Category: Trabajos

Appropriating the DTC at University: Catalogues of Professional Examples to Bring the MCDDU Closer

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

As I mentioned in the April post, in December 2023 we published the University Digital Teaching Competence Framework (in Spanish:  Marco de Competencia Digital Docente Universitario) ( from here on, MCDDU) as part of the DIGCOMPEDU Formación y Acreditación (DigCompEdu FyA) project.

During the validation of the framework, one of our primary concerns was the limited or non-existent adoption of such a document among those it affects: not only the teaching staff but also all the decision-makers at all levels who, in one way or another, influence university digital teaching competencies.

From this concern, and thanks to the work of many people in the consortium, we have created five catalogues—one for each branch of knowledge (Arts and Humanities, Physical and Experimental Sciences, Health Sciences, Social and Legal Sciences, and Engineering and Architecture)—that compile examples of how each area and sub-area of the framework (the MCDDU) materialize in the daily life of a university professor from each of these branches.

The catalogues were developed between November 2023 and February 2024 through a focus group strategy with professionals teaching at the various universities involved in the DigCompEdu-FyA project. A total of 100 teachers worked in 15 groups—three groups for each branch of knowledge—to cover and complete examples of the six areas of the MCDDU.

Once the focus groups concluded in February, we worked to c

omplete the compilation. Also, we tried to shape them in a way that made them readily accessible to anyone who wanted them. And now, finally, they are open and available to anyone who wants them:

MCDDU PROFESSIONAL EXAMPLES CATALOGUES for UNIVERSITY TEACHING STAFF

In addition, we have created a report detailing how and why the catalogues were made, in case it can be helpful for similar initiatives. You can find it here:

General Report: http://hdl.handle.net/10201/142950

All documents are under a **CC NC SA license**, which aims to open up the project materials and allow us to continue growing. Please note that all these documents are currently only available in Spanish. However, we believe they can inspire similar initiatives in other contexts and languages.

As stated in the catalogues, these examples are ONLY AN INITIAL APPROACH. We hope they inspire us to perform or enrich certain aspects of teachers’ work and to create new examples. The more examples we have, the better.

We initially develop this competence in our institutions, and our perception of it will change significantly. These catalogues are only intended to serve as an initial help. The examples are temporary because they are based on constantly evolving tools, and there are errors we should improve, but we thought it was essential to take this first step. We will have to do the rest together.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the spectacular work of the people from the universities that make DigCompEdu FyA, the teachers who participated in the focus groups and my colleague Nuria Vanaclocha, who is doing a spectacular job. In addition, we have had José Martínez from hando.es for the design, who is always wonderful.

WHAT WE HAVE DONE THIS YEAR 23/24 III: AI IN THE EXAM PART 2: what do we do with AI?

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

In this post on 7 June and this video last Friday, I started this story by sharing some of my thoughts on the role of AI in my subject exam.
As I told you then, in addition to asking them to use AI to “kick-start” the exam and to tell me how they had used it, in the last part of the exam (the “metacognitive” part), I asked them to reflect on

“Your utilization of AI in developing this exam and your assessment of how your humanity complemented this process”.

I confess that, now that I think about it, the formulation of the human “complementing” was not the most accurate, but well… the thing is that I would like to share with you some of the answers that stand out -I confess that I have only taken answers from people who did a minimally coherent job and that I think reflect that use in the result of their exams- and that I have organised around 5 concrete ideas:

1. AI’s Role in Enhancing Learning and Efficiency AI has significantly enhanced the planning, creation of didactic materials, and overall learning experience for students by ensuring efficiency, accuracy, and personalized learning activities. However, the human role in interpreting AI proposals and making decisions based on experience and judgment is crucial.

“The use of AI has been crucial during the exam as it has helped me planning the activities, creating the didactic materials and making the activities more fun and dynamic in order to enhance students’ learning. Also, AI ensures efficiency and accuracy and tailors the activities to meet individual learning needs.
However, it’s important to acknowledge that I have played an important role in the creation of this project. My experience, judgment, and knowledge has allowed me to interpret the AI proposal, consider the broader context of student learning, and make important decisions of my students well-being..”

