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!