Innovation project

Hi guys, this is the very last post of mine for this subject. I hope you have enjoyed all of them as much as I have. Here is an esqueme to help you understand todays finale project. The innovation project.

This project consisted on building an innovation project and answering a series of questions to help us understand the whole process. Below I will leave you my group work. Enjoy.

The preliminary ideas I had about this topic was the definition and idea of innovation project. It's when a project produces innovation as a result. It means that a certain project is innovative, not necessarily its results. Using new methods to create something to help us innovate. It's the process of translating an idea or invention into a good service that creates value for which customers will pay.

Our team created Innovation Project about health, as it is an important aspect in our lives and many people aren’t aware of this issue. Moreover, it is important to raise awareness since the students are children, so in this way, they will lead a life full of health.
The centre that we have selected is CEIP Real Blanc from Cocentaina. We have decided to select this centre because it is a public school from the Valencian Community which is  implementing an interesting project of innovation with all the students of the school. The school received an award for this great project.
I have learned how to come up with an innovation project and how to create it following the questions to have in mind that were proposed by my teachers. The steps were easy to follow and the questions, which you can see in the esqueme, were set out nicely. The project was fun and gives me an idea of what to propose to a school when I become a teacher myself.
Here is the link to our project.

The hardest part was coming up with an idea. We had to think for a while about this as we didn't know much about innovation projects. After a good 20 minutes we decided to the project about health. I need to improve on knowing more types of innovation projects. I read a website called SIMO education written by a numerous amount of authors, one for each example. which gives you various examples of innovation projects implemented all over the world, even here in Spain. The variety is amazing and even though it doesn't fully explain what they are used for and how it helps, it is obvious when you think about it. It goes from LGBTI, to history entertainment, to technology. This should have been something to mention. Give a few examples to us, then that way we can be a little more creative.
SIMO education. (s.f.). Recuperado de https://www.ifema.es/en/simo-educacion/news/simo-educacion-2018-present-30-innovative-educational-experi

The knowledge I can generate was something I have just come up with. I remember seeing a flipped classroom theory which is supposed to help students efficiency at school. A flipped classroom means to reverse the traditional learning environment by delivering instructional content, often online, outside of the classroom and they do their work in class. It basically means to learn at home from videos of your teachers and work in class with their help. This could be a good way of learning as most students when they get home they do not do their tasks for the day where as now the teachers is on them. If the videos are sent online then what we could do to make sure that the students watches them is send them to a messaging group, like WhatsApp, to the parents to ensure they know that their children must watch a certain content.

References:

SIMO education. (s.f.). Recuperado de https://www.ifema.es/en/simo-educacion/news/simo-educacion-2018-present-30-innovative-educational-experi

Practice 10: Assessment.

Welcome to practice 10. Today we are going to be talking about assessment. Here is this posts esqueme.

This practice teaches how the process of assessment works and how to construct a diagram of one.

The preliminary ideas that I had about this practice was the definition of assessment. Assessment is the process of considering all the information about a situation or a person and making a judgment.

I have learned how difficult it actually is to understand the process of assessment. I have learned how to do the assessment step by step, all the seeing ahead and the plan b's we need to have. The diagram was interesting as well, we had many ideas on how to do it but the way we did it was easier for us to understand.

The hardest part, and therefor that needs more work, was how to elaborate the diagram. As I have just mentioned the diagram was very interesting as we didn't know how to build it. W tried it various ways but we had to think how it would be easier to understand and follow. This is how it ended up.



The knowledge I can generate is a website that compares both methodologies, formative and summative. We already know that formative gives us the information to guide and lead the educational process. It involves a permanent check on all the elements that make up the process, not the results. Whereas summative occurs at the end of a particular process programme, to analyse the results. This website explains the definitions, with an explanatory video, what elements are involved, what they assess and even which one is best. This could have been explained better in the power point, but at least now I know.
Zook, C. (s.f.). formative or summative? Recuperado de https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/formative-vs.-summative-assessments-what-do-they-mean

References:
Zook, C. (s.f.). formative or summative? Recuperado de https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/formative-vs.-summative-assessments-what-do-they-mean

Practice 9: Parents association.

This esqueme involves the questions we needed to follow to complete our task of finding a parents association of a school.

This projects aims to find a school and explain through a series of questions and explain how their parents association is organised.