2. Limited AI Usage and Human Effort: While AI was used for specific tasks like creating rubrics and translating texts, the bulk of the work remained human-driven. The AI was mainly utilized for initial suggestions, and the human touch was essential in finalizing and personalizing the work, reflecting a general mistrust in AI’s ability to replace human input fully.
As reflected in the following paragraphs

“Apart from the part where we had to use the AI, I have only used the AI for the creation of the rubrics using PopAI and DeepL as translator. I have to admit that I didn’t modify much of the work that PopAI provided me with and I simply selected the rubrics that suited me best and discarded the ones that I found useless. Other than that, the rest of the work is entirely human.”

“In my case I have not used AI much to take this exam. I have only used it to base the creation of my evaluation rubrics for the activities I have created and to translate and summarize some texts. In any case, I have never been able to literally say what the AI says because I don’t trust it very much that it is true, plus, I always like to give my personal touch to everything I do and I never like to copy things.”

“According to the last aspect I’m proud to say that the three activities were my own idea and I didn’t use any AI to ask for them, and what I really used the AI “Chatgpt” for was to ask things once the activity was thought, as for example how to get to “universe” in Little Alchemy 2 in a short way, and what aspects should teachers evaluate on the activities for the rubric, but I also used myself, like my thoughts, and everything for asking my classmates what should we do, we resolved questions with each other instead of looking for them so I think that putting things in common is more human than searching things that could be wrong.”

3. Balancing AI Assistance and Critical Thinking: The use of AI, particularly ChatGPT, was balanced with critical thinking and personal effort. AI served as a consultative tool to assist in learning without hindering personal critical thought. The emphasis was on using AI for clarifying, rewriting, and providing initial ideas, with the final output being heavily influenced by human creativity and critical analysis.

“Another form of balance is relevant in relation to my use of AI in developing this exam. ChatGPT has been my preferred form of AI throughout this process, and I have worked to use the tool in a manner that is assisting my learning, not taking away my own thinking. That has looked like clarifying questions, asking AI to rewrite sentences or pose an initial question to, and then change and build my response from there. I believe that my humanity complemented this process in that I never want my use of AI to be hindering me from learning. I do not want this technology to be a crutch that takes away from my own critical thought. I have used AI to serve in a consultative role, assisting but not replacing my responsibilities as a student and as a person. As I navigate beyond this semester, I am determined to continue embracing new ideas, critically analyzing information, and actively exploring, ensuring that my life-long learning remains dynamic and responsive to the world around me.”

“Yeah, so, in summary, artificial intelligence got my project off the ground and technology in general was essential to fill the skills I didn’t have. But my human skills and creativity enabled me to turn it into something personal, original, and focused.”

“Lastly, regarding using ChatGPT for educational purposes, even with clear prompts, ChatGPT tends to provide general rather than educational insights. Education involves emotions and cognitive aspects that AI tools may not fully grasp. It’s crucial to consult ChatGPT for ideas, but relying solely on its information without critical reconstruction can lead to misunderstandings.”

4. AI as a Supplement to Human Decision-Making and Personalization: AI generated ideas and suggestions, particularly for student profiles and activities. However, the final decisions were made based on human judgment and experience. Personalizing educational content was a key aspect where human insight was indispensable, ensuring that activities were engaging and relevant to students.

“I’ve used ChatGPT to ask for and receive suggestions. That’s to say I asked ChatGPT if I was right, if I could do this thing in a more appealing way, if I could do this other thing in a more attractive/engaging way. We all know that AI is wonderful and it can do everything you want it to do. However, I think that ChatGPT is not going to be able to do some things and being a teacher is one of those. My humanity completed this process by thinking in the things that I would have loved to do when I was a student. I think that being a teacher implies having like another sense. And you have to bear in mind always that you once were there, you once were a student and I would have loved to create a StopMotion when I was learning the European countries, for example, or to use Augmented Reality to see the different pieces of art all along history. So, I think it’s really important to never forget that you once were a student and to do what you think your students are going to enjoy.”

