11. Final conclusions

Looking back, it has been a long road walked during this term. Coming back to the first post, I feel we are a step nearer Ithaca but as Kavafis said the goal is not arriving there but enjoying the trip itself. During this trip to  School Guidance and Counselling I feel I've learned at all... I've changed my mind at some point during the year about many things related with didactics and about how to conceive diversity... As it is said in Carlos Cano attention to diversity plan, we all are diverse and from this view we, as teachers, have to try to include everyone so that everyone can get the best of themselves. On the other hand, as Pilar from Gaudem school said, 'this is about eliminating barriers so everyone can learn in the best conditions.' Isn't it the same?
I've been observing at school how methodology matters, how everything can be learnt through cooperative learning, how people, when  given responsibility, respond from this role. On the other hand, I'm aware that I've learned a lot not only contents but also from how this contents were proposed. Each class has been a methodology lab. in which try out some new strategies... So contents were learned without much effort while thinking about methodology and we learned about methodology because we were asked to explain some contents to our peers.  I feel I've been entering in a loop where both parts were fed. I could use many things I observed in the school in my classrooms as examples of the theoretical content and I could see if the contents we were seeing at the subject were put into practice and if so, how they did it. :-)
My mind is a mess of thoughts and ideas, I think this blog has helped me to organize them a bit, to review my notes, to give a voice to old and new thoughts, to rebuild them with new materials, to put them into practice and to learn from my errors. I think I've learnt in the three axis proposed: contents, methodology and ICT and I've tried to reflect it with the entries of the blog. Any comment will be welcome at any point.
Thank you very much.

10. School guidance plan

Now it is the time to put everything together to design our own school guidance plan.
To do it we've started from the school guidance plan of Carlos Cano school. We've decided to focus on the attention to diversity plan. And in TDAH as a specific case from which we will work.
Here you have our written  plan:

As we wanted to do a dynamic presentation we decided to pretend a judgement where the school guidance was exposed in a judgement were the lawyer defended the pros of our project and the attorney the cons and the counselor of the school explained the information. We also called a witness (a TDAH student) who, through her testimony, explained how the theoretical measures were applied in her case.
Once we finished the acting part we started a second part with the rest of the class (the jury) where the interaction was highly enhanced and everyone asked us questions about our plan and told us what they thought about it. For me it was a great part of dialogue.

This work has allowed me to understand even deeply the way the school I've been doing my practicum works. I've had the opportunity to speak with the counselor and the school board and to contrast the information given with teachers and students. So I've experienced the whole process (how is it plan, how actually works, how is it perceived by students and parents and what are the instructions on which it is based) Doing it this way, applying theory into practice and contrasting them is a powerful way to learn because you do it through the testimonies of others.

9. Conference with parents

After watching two videos about conferences with parents, we've tried to decide what are the points to bear in mind in a conference with parents.





These are some of the conclusions I've arrived to during the class and after it:

• A good welcome is crucial because it will set the atmosphere of the conference. Welcoming the mother at the door and accompanying her, trying to be close and friendly, chatting with her/him about something irrelevant at first to break the ice. Sitting in a way that you are not confronted but can hold her glance in a friendly way and the door is closed so there is a feeling of confidentiality.
• The conference has to be prepared in advanced. Goals, documentation of the child needed... It is very useful to send the parents a note with the goals to be achieved in the meeting. It is also needed to talk with the child and explain her/him what the conference will consist on.
• The ideal time for a conference is about 20 minutes. It has to be scheduled and the teacher should remember the mother/father about it so the other parents don't have to wait. It allows to structure better the time and it helps both parts of the conference to get to the point of the meeting.
• When you need to say something that is not positive at all, it is important to frame it between positive things. This way of making constructive criticism is known at Carlos Cano school (the place where I've been doing my practicum) as the sandwich technique. Which means starting by reinforcing something positive about the child, then the things that bother you or that need to be improved and to finish something positive again to end with a good feeling.
• It is very important to have proofs that stand the assessment criteria. So the teacher can show them to the mam to reinforce what it is being said (works of the child to show development, exams...) It is very useful to try to find the causes and not just stick to the results. A good way to organize it is to have a folder for each child. 
• It is a good point to make feel the mother that you want both to work as a team. She is not alone with the problem, the teacher is not either.
• The language used has to be as clear as possible. Educative jargon should be avoided in order everyone to understand the content of what is being said.
• It is very worthwhile to have a written schema so nothing is forgotten. 
• Once the conference is arriving to an end, the teacher should fix the next appointment and she has to check that the mother has understood what to do (if there is any instruction until the next conference).
• After the conference, the teacher need some time to organize what happened. It is very useful to carry out a self-assessment: How was it? What would I have done different? Are the aims I proposed fulfilled? It is also very useful to send the mother an evaluation sheet with the conclusions of the conference, the things they have agreed they would do at home until next meeting and the date of the next meeting. If there is no content enough to send a conclusion sheet it can be substituted by a note saying thank you for coming.