The preliminary ideas I had about this practice was the definition of parents association. The parent Association is the structure through which parents and guardians in a school can work together for the best possible education for their children.

I have learned how schools have set out the importance and objectives on the website for parents to see if they like what they are setting out for their children. I have also realised how big of a part parents play when it comes to the education at their school. They really do have a lot of work to complete and discuss.

What I struggled with was finding advantages and disadvantages of being part of the parents association. This is something we have struggled with before and still need to work on. We tend to know what we have to do and what the topic of the practice is, but never really to come up with pros and cons. The website by Jessica Sayers really helped. Here is a pro and a con amongst the other various ones she thinks are visible. The first pro she mentions is that you get collaboration. AMPA is one of the best associates to join when it comes to collaboration. These collaborations aren't just great from parent to parent but also for parent to teacher associates. AMPA gives you a chance to join a group of like-minded people that will let you use your best assets to meet other people. This is perfect to get things down for your school to make their education the best it can possibly be. If you like to meet new people and work on projects together then you need to join AMP to collaborate with other parents and teachers. A con that she mentions is actually quite obvious. AMPA can sometimes feel overwhelming. When you join it can at first feel like a great idea, but then over time, it can feel overwhelming. Of course, the main focus is the school and children but it can turn into small commits. Such as who's bringing the desserts for the next meeting, who's going to volunteer at this event, who's going to run for the AMPA board and put everything together. And many times parents feel like once you volunteer for something small they are going to expect more and more over time. 
Sayers, J. (s.f.). Pros and cons of AMPA. Recuperado de https://www.moms.com/pta-joining-pros-cons/

I am going to leave you a website, but I don't want you to read it , I want you to watch the video. Again, listen to some explain what AMPA or PTA is. It will make it so much clearer and they explain it so much better than me.
what is AMPA. (s.f.). Recuperado de https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-a-pta-definition-role.html

References:
Sayers, J. (s.f.). Pros and cons of AMPA. Recuperado de https://www.moms.com/pta-joining-pros-cons/
what is AMPA. (s.f.). Recuperado de https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-a-pta-definition-role.html

Practice 8: Montessory school.

This esqueme is about the community-building plan in a school of our choice in the Valencian Community. The school we chose was Montessory.

The practice is set out to put our knowledge about the community-building plan, using a school of our chose and elaborating a project that joins these two together.

The preliminary idea I had about this project was the definition of community-building plan. Community planning involves the formulation of long range visions, goals, policies and strategies for achieving social, economic and environmental sustainability within a community in order to guide future community development.

In this project I have learned how to set out on a school webpage a community-building plan. How to grab the knowledge I knew and compare it to what they did. It also made me think about how important this is for parents to know about the plan as they need to know everything going on in a school. If they find out that it doesn't reach out respectively with their community they might take their child out of the school so it is always important to state what they have as objectives.

The hardest part has been to say what we thought could be improved. When we say its plan we thought it was pretty solid so coming up with something we didn't know much information about was quite tough. In the end we decided that we could improve aspects such as immigrant integration o the equality as it does not mention in the plan. After taking all of the points above into consideration, we think it is important to be aware of the current problems in our society and to teach the students since they are children. I need to learn more about main objectives to be able to say whether a schools community-building plan is complete or whether it needs an improvement. The knowledge I can generate is from the author Eric Schaps. He explains why a community-building plan is so important, the approaches and that it must be it must be a priority. These things, when reading the power point, we can guess these questions, but I think it's important to always state these thing and have them in mind before even thinking about elaborating one yourself. Schaps, E. (s.f.). Community-buildin plan is important. Recuperado de http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar03/vol60/num06/Creating-a-School-Community.aspx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APjMjm6uAT8
This is a little video that explains what a community-building plan is. I know I have explained this already but it sometimes becomes clearer when you here it from someone else rather than reading it.

References:
Schaps, E. (s.f.). Community-buildin plan is important. Recuperado de http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar03/vol60/num06/Creating-a-School-Community.aspx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APjMjm6uAT8

Practice 7: Diversity.

Hi guys. Our post today is about diversity. Hope you enjoy!

This practice wants us to create a scheme to make sure we understand the different advantages and disadvantages that diversity can bring.