“As far as AI is concerned, I have used it especially to add ideas to the characteristics and abilities of my imaginary students, something that has been really useful for me as it has contribute to the amplification of the profile of my learners, allowing me to see some aspects that didn’t come into my mind at the moment…but also to develop my original idea for the activity. At every moment, and as we have had the opportunity to see in the initial video, I have tried to bring my personal and human touch to this process by changing or concretizing certain aspects proposed by the AI.”

5. Ethical Use of AI and Human Emotional Support: The ethical use of AI is paramount, as it can easily overstep into areas that should be driven by human morals and creativity. AI lacks the capacity for empathy and emotional support, which are essential in education. The human role in maintaining moral standards, providing emotional support, and ensuring the learning process remains effective and genuine is highlighted as crucial.

“The AI has been able to help me a lot in this exam to organize myself to take it in the best possible way and to give me some ideas that have been very useful to me. But it is obvious that artificial intelligence does not have the capacity to express empathy or comprehension, and emotional support that only humans can offer effectively.”

“The most important one from my point of view was the correct utilization of AI. We used it several times during this course, including during this exam. AI can be a very dangerous tool, as it can be used to create entire projects, essays, works, etc. Because of that, it is essential to have our morals in mind. If we use AI in the wrong way, the process of learning will be completely lost, that’s why during the realization of this exam I tried to use the AI for only inspiration purposes, as I wanted to test how my abilities were and how far my imagination for creating this project could go. If we use it in the right way, AI can be one of our best friends when creating and developing everything we can imagine.”

“And finally, the last question, that is, what kind of AI I have used to develop this project and also how my humanity has complemented this process. Well, I have used Schemely and Magic School to develop this project. Schemely to ask for different activities or different ideas of activities that I could develop. And Magic School to develop and create my students’ evaluation rubric. I think that my humanity has complemented this process because maybe the AI can give you many answers, but there are no answers if there are no questions. And for example, in Schemely I took into account the necessities of my students, the age they were and the contents that I wanted to teach them, I was the one deciding if I wanted to use that activity or not. And in magic classroom, I was the one who put the criteria that I wanted, the marks that I wanted, I was the one designing everything. But AI just helps us.”

“Also, this course has helped me to understand that artificial intelligence is very useful but it is only a tool or a help. Our humanity is crucial to our jobs and especially in primary school teaching. In this project I have done a lot of different questions to Chat GPT. For example, about the interest of my children but then I have to make a lot of changes to best fit with my beliefs or tastes.”

Many of their testimonies make me optimistic, and others remind me of clichés that we have read in 40 of the thousands of reports on AI that have appeared worldwide over the 1.5 years since ChatGPT appeared, but they continue to make me think.

For now, we close the review of what we have done this year with this flavour of mouth that should open the appetizer to put more ideas on the table next year.

EDUTEC N.86 Issues, Shadows, and Challenges of Data Ecosystems in Education

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

It is both a pleasure and a great honor for me to conclude the year 2023 with the exciting announcement of the release of Issue 86 of the EDUTEC Journal. In this issue, Professor Lesley Gourlay (from the UCL) and I have collaborated as guest Editors for a special section focusing on the ‘Issues, Shadows, and Challenges of Data Ecosystems in Education.’

This special edition features contributions in both Spanish and English, showcasing insights from diverse teams operating in various contexts. The collection encompasses a range of perspectives, methodologies, and approaches, providing an extraordinary overview of the emerging questions posed by the datafication process in education. We believe that this compilation offers a comprehensive insight into the intricate landscape of challenges and opportunities within the realm of educational data ecosystems:

We extend a gracious invitation for you to peruse the compelling articles within this edition and engage in thoughtful contemplation on the pressing issues we present, issues we deem of paramount importance in contemporary times

Thanks to everyone who makes possible this amazing effort

Working with JRC: ARS- SELFIE Strategic Approaches to Regional Transformation of Digital Education.

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

Since a little over a year ago, I directed a research project commissioned by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Union, in which we wanted to gain in-depth knowledge of the digital competence development plans of schools and teachers (mainly in primary and secondary education) in the different Spanish territories.