Self-reflection:

Through seeing some videos about conferences with parents we have learned a lot comparing what we saw with our own experience as students.

For me the main reflection about this session is not about the conference itself (I think we have learnt lots of things that will improve them when we have to do them) but about how families are conceived at school.

In most of the schools, the board of teachers tend to think that families don't have to contribute in the educational process, the farther they are the better... Putting forward their ignorance about educational topics  some schools put parents out of the way.

I've been experiencing this year amazing results when you include families in every possible way. Once teachers see them as friends instead of enemies cooperation between both may help a lot the child.

8. Talking with Pilar Alonso. Head of the counselling and Innovation department at Gaudem School

Today we've shared the session with Pilar Alonso who is the head of the counselling and Innovation department at Gaudem School.

Self-reflection

There are two main things that I highlight the most from today's session:
- First of all the way Pilar has talked about barriers elimination instead of curricular adaptation. It is not just a matter of words but of how education is conceived. It is not that you adapt the classroom for one student in need is that the classroom is structured both physically and methodologically so that any student who comes won't encounter any barrier for her/his learning. This concept usually is clear speaking about building adaptations... (For example the school has an elevator so if a person with mobility difficulties come won't find a physical barrier to arrive to his/her class... If there were no elevator before even knowing that a student which such characteristics could come to the school it wouldn't be ready for its use when needed) but if talking about physical barriers it seems obvious it is not that obvious while speaking about methodologies.
How to eliminate barriers for those who have learning difficulties? How to include them in the class and enhance their motivation? This leads to the second main thing I've realized during today's session:
- Cooperative learning is a very good solution to eliminate barriers. The methodology Pilar told us was very similar from the one I've experienced at Carlos Cano school with measures as trying to do whenever possible all the support measures inside the classroom, whenever possible there are at least 2 teachers per classroom and this is achieved through a teacher support web (whenever a teacher has a free hour s/he enters in another class), there is no textbook neither in primary education nor in secondary education... She has put into words many thing I've been elaborating this year through my experience in the school that were floating as thoughts through my mind.
She reinforced the idea that teachers should have both technical and reflexive skills and, as reflection is easier in a group, it should be collaborative. There is a need to change a lot of minds who think poor boy... S/he has the right of an education of quality. So his/her teacher needs to be an educator instead of an instructor.
There are still many things I can not elaborate in words from that day... but I have one thing for sure, the idea of bringing an expert to the class to chat with her is a very good methodological tool we should bear in mind once teaching because it allows the students to know the reality of what they are studying in the words of a person who is experiencing it instead of mere theory.

7. Collaborative learning debate

The first part of this session has surprised me a lot. Miguel has asked us what attention to diversity means now for us and how the concept has changed. He also asked us if we feel now that attention to diversity is important and why and to give feedback about the last activity (The collaborative activities we designed).

For the second part of the class we were divided in two groups in order to play a debate. The topic were advantages and disadvantages of collaborative learning. We were given some information.

Advantages of collaborative learning
Disadvantages of collaborative learning

We had some minutes to prepare the debate and then we started it.
At the end, Miguel gave us 44 benefits of collaborative learning


Self-reflection

I've really enjoyed the class today... And I think it is the time to reflect about this. Most of the time at the end of this subject sessions I have the feeling of having enjoyed and learned what really is a prize for my intrinsic motivation. I have the feeling of not wanting to miss any session not because I wouldn't get the concepts worked but because it is a very easy way to learn.

