In week 10, we worked with the textbooks topic, specifically with the dark side of them.

 

First, Claudia who was the facilitator divided the tasks and organized the activity. Each one of us was in charge of reading one part of the text both in Spanish and English. Then we took the main ideas of them and we put it in common in class. After that, we chose the best ones and we thought how could we relate these ideas  with the pictures that we will had to do later.

During the class break, we made the pictures of everyone together and we edited them with Instagram.

Finally we uploaded the photos to the Instagram stories and printed them to bring them the next day in class.

On Tuesday everything was ready to start!

After listening Linda’s explanations we created some spaces to do our museum moving chairs and tables in order to show our ideas to the other groups. Maló who was the star had to be in our personal space explaining all the ideas and the others had to move around the class seeing the others museums. While we were doing so, we had to take notes of the general and specific information which would be useful with the feedbacks to complete and improve our work.

 

Our 10 ideas about the dark side of textbooks were:

 

1. There are students that can't afford the price of the books.

2. Textbooks make disqualified teachers.

3. Textbooks are published for economic rather than intellectual reasons

4. Books have complement items only for one use, so students can’t sell them again.

5. Books don't have creativity.

6. Paying again after 4 years for the same content

7.  Education and books are influenced by the government

8. Student-matter could be sometimes wrong or it could be false.

9. With the use of books it isn't necessary to memorize as much, so the memory and retelling capacity will get worse

10. The textbook governs the life of the class.

 

Books are our ‘’way of learning’’ and this task has been our way of reflecting about them.

 

This is our different and interesting final product of our work with textbooks and our space for seeing it:

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1. There are students that can't afford the price of the book

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2. Textbooks make disqualified teachers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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3. Textbooks are published for economic rather than intelectual reasons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Books have complement items only for one use, so students can't sell them again

 

 

 

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5. Books don't have creativity

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6. Paying again after 4 years for the same content

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7. Education and books are influenced by the government

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8. Students-matter could be sometimes wrong or it could be false 

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9. With the use of books it isn't necessary to memorize as much, so the memory and retelling capacity will get worse

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10. The textbook governs the life of the class

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The feedback that we received was that some of the images ideas weren’t transmitted clearly. So we have decided to put the meaning under each image.

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This week, the roles were:

 

Facilitator: Claudia Dobón

Historian / Journalist: Ana Losada and Ana Jiménez

Curator: Marta Delgado

Translator: Beatriz Llamas and Inmaculada Martínez

Analyst: Inés Moreno and Elena Martínez

Star: María de la O Jiménez

 

 

That week, our analysts, Inés y Elena, made the following reflection:

 

This week, we have learned that textbooks are not as good as they seem, because they have advantages, but a lot of disadvantages too and we, as teachers, could use others methodologies in order to teach students in a better way, such as doing a PBL with a lot of worksheets, using new ICT teaching children how to use them… As we have said before, textbooks have a lot of disadvantages: sometimes they are so expensive, they are manipulated and controlled by the government and only teach what the government wants; they make lazy, boring and predictable teachers; they are always teaching the same concepts year by year, sometimes they become repetitive without creativity, they do not improve their content if there is something that is wrong or not include newly discovered information...

 

We strongly believe that learning these concepts while we were reading the documents that Linda brought to us is the best part of the activity because it has given us the opportunity to judge and have a reflexion about the good and bad aspects of textbooks, because, before this activity, we have not thought that textbooks could have a so many negative aspects and so much negative influence on us. Now, we have learned a lot of things about them and we know that they are not as good as we thought, and this is one of the best parts of this task.

 

We can consider that the best moment of the week was when we were working all together doing the Instagram pictures because we spent a good and fun time together helping each other and a lot of new ideas came out. To be honest, if we had done them individually, the pictures and the activity would not have been as good as it is. The main reason is that when we are together we are better in order to achieve the final goal of the group activities and, also,  the time goes faster than doing the activities separated.