The aim of the research was to find out about the different approaches taken by the different Autonomous Communities – especially in terms of regulations or plans – to improve or transform the digital competence of schools; the structure of the plans, their design, organisation, how they have been inspired and, to what extent, whether or not they are related to the frameworks and tools developed by the JRC (SELFIE, SELFIE for teachers, DIGCOMP, DIGCOMPEDU, DIGCOMPORG, etc.). It was not an evaluative research, but to take advantage of the work already done in our Autonomous Communities to learn from the different experiences of our territories, understanding that each one is a good practice that we can tell and from which other territories within and outside the Union can draw inspiration.

The study is based on a compilation of deep interviews with the government officials of each Spanish territory – commissioned by each Autonomous Community with the exception of Andalusia and Galicia which we know that, although they wanted to help us, it was materially impossible to do so – and, of course, an interview with the director of INTEF. From these interviews, a case is presented for each region using a narrative and visual approach.

This research has resulted in a report that the JRC has elevated to Science for Policy Report status, which has recently been published by the Union and which we can now share:

Castañeda, Linda, Virginia Viñoles-Cosentino, Ana Yara Postigo-Fuentes, Cesar Herrero, and Romina Cachia. 2023. Strategic Approaches to Regional Transformation of Digital Education. Science for Policy Report JRC134282. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC134282. JCR SCIENCE FOR POLICY REPORT.

This report highlights the importance of DigCompEdu as a framework that goes beyond the instrumental view of the digital transformation of education, helping institutions to anticipate, design and structure it. SELFIE is seen as a fundamental tool for school awareness and digital planning. Furthermore, the results consolidate the evidence of diverse approaches to digital transformation, especially considering the context of Spain, where the competence of education is at the regional level. Finally, in the report we present policy recommendations based on the results found in this study.

Once the report has been published, we will soon start to disseminate the results, which I will surely tell you about.

In addition to making this work available to you, I would like to publicly acknowledge the efforts of the people who have collaborated with us in this research:

First of all, I would like to thank the people who collaborated with us from each of the ACs. Thank you for opening one or more spaces of your time at such a complicated time and with such an impressive workload as the beginning of the 22-23 school year. We remain at your disposal, and we hope that all your efforts will be properly reflected in the digital transformation of your territories.

Thanks to Cesar Herrero and Romina Cachia, from the JRC, who have been extraordinary research partners, for doing a truly remarkable job and for helping us a lot in achieving this effort in a rigorous and endearing way. Thank you for trusting me for this effort. Thanks also to the entire JRC team for their contributions to the work.

Thank you Natalia Lobato for taking care of the visual part of this work (the infographics). That visual perspective of each of the cases I think helps us a lot to re-look at the research and your hand as an artist and designer has been a gift.

Finally, thanks to my team: Virginia Viñoles Consentino and Ana Yara Postigo-Fuentes who have been extraordinary colleagues and who have made it possible for this research to be what it is. They are two sure values in educational research with an spectacular projection and work capacity, and they are also two good friends. Thank you for coming on board.

It was my first time working for the JRC and I confess that the imposter syndrome is still with me every step of the way. I have learned a lot from this whole process and from all the facets involved (digital competence, educational policy, Spain and its particularities, qualitative research, project management, communication, digital transformation in education… and much more). I am honoured and proud of the work and I sincerely hope that the result will be interesting and useful for those who read it.

Addenda: Convencidas de que este trabajo tiene mucho interés en el ámbito latinoamericano, hemos deicido hacer una versión en castellano de la publicación que está abierta y disponible en: https://digitum.um.es/digitum/bitstream/10201/134464/1/ARSSELFIE_SP.pdf  el enlace permanente del repositorio de mi universidad es http://hdl.handle.net/10201/134464

 

Rethinking the course’s roles (update)

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

Those who have already been here, know that I usually carry out my teaching with a specific dynamic that has been changing over the years…  This year has seen the renewal of some of the roles that we manage (the last update is from 2020, and in it, there are many of the theoretical foundations that inspire this work, but the renewal was overdue), and I wanted to tell you about it to see what you think:

1.  Facilitator – Administrator:

This role is considered to make easier the group configuration and running. The person in charge of this role acts as the group leader and is responsible for task distribution, conflict mediation, checking the fulfilment of obligations, and motivating and encouraging his/her classmates. Her/his mission is the fulfilment of the task in the best way possible, and ALSO the group’s mental health conditions

Moreover, this role takes charge of updating the blog and all the online spaces of the group on the social web, apart from revising the format, spelling and grammar associated with the group assignments.