Once said that, I really liked the first part of the class. Miguel, through questions that made us compare waht we knew at the beginning of the subject and what we know now, made us aware of how we have been building knowledge and how a concept that we defined at the beginning of the course in 2 or 3 lines now has been filled with nuances and new branches we never would thought about. How we got involved with the idea of attention to diversity and how this idea changed our way to conceive education in a regular class. I think we would incorporate this to our methodological backpack, because if our students are old enough (2nd or 3rd cycle) it is a real prize for intrinsic motivation to be aware of what you've learnt and how you've changed your mind and emotions without any formal assessment required.

I have confronted feelings about the debate. I think debates are a methodological tool really worthwhile because you have to built up reasons to defend what you've been told and by building these reasons in your group I learn a lot, both by having to express what it is in my mind and by listening the others who often doesn't think as I do, questioning what they say and listening their answers. But in order to enjoy a debate everyone needs to know how to debate:




Mass media tells us at every minute that a debate is a mess of insults and personal arguments instead of showing that it is a matter of logic and reasoning... Of course there are many feeling around a debate because we confound attacking an idea with attacking the person who holds it.
Even when I don't think I'm good at debating, I'm really passionate about it because I enjoy it a lot, moreover when the topic to defend is the one in which I believe. As I've been the whole year carrying out a volunteer practicum at a school whose methodology is grounded on collaborative and cooperative learning, I had plenty of examples of why this works and even cases to refut the statements of the people who had to defend the other side. Of course, they are particular cases and can't be generalized... but what has been experienced is learned in a deeper way... I suppose this is my case.
I think at some points of the debate it lacked a moderator (even when Miguel moderated it sometimes) and also it would have been very useful some tips about what is a debate and what is not, about what arguments are valid and which aren't and also some feedback at the end of the activity about the strengths and the weaknesses of the debate he observed. 

6. Attention to diversity. Collaborative activities from other groups

Here I present a brief description and reflection of each group activity in the order they presented them:


Separate Special Education needs provision in Early Childhood and School Education.

This topic was prepared by Pablo, Raúl, Ruth and Daniel Jarque.

They presented as a contest activity in which 9 questions were given and we had to run in order to get a piece of paper of a table with some information. This information could be either true or false and the answer to a question or not.

One of the best points of this activity is that they achieved our full implication. The whole class was motivated to play and involved in the activity at 8.30h in the morning. Amazing. I would improve the level of depth they were looking for. From my point of view, this is a great activity to start the topic with or, once you've worked on it to sum up and to assess what has been learned, but I don't think it is the best choice for a core activity because once playing the players tried to guess without many knowledge foundations if what they got could match or not with an answer and the trials responded most of the times to grammatical questions more than knowledge ones (this answer doesn't match grammatically with this question...) and once we were correcting the activity no reinforcement was done on understanding. So I don't think we got the point of the topic at all. To end with I would highlight the good time management they did (it was a relaxed class without the stress of ours) and the feeling that we enjoyed it.

Special Education Needs provision within Mainstream Education

This topic was prepared by Ana Rodríguez, Dani Muñoz, Belén and Andrea González.

The activity they developed was an adaptation of a dynamic called strength in which everyone but one person stick together and this person has to separate one from the rest of the group. Each one was given a paper, so if a person was separated from the rest of the group s/he was given a question and the rest of the group has to see if they had the answer to this question.

A good point of this activity was that everyone got involved in it. I would improve the fact that there were no adaptations for "disabled people" and I could not participate at any point of the activity because I had a broken foot. It seemed to me quite paradoxical that the topic was special education needs provision and that one person was completely excluded of the activity. On the other hand this activity makes me retake an methodological internal debate about motivation and learning... Is everything valid in the name of motivating the students? Even when learning could be compromised? What was the aim of the activity? Is the activity addressed to learn or to the joy of playing itself? These and other questions were on my mind while I was observing them. Another thing I would improve of the methodology of the activity itself is that it was a qualifying game... So once you had no paper you had to sit down and look for the rest of the activity. I don't like at all qualifying activities. From my point of view they are too competitive and quite exclusive. The people who needs more playing, because they don't have the skills required developed, are the first to sit down in qualifying games. Do the observers learn? Do the ones who are playing learn? Do the team in charge of the activity learn? From my point of view there was no time to assimilate the info in the questions-answers part because the focus of the activity was on the physical part. I think the ones who learn were the team in charge of the activity while preparing the question-answer part but not during the game. How to achieve equilibrium between enjoying and learning?  A last point to improve was that, from my point of view, questions were not accurate enough so even if someone was really concentrated in learning contents it would have been difficult. I think it would have been great as a warming up activity of 5-10 minutes (3-4 questions answers without anyone disqualified) but I don't think it is a proper core activity to develop the topic.

