main ideas of this video were that all students were together, never separated according to their abilities and that they decided about its learning process.

The second school was Amara Berri’s, which the main idea was that there was more tan one teacher by classroom. In this way, dealing with the students is easier and learning processes more effective.

The Unknowns

My group developed the second part of inclusive schools. We were more focused on the practice of inclusive schools projects.

Inclusive education is the process that has to develop the society to ensure the learning and participation of all: students, teachers and parents in school life, with attention to diversity and vulnerability.

The main ideas are not leaving anyone out, promote equal opportunities, democracy and justice, seek coordination of the various agents and formative environments, promoting dynamism and interaction between institutions, be aware and finally enhance the concept of the school as an educational community.

The benefits that these ideas will provide are develop individual strengths and gifts, work on individual goals while participating in the life of the classroom, involve the parents, foster a school culture of respect and belonging, opportunities to learn about it and accept individual differences, develop friendships and positive affect to appreciate diversity and inclusion on a broader level.

The barriers here are the same that in the first part of the Project: policies, culture and didactics (different ideologies and ways of doing things).

          For finishing the presentation about Inclusive Schools we posted two videos of two different inclusive schools.

The first video was from Padre Piquer Center. This school grew as a solution for an unfavourable situation of a neighbour in Madrid. This school fights against the socioeconomic factor, as every student have to have an equal and quality education dispite their socioeconomic situation. Padre Piquer center also deals with diversity, has stabliseh multitasking classroom were cooperative learning is carried out, they have a different class environment: there are more tan one teacher per class and students are all together, never separated according to their abilities.

The second video was from Sadako School. This center based the learning process on learning doing, experiencing and puttin into practice in real life what they learnt. They were also focused on innovation, as technology is part of our lifes it must be introduced in the school environment. Besides, they  supported role distribution where children face different roles and finally they have to do a working notebook writing what they have donde and how.

               In conclusion, the Project of Inclusive School is posible but for introducing them completely we need everyone support. Apart from that, we need to break the barriers and finally try to do our best as teachers.

Ø  ICT’s AND LEARNING DISABILITIES – Crónicas Viajeras

This group talked about disabled children and how ICT’s could help them.

They focused mainly in the most common disabilities which are: autism, down syndrome and motor disabilities.

First they talked about autism. Autist children have difficulties of socialization, language, thoughts and imagination. For them they used tablets and cameras with specific Apps to help them to deal with their diabilities. The results shown that autist children started to be more integrated.

Next, they explained the down’s syndrome disabilities, wich were distractions, little initiative, por differentiation between old and new stimuli. Whiteboards, games (pictograms, just dance, sing star) were used with down syndrome children, what resulted that they helped children to memorize and concéntrate.

Finally, they presented the characteristics of children with motor dissabilities wich were: physical and motor difficulties and a big problema for these children was the unadaptation of the facilities. Mp3s, computers and laptops were used and finally the results showed that this kind of ICT’s helped them to adaptate, communicate and for feeling comfortable.

       In conclusion, ICT’s help disabled children to improve, integrate and foster their desire to participate in the class environment. 

              

Ø  ICT’s  AND IMPROVEMENT SCHOOLS – Team Perk

Team Perk talked about ICT’s in schools and how can they improve the learning and development processes of children.

This Project with ICT’s first focused on teachers and how the introduction of new technologies would affect them as sometimes children know more about their use than teachers. The solution to this problema was to organise courses for teachers for increasing their technological knowledge. This can be a profitable action but if we do in the right way. The introduction of ICT’s in school has to be done in the right way and if not there will appear some advantages and disadvantages. Here was where the idea of HOW could we introduce ICT’s comes.

They talked about teaching children to use technologies: they have to be critical and they need to know some strategies. Apart from this, they will use technologies in educational platformas such as wikis or blogs, to search infromation, videos, to make projects and to share information.

Then they also  talked about the materials we could use: ipads, robots, computers, etc. This helped children to innovate their way of learning as it is an innovation in the way teachers teach.

In conclusion, introducing ICT’s in school environment is a great idea as is a new way of teaching and learning and that enjoy children but we have to be carefull with social networks and student’s privacy. New technologies improve the relationships between teachers ans students as it makes them interact. A new way of teaching is near!

Ø  SOCIOEMOTIONAL LEARNING – Wanderlust

Socioemocional learning is based on neursoscience, multiple intelligences and psychoneuroinmunology.

What we get with socioemotional learning? We increase social skills and satifying interpersonal relationships, decrease violence, increase good academic performance.

Methodology followed to carry out socioemotional learning is to work emotions everyday, work empathy and asertiveness, expent some minutes at the beginning of the lesson to mins express feelings. 

Finally, we, as teachers, have to help them to feel happy. In this Project they suggested to work with multiple intelligences: work in projects with teachers help, work with mutiple intelligences and create an emotional intelligence week. They also foster cooperative learning as they consider is a good way to create frendship, positive reinforcement, feel comfortable, feel accomplished, etc. All of these projects CAN STOP BULLYING.

                Then, they focused on the development of empathy. Empathy is necessary and basic to live in community, communicate, work in groups and solve problems.

                Developing empathy is a new method to attend children’s emotions by active listening, teach games based in empathy techniques

·         What can we do?  Emotional stimulation, environment, develop empathic skills, equality, create deep knowledge of the students (teacher-student interaction).

Finally, they posted a video. Its main ideas were: integration, talk about things of life, put in others shoes, recognise emotions and learn how could you feel in different situations; read body expression, motional lessons, talk about their feelings.

In conclusion, the main aim is to acquire a better understanding of our emotions and control and identify others preventing adverse effects of negative emotions.

·         LEARNING COMMUNITIES – Musical Chairs

Learning community is the coordination of teachers, students and volunteers in the classroom. The main aim of this Project is to concern people that school and education is not something isolated from the society and that any type of help or cooperation is needed. 

The objective is to introduce society in the educational environment. We would do this with voluntiers, people that has nothing to do with the school (they don’t have academic degree) but they help giving talks, making workshops related with an specific topic.

To get this objective we need to carry out a process with 3 different stages:

1.       Dream: we think in all the possibilities to improve our school.

2.       Priorities: select between every proposals the most needed and effective.

3.       Working committees: put into practice solving the different difficulties we would found.

In conclusion, we need to introduce society in the educational environment and we can do this by the creation of new activities, projects and the modification of the facilities, teachers, methodologies, etc.

·         WAYS OF LIVING TOGETHER – Moderns Students

First, they talked about school mediation and explained the labour of the mediator (it is not always the teachers as children in many situation can avoid this kind of problematic situations) to face bullying, violence or exclusion.

Then, they explained the “peer support program”, which is related to the fisrt point and how to solve those problems.

Third, they talked about "Archeology of feelings" which is a book that compares arqueology with education. It explained it in 5 different steps: dig, discover, investigate, protect and expose.

Finally,the talked about a Finnish school called Kiva. There, they worked with bullying and online materials to fight againts harassment.

As final conclusion I want to say that all of these topics are related and we were not concerned about that. So, from now on we should try, as teachers to introduce all of these aspects in our classrooms and try to do our best, always!