We have learned the various advantages and disadvantages of diversity in a school. Here are some examples: It is obvious that the advantages are more visible as schools organisation progresses. By having those who have an advantage in the same classroom, they can push themselves and progress to be the best they can be.They have the opportunity to socialise and form friendships with people who don’t have a disability. We have also learned that in the classroom they have peer role models academically, socially and in terms of their behavioural skills. They also have greater access to the general curriculum. The end result so far is the social acceptance that they receive. We have also learned that the disadvantages for disabled children was present at a higher level years ago than currently. Originally the concept of disability wasn’t understood as a progressing matter, but as a segregation. As we said earlier, students with special needs were separated in the school from the rest of the ‘normal’ students. This means that they are only able to interact and compete who have the same ability as themselves. We could also find the possibility that the centre won’t adapt and help the children in need but will expect them to adapt to the centre. Finally, we learned that the situation of the separation of these types of children still exists and if, and hopefully when, these are joined as one, they must have the required resources in every school for every child.
For me it was more interesting to learn about the many disadvantages even though it was the hardest part to learn and therefor I need more practice. We based our practice on our own knowledge and what we could see from the power point but I found an author called Andrew Button who states a series of obvious disadvantages that we didn't think of. Here are some of the things he has to say. First of all, he says that there may be a language barrier. Language barriers are generally temporary in nature as the eventually learn the language of the country they move to, but the language segregation can endure. As a result, many governments now require that prospective immigrants learn their country's official language. Another disadvantage is social tension which can occur as a result of cultural and linguistic differences. In Europe tension between the Muslim minority and the largely secular majority is frequently attributed to the incommensurability of Islamic and secular values. The tensions caused by culture are thought to be exacerbated by economic differences, as European Muslim populations are frequently disadvantaged in employment due to a lack of educational opportunities. He also states many more in a very detailed way. Button, A. (s.f.). The disadvantages of cultural diversity. Recuperado de https://www.theclassroom.com/the-disadvantages-of-cultural-diversity-12082787.html The knowledge I can generate is from a website I found when trying to study for my exam. It shows us how important diversity really is. The site I found tells us the following advantages: Structured classroom activities can highlight diversity, mutual respect is part of the equation, no child left behind shines the light on achievement gaps among diverse groups of students many many more. This isn't In the power point, but I do think these things should have been mentioned because I was really entertained when reading this article. How important is diversity? (s.f.). Recuperado de https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/cultural-diversity-at-school/ References: Button, A. (s.f.). The disadvantages of cultural diversity. Recuperado de https://www.theclassroom.com/the-disadvantages-of-cultural-diversity-12082787.html How important is diversity? (s.f.). Recuperado de https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/cultural-diversity-at-school/

Practice 6: leadership helps improve schools.

Hi guys, welcome to practice number six. Today we are going to talk about how leadership helps improve the outcome of schools.



This practice wants us to understand the importance of leadership, its objectives, functions, methods, types and how this can determine the outcome of the school.

The preliminary ideas I had about this topic was all the knowledge from lesson 6. Therefor I knew the meaning of leadership, the types, its characteristics etc. But what I didn't know was how this helps the outcome of the school.

I have learned thatdistribution of leadership gives way to the improvement of the school with the use of empirical evidence. I have also learned that to prove this we need to use certain methodologies such as draws on several fields of enquiry, by looking at changes in organisation, the effectiveness of schools and their leadership. It also analyses in order the evidence from each area and gives us a combination of its most common findings. The last thing it taught me was that we need to assess the outcome of the school now, followed by making the act of distributed learning easy for all schools in all situations to follow.
The hardest part for me was finding the conclusions they obtained from the study. I couldn't use the help from any author as we had to see what was in the given document. However, my friends helped me out and we ended p completing the task. We need to work more on how leadership improves the schools outcome. I found an article written by a numerous amount of authors who explain on pages 16 to 20 the importance of leadership and how it can help the outcome of students. Her is an example. The sustainable transformation of a school is the outcome of effective leadership. Effective leadership results in the improvement of physical, psychological and social conditions for teaching and learning, raised aspirations of staff, students and communities and the improved achievement of all pupils. This isn't explained in the power point, so to understand this I recommend reading the article. It helped me. Day, C., Sammons, P., Hopkins, D., Harris, A., Leithwood, K., Gu, Q., . . . Kington, A. (s.f.). Pupils outcome is because of leadership. Recuperado de https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/11329/1/DCSF-RR108.pdf The knowledge I can generate is, apart from the 3 types of leadership that we have studied, that there are more types. Why restrict information o something important. The other four types are the following. Strategic leadership, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, coach-style leadership and bureaucratic leadership. The most interesting is the transformational leadership even though it is only sometimes effective.