Once the activity was finished they read the main ideas in a 'traditional class way'. This was the moment were the theoretical content was exposed. As we were asked to work with collaborative activities I don't find this methodology appropriate. I couldn't find the connection between the activity and the explanation. Why did they do the strength activity? If they believed the content should be exposed in a traditional way after all in order to learn it? Another thing to bear is mind is the assessment: How did they asses that the class had learnt the contents they wanted us to learn?

A very positive thing of their activity, though, was that I liked very much the environment they create with the activity. Almost everyone was laughing and enjoying.

Support measures for learners in Early Childhood and School Education

This topic was prepared by Blanca, Elena and Raquel. 

The activity they presented was a mixture between a role playing and a debate activity.

First of all we made groups randomly by choosing a color paper. Then they give as a topic (Hospitalized children, rural schools, school with a great proportion of immigrant children with language difficulties and a mental disabled school. We had to imagine that we were an institution (school, association...) with the characteristic of the topic given. Then some resources were presented and each group had to prepare reasons why they deserve that resource more than the rest of groups. Then we had to give a point to any group (including ours) to see who got the resource. I liked the fact that we work from our previous knowledge, it would be great as a starting activity for this topic. The only thing I would improve is that they didn't thought of any way to assess the activity (knowledge, skills such as communicative ones...). Maybe there is no feeling of learning because there is no exposure to the naked contents but we learnt a lot by sharing reasons in small groups and by listening the reasons and ideas of others. I really liked it. I think that we could learn from experience and empathy. It was a motivating activity that allowed us to share our points of view. From a methodological perspective, it is a good idea to establish small cooperative groups because then everyone participates.

Support measures for learners in Early Childhood and School Education

This group formed by Azahara,  María, Gemma, Almudena Bellot and  Athina, developed the same topic than the last one. First of all they introduced through a power point presentation the topic we were going to work on. Then we were divided in cooperative groups and had to build 3 murals with specific measures for 3 target groups (hospitalized children, itinerant students and rural schools). One mural was given to each group and we had to write on post-its specific educative measures for the target group of our mural. Then murals were rotated and we had to complete the mural of the other groups.

I think it has been a very well designed activity. They have thought in different group settings - individual work while each one writes his/her post-it, small group work within the cooperative groups to discuss every post-it and big group for the conclusions - they've also though about how to assess. They were assessing through direct observation and also through the written material of the post-its. I would improve the way the information was exposed at first. It was a master class. I would also improve the way the instructions on how to work on other's murals were given. The last thing I would improve is the time management: I found we had not enough time for the debate (I was enjoying it a lot). I really liked the way they encouraged different people from each group to speak reinforcing participation of those who are shyer.

Separate Special Education needs provision in Early Childhood and School Education

The last group was formed by  Chusa, Leticia,  Andrea Cerezo and Ari.

They developed an 'expert activity' (this methodology has been explained in the last post). Then they made a contest to see what we have learned.

Although at the beginning there was a little bit of disorganization, this is the activity in which I've learnt the most. It was a cooperative activity as we were asked to and it was dynamic and treat the contents with depth. To assess what we learnt with the expert activity they proposed a team contest. It resulted very dynamic with questions and with rebound. They give us a positive reinforcement when we answered well a question (sweets) and that increased the implication of the whole class (what are we able to do for a sweet?)

They had a good timing control, they made us think (even we used high thinking tools as mind maps to help us to explain the others our expert topic), share and cooperate. Well done!

With this activity there is another internal debate that arises... It is the one about positive reinforcements... Are they always valid? Should we propose a methodology where the prize to the effort is external or should we work on internal motivation? How to do that? I think it is great to use external reinforcements (prizes) from time to time... but if they are an habit... What will happen when they disappear?