 

2.  Historian – Journalist:

The historian-reporter is in charge of writing a weekly article about what has happened in the group during the week and documenting everything that happens in the group, being free to carry out his/her task in the format he/she considers more appropriate. Students are encouraged to ‘tell their groups’ stories’ using the various formats provided by digital tools. That article is expected to serve, apart from the evaluation process by the teacher, as a field and register notebook by the group, allowing them to make decisions about maintaining or modifying their own internal work dynamics.

Besides, the historian role has the mission of exploring sites of interest which may be interesting either for the subject development or for the teaching training of the class members. Then the blogpost of the journalist must include, apart from the group’s history at least, one reference to a CLASS GROUP’s website and another to SOMEBODY OUTSIDE THE CLASS’s website, explaining the reasons of the choice and leaving a comment on the site that is available for review.

3.  Curator:

The curator will look for at least three online resources (news, tools, apps, webpages) that will help the group to complete in a better way their task. The list of these three –at least three, if more, more– resources, with a phrase about how to use it, the link to connect with this, and a phrase about how this resource helps you to improve the task, must be included in the blog.

Moreover, the curator is responsible for compiling and organising in a schematic way, all the information sources that the group has used to develop the activity. It means, creating an online mindmap (using the tool you prefer) and embedding the result in the specific curator post of your blog. Moreover, he/she must be in charge of sequencing the documents specifying the process carried out and linking and indexing (according to APA style) the aforementioned documents in the mentioned visual diagram, which will grow every week when the new curator upgrades the map.

4.  Translator

Inspirado en roles como el theoritician de otras propuestas como la de De Wever et al. (2010), este rol puede clasificarse por su función, entre los que ayudan a los alumnos a formular lo que saben los estudiantes y a integrarlo, así como a los que pretenden incentivar el pensamiento de los alumnos y mejorar su razonamiento (Johnson et al., 1999).

The translator must define –in their own words– the six core terms related to the subject every week, which have been worked on in the activity (at least one related to the geek component, (I must do another blogpost explaining “the geek component” hehe) at least one regarding the methodological –pedagogical– component of the task, and at least three related to the theoretical part of the task).

Each term must be defined in a minimum of 50 words and a maximum of 150; the answers must be original or –if you use other resources to create the answers–, you are forced to include your sources adequately and justify your choices.

5.  Analyst:

The analyst is responsible for conducting the assignment’s final reflection and the weekly evaluation of the group members’ performance.

The members’ performance evaluation is carried out following some general rules enabling analysts to value each group member’s contribution:

  • The mark will be from 1 to 5 and only whole numbers.
  • Mark 3 (out of 5) means: The person has completed his/her function and task part correctly, on time and without big mistakes.
  • If the mark of all the group members is the same, the mark will be ignored by the teacher, and the analyst will be penalised.
  • Every mark must be qualitatively justified.

At the end of each week, each analyst must include that assessment (numerical and qualitative) in an online ad-hoc questionnaire (the questionnaire URL will be available in the LMS).

Apart from this assessment, the analyst is in charge of conducting the team’s final reflection, where he/she must comment on what they have learnt, not only about the subject contents but also about the teamwork and the fact of being a teacher in general. To help you to start thinking, these questions could help you:

  1. What was the best part of the activity?
  2. What was the worse?
  3. What was the best moment of the week (in the work of the group)?
  4. What was the worse?
  5. What have you learnt?
  6. What do you need to conserve -as a group- for the next weeks?
  7. What do you need to improve –as a group- for the next weeks?
  8. How is THIS content related to other course content and your degree?
  9. How would the geek thing we included in the task change the teachers’ profession?
  10. Is there any evident social connection to this content (news, politics, etc.)?

