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