 

In contrast, we guess that the worst part of the activity was when we had to listen each one of the presentations of the rest of the groups in class because, although it was a good technique to get ideas of other groups and moreover at the same time that they were repeating identical ideas you could learn them as if you were studying, it was very repetitive.

 

As a group, we have to conserve the good organization that we have because almost every week we divide the activities in a good way, we ask for any doubt to our classmates and also we put in common all our ideas as we work all together with rapport. On the other hand, we have to improve that every component of the group does his own part of the work earlier and not in the last moment, although finally we did it very well.

 

The content of this task could be related to the content of other tasks, in the part that we do not use physical books, we use online documents which are as important as a physical book. In addition, in this case, they are free. Moreover, in general, in this subject, we haven't used physical books. Instead in psychology or English we have used books which are very expensive to buy them and in addition, they were made five years ago so they could have information that it is wrong or outdated.

 

We think that this activity has a good social connection because it is related directly with the life of all of the students that now are studying using textbooks because their teachers are not concerned about the disadvantages of using them to teach. And, what is more, children that are using textbooks at school would not be as able as other children using  ICT resources or other methodologies and this will impact on their academic life.

 

The five core terms this week are:

 

DIGITAL BOOK: Is a book that has been published and that is available in a digital form.

 

CD: A compact disk is a tool that allows people to storage information and record or play it later, for example, audio, video, etc, in a digital form. In this case related to textbooks, it is usually added as a complementary item that would make it easier to understand the book and work with it.

 

CODE: Is the password for some kinds of web pages in which you have an account and it is related to education. With textbooks, some parts of information require a specific code that is only available once, making it impossible to resell it.

 

INSTAGRAM: Is a social network and an app in which people can share photos and videos, in this way other people can see them. We have used it to show the drawbacks of using textbooks in a way in which many people could be aware of them.

 

TECHNOLOGY:  It is a series of techniques that apply some scientific knowledge in order to achieve a goal. Related to this specific topic, technology allows us new ways of being aware of the world in which we live, and get informed without the necessity of using textbooks.

 

SELF-EVALUATION:

 

Claudia who was the facilitator, was in charge of dividing the group tasks in order to have the activity prepared on time. Also, she looked for some ideas in the text to do the final pictures. In class, she had to create a space for showing them. She deserves a 9.

 

Ana Losada whose role was historian/journalist had the task of reading also the text and looking for more ideas. Moreover, she took the pictures of each one in class, she waited for all to be done and finally she could printed them to have it for the big day. She deserves a 9.

 

Ana Jiménez who was also the historian/journalist, was the responsible of reading the spanish document alone. Moreover she did a summary and she thought several ideas for doing the books pictures. She deserves a 9.

 

Marta Delgado who was the curator, had the task of reading one part of the English document and collecting all the sources in order to make the diagram. Also she received the feedbacks and took notes of the other groups work. She deserves a 10.

 

Beatriz Llamas who was one of the translators, was also in charge of reading the text with more people for looking for ideas. Furthermore, she was collecting information both general and specific of each group. She deserves a 10.

 

Inmaculada Martínez who was the other translator look for some really interesting ideas and shared them with us. She along with Bea were the ones who took notes of the big ideas of each group in class and used in common with the rest. She deserves a 9.

 

Inés Moreno who was analyst in this task, was the responsible with Elena of doing a reflection about this day and they also have had to make changes because of the Linda’s feedback. She deserves a 9.

 

Elena Martínez who was also analyst, had the task with Inés of doing also the reflection and take notes about the feedback to improve it later. She deserves a 9.

 

María de la O Jiménez who was the star and she was responsible for presenting our ideas in class. She stood up all the time repeating the meanings of each photo in case there was a group that did not understand them and receiving the feedback. She deserves a 9.

 

These are the reasons why we as a group deserve a 9’5. Specially this task shows how good we work as a team, our organization and cooperation to do all things at time.