It is probably one of the most important roles of the assignment since the analyst is in charge of conducting the assignment reflection, paying special attention to the other roles’ contributions, analysing what aspects have been tackled, thinking about how they have worked and agreed with his/her classmates a reflection about what they have learned. To sum up, the analyst specifies and agrees with the team’s reflection and metacognition process.

6.  Star:

The star is in charge of presenting the final product of the weekly tasks to all the class members, paying attention to the specified requirements in each task.

The star blog post MUST include the feedback received during the presentation and the star’s impressions about the performance.

It must be emphasised that, despite the fact that all the team members should be involved in the achievement of the task, the star has shown a greater interest each week. During the subject development, it has been observed that the star role is the one which requires more information search for the final task.

 

If you want a summary of the class dynamics in English, you have one at:

Castañeda, Linda & Marín Victoria (2022). Improving Pedagogical Design in Higher Education: Untangling the Learning Activity Complexity through Students’ Declared Performance. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning RPTEL 18, 1. https://rptel.apsce.net/index.php/RPTEL/article/view/2023-18004 

Although there are many of my publications refer to my teaching.

BTW, all the pictures have been created with DALL-E 2 by Myself, L. Castañeda

Video-papers in Spanish for English articles

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

A couple of months ago, I was echoing a publication by colleagues and myself that had just come out, and I posted it on Twitter. I often do it, especially if the publication is open access, to complete the cycle of diffusion and dissemination. I think it might get someone to read it and, as well as find out about some of the things we do in “the ivory tower”, give us feedback or make a comment.

The funny thing is that, like many of my publications over the last year, this publication is written in English, but mired of people on Twitter are VERY Spanish-speaking, so one of my colleagues from Argentina asked me, “Linda, where can we access the article in Spanish?”… and that got me thinking, the truth is… I don’t write the article in Spanish and then translate it; there is no article in Spanish… but I “care” that I think that what is in that article can be useful for teachers and colleagues who don’t speak English (in the same way that I am convinced that reading in other languages – whatever the mother tongue – is a splendid intellectual privilege)….  and I thought “I could run it through some automatic translation tool – like DEEP-L or Google – which nowadays work particularly well between Spanish and English”, but of course, to make that effort you have to be interested in the article… and how are you going to know if you are interested in the summary is only in English. You have only seen the title, which is also in English…?

At that moment, I had an idea, probably Instagram reels could be used for this, and I started a “project” that has been active since then, and I hope it will continue… at least as long as it continues to be of interest. The idea is to make a REEL (90 seconds) in which we summarise, in Spanish, one of the articles we have published in English. We also leave on Instagram as a post the documentation and QR codes to access the publication in question.  Here you have the first one I did.

 

Ver esta publicación en Instagram

 

Una publicación compartida por Linda Castañeda (@lindacq)

 

With a few days difference, I publish the summary also on LinkedIn and on my Youtube channel, where I have already started a list where you can find all the ones I have done so far:

I sincerely hope that the initiative may encourage teachers or colleagues who are resistant to English  to read some of the articles, even if it is in an automatically translated version…

At some point, someone asked me if I would do it the other way round (make a video paper in English of my articles in Spanish) …. … I wish someone had asked for them in English; I would surely consider it… I think there is a lot to do to decolonise discourses and lot to do to open our heads to other languages. … and although things are already starting to be done (I highly recommend reading this editorial in Learning Media & Technology “Reading internationally: if citing is a political practice, who are we reading and who are we citing?” and reflecting on what it means) I think that for the moment I will only do them in Spanish.

Attention, I’m wearing a filter; I intend to do them when I have time and sometimes I don’t feel good-looking enough for a video, so long live Instagram filters! 😉

Bye CUTE!

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

The CUTE project ends tomorrow, 31 December, and with it, a memorable experience of participation in a project in which we have learned a lot of interesting things.

To say goodbye to the project in which many people from many places have participated, my colleague Virginia Viñoles and I wanted to make a final video of reflection on what the project has meant for us (yes, in Spanish, but maybe is a good time for start with your Spanish hehe).