5. Attention to diversity. Collaborative learning

Once we have experienced a collaborative activity such as the group of experts, it has arrived the time for us to design one.
As the aims of this subject are both acquiring new knowledge about counselling and school guidance and increasing our teaching backpack with new methodologies and didactic resources (ICT, classroom management, activities...), during the next sessions we are going to develop a collaborative activity about attention to diversity both to learn about this topic and to experience how is it to teach in cooperative groups through a collaborative methodology.
So, first of all, we've been looking at the documentation Miguel posted it (both about contents and about types of collaborative activities).
Here you have the slides about collaborative activities (I found many of them really useful and helped me to clarify some previous ideas I had about them). It also helped me to learn how to use box (a space in the cloud) and how to share its content... Here you have my first try:



You can find very well developed the information we had related to attention to diversity in Almu's blog.

We developed an hour class about the topic "Special Education Needs provision within Mainstream Education(Students with specific need of ed. support)"

First of all we split the class in 5 cooperative teams (The ordinary ones for this classroom)

We designed 3 activities:
- A warming up activity 'At a glance'  in which we wanted our mates to get in touch with the topic and to recover previous knowledge if any. In order to do so, we split the information we were going to work with in four chunks. The aim of this activity was that they had a first glance at the contents so they were able to answer some questions whose answer was on the papers hanged. We presented the activity as a little contest so that the dynamic feeling of it helped to enhance motivation.

- For the second activity, the core activity of the session, we chose a 'group of experts' activity, to reinforce the methodology we learned as a students and put it into practice as teachers to have a better perspective of its strengths and weaknesses. The aim of this activity was to work deeply on the contents and learn how to tell what you've learned so the rest of your group learns it as well. In order to do so, we asked them to write questions about it once they shared their information.

- The last activity 'The number' is thought as a summing-up activity. Using the questions written in the previous activity we will try to get into a question-answer contest among the groups to see what we have learnt, serving as self-evaluation of the knowledge acquired.

Here you have in a box presentation the activities further explained as well as the questions we asked during the first activity.

During the activity we tried to assess how each group was developing the activities. In collaborative learning it is not only the result which is been assessed but also the process. We tried to assess individual and group attitude towards the activities we proposed, and how they were working on them (performance, understanding, involvement...).

After the activity we asked the rest of the groups to send us an evaluation of our activities in order to see how they perceived them and what could be improved for next time. We also had a meeting to self-evaluate the development of the activities. Here you have our rubrics for each group and our self-assessment:




Self-reflection:

I've learnt a lot with this activity. To be honest, in this case, the weakest part of my learning was, at first, the content part, because I turned an expert on my chunk and because of the rush of the week I didn't learnt that much from the others... (Later on, I read the whole information). I really enjoyed the part of planning the activities, as I said I learnt more about cooperative learning (which I'm really keen on) and I had the opportunity to see the problems of the activities we planned when put into practice.

We thought the class was going to get involved with the first activity, and some of them did it but not all... There was a component of movement, a little bit of competition  to help them to wake up... But something was missing... Maybe, the chunks of information were too long, maybe the instructions of the activity were not exposed clear enough... Maybe some of them just didn't want to participate at all... What to do to motivate those without intrinsic motivation at all? I think this is one of the great questions of this degree.

Another thing to learn from, was the timing... How different does the time run in our heads and in reallity... As it uses to happen, we didn't calculate the time properly. In the second activity, one of the strongest points from my perspective is that we asked them to write questions down instead of reproducing contents. I think I learn much more through questions than through their answers... In order to make a smart question, it is required to understand what has been read and to relate this information.

The third activity was an activity that allowed us to know what was learned and what not. We thought that the fact that they were the ones making questions (instead of pre-thought questions from our part) would motivate them to get involved in the activity because they were their peers who were asking. It worked on most of the class...
I think this kind of activities were all the process is developed, planning-development-assessment of an activity is really worthwhile because it allows us to experience in the role of a teacher different ways to proceed in the class.