Transformational leadership is always "transforming" and improving upon the company's conventions. Employees might have a basic set of tasks and goals that they complete every week or month, but the leader is constantly pushing them outside of their comfort zone.

When starting a job with this type of leader, all employees might get a list of goals to reach, as well as deadlines for reaching them. While the goals might seem simple at first, this manager might pick up the pace of deadlines or give you more and more challenging goals as you grow with the company.

This is a highly encouraged form of leadership among growth-minded companies because it motivates employees to see what they're capable of. But transformational leaders can risk losing sight of everyone's individual learning curves if direct reports don't receive the right coaching to guide them through new responsibilities.

Becker, B. (s.f.). tje 8 most common types of leadership. Recuperado de https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/leadership-styles

References:

Day, C., Sammons, P., Hopkins, D., Harris, A., Leithwood, K., Gu, Q., . . . Kington, A. (s.f.). Pupils outcome is because of leadership. Recuperado de https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/11329/1/DCSF-RR108.pdf

Becker, B. (s.f.). tje 8 most common types of leadership. Recuperado de https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/leadership-styles

1. 
   

Lesson 10: assessment of the schools.

Hi guys, this unfortunately is our last theory post. But don't worry because this last one is just as interesting as the rest. Let's have a look at the esqueme to lesson 10.

This lesson helps us understand the importance of assessment. It  tells us what it is used for, what elements are assessed, the types of assessment and the laws that govern this action.

The preliminary ideas that I had about this lesson was that the assessment is used to know the degree to which each one of the proposed objectives has to be achieved, to detect the problems that the organisation is having, to reorient the implantation of plans and to improve performance or the degree of achievement of objectives. There are many more but these were the ones I recognised

In this lesson I have learned what assessment is really used for, what elements are assessed, the types of assessment which are the formative and the summative and the laws governing the assessment; these being LOGSE, LOE, LOMCE and the Oder of the 13th of December.

This lesson was quite easy to understand and didn't have any difficulties but if I have to mention something I would have to say that the point about sel-evaluation wasn't explained I would like to know what this actually means. What I would like to learn about how self-evaluation is related to schools. Self-evaluation I found simply on google that it means to look at your progress, develop and learn to determine what has improved and what areas still need improvement. It usually involves comparing a ''before'' situation with a current situation. I found an author called Simon Camby who explains in a very detailed maner how the self-evaluation of a school is its backbone. It explains the importance, the steps to do so, its guidelines. The reasons why this isn't explains is a little disappointing as I believe it's very important. Camby, S. (s.f.). Self-evaluation in schools. Recuperado de https://www.focus-education.co.uk/blog/self-evaluation-document-great-school/

The knowledge I can generate is very useful. I found an article written by Erin Hull who explains everything you need to know about assessment in schools, what it is, the types, its alternatives. If you focus at the bottom of the page there are many other articles with variants of this topic such as creating questions for student assessment, dynamic assessment... The most interesting thing for was when she said that assessments are normally considered stressful affairs. This I didn't know. I just believed that it took a while because of the things you need to take into consideration, not because said process was complicated. Anyway, she explains that there are some modern types of assessment such as diagnostic assessment and alternative assessments which are actually used to relieve stress and make courses more accessible for students. Worth looking at. Hull, E. (s.f.). Assessment in schools.. Recuperado de https://study.com/teach/assessments.html

I am going to leave a link down below because it explains what makes a great assessment. This is something that helps us have a global image of what is needed internally.
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/tools/assessing-and-monitoring-pupil-progress/developing-whole-school-assessment/

References:
Camby, S. (s.f.). Self-evaluation in schools. Recuperado de https://www.focus-education.co.uk/blog/self-evaluation-document-great-school/ self-evaluation in schools.
Hull, E. (s.f.). Assessment in schools.. Recuperado de https://study.com/teach/assessments.html assessment in schools.
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/tools/assessing-and-monitoring-pupil-progress/developing-whole-school-assessment/ What makes a great assessment?