If you have no idea what CUTE is, here is a video with an intro to the project

Although the project is over, you still have all the info about the project on the official page of the Toolkit with all the CUTE material: https://cutetoolkit.ku.dk/

Thanks to all the people who have helped us along the way, see you in CUTIE! (yes, there is a new project, continuation of this one called CUTIE ;-))

CUTE: Competencies for Universities – using Technology in Education
ERASMUS+: Strategic Partnership (KA203-867FE04B)
Period Sept 2019 – Dec 2022

The entire year without posts… but in the new year will be news…

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

It’s been more than a year since I last wrote in my blog, and it’s not because we haven’t done a lot of things; it’s because I probably haven’t had the time to tell you about it. However, the need to do so has returned, so I’ll tell you about it… I hope you will be interested…

In the meantime, have a fabulous end of the year and a spectacular 2023!

This image is made with PowerPoint from an image (the March Hare) made with DALLE-2 from the text: “a stern-looking spring hare dressed as a crazy lady librarian holding an iphone, digital art” and augmented in the same tool with instructions to create a Christmas background with a computer.

let’s talk about PLE in TEEM 2021

Posted on by lindacq@um.es
This 2021, after many time without being together “formally” to talk about Personal Learning Environments, and after almost 5 years without the #PLECONF, some PLE-people (and friends)  have decided to try to reedit that amazing spirit and incredible conversation about PLE that are, at least from our point of view, more relevant than ever before.
For doing this, we have organized a track in the 9th edition of the Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (TEEM) conference chaired by Nada Dabbagh, Graham Attwell and myself.
This track (Track 11) intends to pick up the spirit of the PLECONF. Therefore we will try to make a different approach in our session that allows us to learn and share. To achieve this, we have asked our authorship teams to record a video with the most critical points of their papers, and THIS is going to be their actual presentations of their papers.
Now, we have most of them and want YOU to review them and have a first approach to the conversation.
The  PLE TRACK session at TEEM Conference will be on October 28th, Thursday, at 17:30 (Central European Time) and will have a duration of 1 hour and a half and we intend it to be an interactive online discussion It means it will not be a traditional presentation session.
Still, we will have collaborative discussions on fundamental aspects that can help us to understand the PLE topic better and advance our understanding of it:
  • what do we know about PLE?
  • what aspects still give us questions about PLE?
  • And what are the future research and development challenges around PLE?

Therefore, THIS is an invitation to take part in TEEM 2021 and on this #PLE session. To watch some of the videos (preferably all of them) and join us in the session… ah! and be prepared to discuss and talk

Supporting Students’ Control and Ownership of Learning in the Multimodal Learning from a PLE Perspective
Urith N. Ramírez Mera and Gemma Tur		 Has Covid-19 emergency instruction killed the PLE?
Luis Pedro and Carlos Santos
Deeper Mapping: PLE diagrams, PKM Workflows and Scholarly Ontologies
Mike Cosgrave		 Personal Learning Environments as Digital Spaces that are Collaborative, Adaptive, and Autonomous
Nada Dabbagh and Maurine Kwende
The Personalized Learning Interaction Framework: Expert Perspectives on How to Apply Dimensions of Personalized Learning to Workforce Training and Development Programs
Helen Fake and Nada Dabbagh		 Personal Learning Environments: looking back and looking forward Graham Attwell
 

A letter difference, not different; two complementary approaches for learning

Atikah Shemshack and Shanshan Ma

Digital Skills for Building and Using Personal Learning Environments

Maria Perifanou and Anastasios Economides.

 

We still miss two more videos, as soon as we have them we will upload them here… please, join us!, see you online at the next PLE conversation!  

Presenting online, a course in Spanish

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

In the middle of this semester I was fortunate enough to participate as a teacher in a course on how to make online presentations for university professors (only in Spanish).

The course had some sessions in which we were talking about the presentations of our colleagues and we tried to give some feedback on the “basics” of making presentations.

As basic resources, we used some slides from professor Francesc Llorens that I think are incredibly complete and great for thinking about visual presentations and that he lent me for the occasion, although you can find them online. They are just in Spanish, but with the translator, I’m sure you can use them easily.