From an ICT point of view, with this activity I've deepen in how to hang and share contents in the cloud. I used to have dropbox but only to share files with people who also had the program. Now I've learnt how to embed the content I wanted to share. As always, self-learning of ICT, for me is quite hard. It is a process of trial and error... But I have to admit that the consequences are great. At least in this case.

4. Group of experts

Now that we've done a broad approach to what counselling is through the webquest and that we've seen different ways of understanding it worldwide, let's focus on the Spanish context. What does Guidance and Counselling mean in Spain? How does it work?

In order to research about it we've done a collaborative activity called group of experts. Here you have the instructions Miguel gave us:

I was assigned number 4 "Spain: Support Measures for Learners in Adult Education and Training"
So, within our group of experts, we decided to prepare our topic in order to explain it to our respective collaborative groups through a mind map (so we would see the key concepts and thus we would be able to develop the whole piece of information from it). We did it using Cmap (a tool we learned to use during the first term) so we would be able to share it with the rest of the class:

What we came back to our collaborative groups we explained each other the piece of information we worked on in order to share what we've learnt.


Next day we had a surprise exam about the topics of the previous session.
Then Miguel gave each of us every piece of information and we had to self-assess our exam and then write it again properly.


Here you have the exam questions:

I've found the links in Eurypedia for each piece of information:

1a) Guidance and Counselling in Early Childhood and School Education
1b) Education Staff Responsible for Guidance in Early Childhood and School Education
2a) Guidance and Counselling in Higher Education
2b) Support measures for learners in Higher Education
3) Guidance and Counselling in a Lifelong Learning Approach
4) Support Measures for Learners in Adult Education and Training




Self - reflection:


What I've rediscovered with this activity is that from learning to teaching a topic there is a huge step. It is not only the content but the way to transmit it what makes the others get involved or not... learn or not... You can just expose your information or you can try them to learn it. In my group I experienced both... and even more, one of us had to go so there was a topic about which we didn't work the same way than the others.
From my point of view, I think that it should be reinforced during the instructions that the aim is not just tell what you've learnt but think about a way to make that the others learn it as easy as possible.


The main reflection comes from the "exam experience". I truly hate exams, I don't feel it is the way to show what someone has learned and until what extend he or she did it... but... (look the silliness of my next statement) the best way - not the only fortunately - in which I believe I've learnt something is through a good mark in an exam :-( I feel I have a lot to "deconstruct" because even disliking exams and thinking they are neither didactic nor a good way to prove nothing else than stress resistance, I build my self-image as a student on them... Well it is never late to realize there are things inside that need to be reconsidered. 


Once said that, another reflection I'm making is on the exam itself... I felt it was tremendously  unfair. We were supposed to have 25% of the overall information so I would expect an exam that treat the way we learned and thus the content in a balanced way... but this wasn't the case... In the exam the topic in which I was an expert (topic 4) was valued with a question of 1 point while for the first topic there was a question with 8 sections valued with 4 points... (This topic was the one we couldn't prepare properly the day before because our expert had to go). As future teachers I found very enriching to be in the shoes of an student who feels that the way she is being assessed is not fair. 


On the other hand, I liked the way Miguel conducted the activity from this moment on. With the exam I had the feeling that now I knew what I didn't know... He made us self-assess our exam (after giving us all the information) and then, we had the opportunity to redo the exam. Maybe I should stop here for a sec. to think  how do we self-assess us... Again, the thing about having clear criteria came back to my mind... I tried to decide how to assess my own exam before starting to assess it... Let's keep working on this.
At the end of the activity, I was quite sure of knowing the info I was required to. This was reinforced with the feedback of Miguel. (But I'll come back with this topic about feedback later on :-) )


Here you have both attempts of exam (The first one with my own rubrics to assess it and the second one once I read the whole piece of info):

And here you have the second attempt :-)

3. Presentations and assessment of the webquest

Once the presentations over the webquest were ready, we devoted almost 3 classroom sessions to present them.

During these sessions we were asked to assess the other group's presentations (peer-assessment) and to self-assess ours. (Neither of these tasks was an easy one...)

It was very enriching to see the same contents through different perspectives. All the groups had to prepare a presentation on the same contents. At first, I thought I was going to get bored of listening the same up to 6 times... but it was the other way round. Even we had exactly the same material to prepare it, none of us did the same... Through the different groups we could reinforce the core concepts and then getting different nuances depending on what the group found interesting and on what each group focused on.

You can find our presentation in the last post.
Here I've attached the presentations of the groups that share it:

Presentation of Leticia, Chusa, Andrea C. y Ari:

School Guidance and Counselling on Prezi

Presentation of Raúl, Pablo, Ruth and Dani J.:

School guidance and counselling on Prezi

Presentation of Raquel, Blanca and Elena:



Our group agreed before the presentations started to assess through 3 main criteria:

- Contents: Is the presentation complete? Do you feel that they understand what they present? Are they able to answer questions about the content they present? Have they looked for examples to reinforce the meaning of the concepts they present?

- Communication skills: Do they read? (The audience doesn't matter at all)  Do they repeat a memorized paragraph? (same as the last one) Do they explain what's in the presentations? (The message here is addressed to the audience) Do they look the people they are explaining the topic to? Do they feel comfortable with English? (We didn't give a bad mark if this is not the case... but we found it very important to keep our attention on it because the quality of what is being said can be affected by the lack of domain of the language used... From my point of view this is a pitty...)

- Tech quality: What kind of presentation do they chose? Did they explore any new software or stick to power point? How are the "slides" like? (I think it is importance to achieve a balance in the quantity of text to read: too much text then the people won't listen... if there is not enough text they may get lost... So the point is to present the key ideas or concepts and to develop them through the oral explanation). Did they use videos and images? Is this media relevant and well chosen?

You can find a summary of our group evaluations in Almudena's blog. There are only 3 of the 6 groups evaluations because we handled the other 3 (included ours) to Miguel without keeping a copy.

Self-reflection:

During these presentations I've thought mainly about 2 topics: assessment and teaching styles.

These sessions have made me think a lot about assessment and evaluation (a cyclic trend topic in my mind)  the importance of having clear criteria in order to be objective while assessing. The importance of transmitting to the students these criteria before their assessment (to make it transparent instead of the classical black box in which students try to guess what the teacher is looking for in their works). The importance of defining what is important. Because what is meaningful for me as evaluator may not be so important for another member of the assessing team. So, the importance of an agreement on shared criteria... And then, why not? Share this criteria with those who are going to be assessed... What do people fear if they know it in advance? Even more, the importance of having meaningful criteria that makes it possible to assess the whole process and not just a product... Is it possible to assess what a person/group really know? What are then those criteria?
I've found it very difficult to assess the other groups. I felt myself being subjective... Sometimes having the feeling that I liked it or not... but it is not that easy to state why  I liked it... I think assessment is a topic that will accompany me during my whole path... maybe today's reflection is just one step further and the opportunity to come back to it.

About teaching styles... As you can see through the 4 presentations I've attached (ours and 3 more) there are many ways to explain the same thing... What leads me to many questions... What's the best way to work on a content? Does the content itself really matter? Or what matters is the way the teacher presents it? What do engage us? and our future students?

2. Building our knowledge: Webquest

Once we had worked on our previous knowledge, the time arrived to work on the definitions we proposed to get the nuances of these first concepts.


How to do so? This is the time for webquests.


A webquest is a didactic resource through the Internet which encourage students higher order thinking skills to solve a real messy problem. They are within Problem-Based Learning (PBL). They are inquiry-oriented activities which allow students to build their own knowledge looking for information in different web pages and contrasting the different sources. If you want to know more about webquests, their aims, parts... Click here.


How did we work? Miguel, our teacher, presented us the webquest we were going to use and through a groupal glance to it we review what we had just learned theoretically in an individual way about webquests applied to a real instance.
Then, we organized ourselves in teams of 4 and we followed the webquest in order to develop a way to answer the questions stated there and  to present the information we got to the rest of the class. Each of us had a glance through the 7 webpages given as resources. In our group we decided that each of us was going to specialize in one or two webpages to share the information obtained afterwards.


How did we present the info? I was very interested in learning how to use prezi so we decided to try and learn. After 3 class sessions devoted to the webquest and prezi... Here you have the  presentation we did:

School Guidance and Counselling on Prezi

During the preparation sessions Miguel showed us this video about comprehensive school counselling. It was a good starting point for our work.






Self-reflection:


From a didactics point of view, I'm realizing one of the purposes of Miguel is that we experiment a methodology we may apply, that is doing activities and using technological resources that we may adapt and use once we are teaching (putting theory into practice) having first the student experience of the activity, and so, a broad view over the resource both as students and as prospect teacher.


For instance, the groupal reinforcement of an individual task such as learning about webquests from a webpage, or the use of the webquest itself.
From an ICT point of view, we have learned two valuable resources: webquests and prezi, therefore improving our ICT skills.
I've rediscovered the webquest as a way to promote students' autonomy and critic learning while having a guidance in order not to get lost because, as it has already been said, it is a way to promote that each student builds her/his own knowledge.
For me, learning to use prezi has been the end of a process which started as every learning process should start: with curiosity. During one of our monthly session of the Collective Learning Group (Grupo de aprendizaje colectivo) of Escuela Abierta (the Pedagogic Renewal Movement - M.R.P.- of Getafe) about social skills and emotional intelligence, prezi was used and I was quite impressed about its possibilities but as it always happens I found no time to go in depth with it until the proposal of presenting this assigment using an original way. So, it is important to give some freedom within the activities in order to be addressed from the interests of each student.

1. A way to start: Icebreakers and previous knowledge

    How shall a teacher start a lesson? What can she/he do in order to capture the students attention?
This is what we have done the first day of this subject:

• Icebreakers: They are short activities used at the beginning of the class to give time enough to the students so they can focus on the upcoming lesson. They can be group dynamics, a short video, etc. 
• Introducing myself: It's a good icebreaker for a first day in a subject. It allows the teacher to know the class (and even among the students) and the students to meet the teacher.

• Previous knowledge: It is very important for a teacher to know what is the starting point of their students in the subject in order to adapt the contents to the real level of  the students. To do so, we have done a group dynamics in which we had to translate into English the title of the subject "Orientación educativa y acción tutorial" and try to define it broadly. As we tried to reach a consensus, first we thought it individually, then by couples and, finally, in teams of 4. At this stage we tried to bring our ideas together. Here there is what we came up with: 

Num	Title	Definition
1	School counselling and educational orientation	School counselling and educational orientation is about school counselling which involves recognising academic and personal problems in order to help children to overcome them by adopting the established instructions to each student's context.
2	Educational orientation and counselling	A set of tools to help us to identify and deal with educational problems whose aim is to guide a class which is composed of different kind of children (context matters).
3	School guidance and tutorial action	A kind of guidance to provide tools focused on children to solve problems about their learning and development at school
4	Educational guidance and students’ counselling	It will provide us with skills to help students and deal with diversity in the classroom, getting the best out of them to become critical citizens in society.
5	School guidance and counselling	It shows what teachers have to know about tutorizing. We, as teachers, must know what kind of activities are the best for children to reach the objectives and guide them during Primary school.

Key words: counselling, problem solving, identify, context, tools, guidance, diversity, 'tutorizing', educational objectives.

Self-Reflection: 

From a didactics point of view, we discovered that we already knew some concepts and although we had many things to learn and polish up, we were able to state some concepts to start with. I think it is very important to take into account the previous knowledge of the students in whatever you are going to teach. Mainly I can find 2 reasons: The first one is to encourage the students and the second one is to give a broad idea of the class level in order for the teacher to adapt his/her lessons to this starting point. 

From a linguistic point of view, we have learned that some words don't have meaning at all in English or they don't have the same meaning as in Spanish or even they aren't used in the same contexts (e.g. tutorizing...)

During this class I reinforced the idea that it is easier to create a learning atmosphere when students feel that the teacher is a close and approachable person. It is easier to work with a person if you know something about her/him.

The only improvement I would suggest for a first class is the importance to handle or to post a study guide of the subject with the themes, the way they are going to develope them (methodology), how the subject is going to be evaluated (evaluation criteria), some broad bibliography... I think it helps the student to figure out a broad idea of the subject and to work in two different ways: the one of learning and the one that involves marks.

0. A welcome gift

Ithaca

As you set out for Ithaca

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:

you' ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind -

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaca always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you're destined for.

But don't hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you're old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you've gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you'll have understood by then what these Ithacas mean.

K.Kavafis