In addition, to serve as course content, I made a few videos on basic issues that I thought were not covered by previous materials. The videos were private until two weeks ago, but then I decided that they were useless in storage and that they might be useful in the open, so I have been “releasing” them little by little and I have finally put them together in a single playlist with the 5 videos that I leave here in case they are of any interest (they are in Spanish, but the subtitles in English work pretty well).

I have long recorded videos on how to make oral and visual presentations, so you still have those materials, some of them in English.

I hope they will be useful…

Challenges in the Knowledge Creation 2021

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

As a result of my participation in one of the lines of the next FIET 2021 (Fòrum Internacional d’Educació i Tecnologia), I have the privilege to debate in a working group in which we are reflecting on the main challenges that the current times propose for the models of knowledge production.  Some years ago, I have the good fortune of being part of an identical group at FIET 2014, which produced a document that I think is worth reviewing “The educational landscape of the digital age: Communication practices pushing (us) forward“, and now the challenge is to take another look at the issue and try to evaluate and, if necessary, refresh that reflection.

In the first part of our individual work, we have been thinking individually about what we consider the main challenges facing knowledge creation in our times, and I would like to share with you my contribution, which is also linked to the last post of this blog.

Following the trend of almost unpredictable acceleration that we have seen over the last 20 years, the last 5 years have seen a huge change in the way knowledge is produced. While the changes appear to be mere consequences of traditional processes, the fact is that there are issues where the quantitative change (in terms of the number of people using it, in terms of the processing technology behind it) has brought about huge qualitative challenges. I would like to point out some of them:

  • The exposure of a huge percentage of the population to the effective and daily use of technologies has changed the way people approach the creation of diverse content, from changes in the way users approach the creation of digital content (the type of tools they use and the amount of media they handle),  to noticeable changes in the communication code (greater preponderance of videos, less “fear” of the camera, enrichment of conversations towards transmedia uses) or, in the case of more advanced users, the creation of more hybrid materials that combine mixed realities and are immensely loaded with meaning.
  • New narrative models enabled by mass-use tools, e.g. the case of content production in Twitter threads, Instagram reels or the case of TikTok with its remixes, and how this generates different possibilities for the simple organisation of these new narratives – see this example: https://twitter.com/KalhanR/status/1391083690051129353?s=20 ). This challenge also refers to the creation of very high quality “live” collaborative content on video streaming platforms such as Twitch (a good example of this are Twich’s broadcasts of political events, especially those related to the 2020 US elections) or audio platforms such as Discord (used by my some of the students on its podcast job), Clubhouse and Stereo.
  • From the point of view of literary uses, some changes in the production models of art: literature, cinema were already mentioned in the 2015 work in an almost anecdotal way (stories told in twitts, e.g.) but have been further explored in recent years (e.g. https://carlesbellver.net/contes/unicorns/ ). There is also a challenge that for the moment is only in the minority, but which directly refers to the production of digital figurative art (with certificates of authenticity linked to bitcoin-like blockchains) and which moves in its own market.
  • The advance of automation mechanisms and the processing speed of AI has also generated an immense amount of “fake” content (fake videos, automated texts) pose at least two complementary challenges:
    • The educational importance of critical thinking skills for the digital world with an emphasis not only on education and re-education programmes for children and schoolchildren but to somehow address the education and re-education of adults and older adults who find themselves completely lacking in thinking tools to face the new information scenario.
    • The profound rethinking of the type of content on which academic knowledge is based and the purpose of certain practices in the educational world. To focus the conversation, I am concerned, as I have already told you, about the relevance of the current format of literature review sections in school or academic papers, understood as part of training, in the face of the boom and the extraordinary success of tools such as https://smodin.me/, or the online companies that create academic papers, which are already having an impact on debates in large universities about the meaning of certain practices.
  • From a much more positive perspective, this increase in the speed of automation mechanisms has allowed tools that generate alternative content to the formats already created to improve enormously (the case of tools that generate automatic subtitles or simultaneous sound translation, or combined tools such as Blackboard’s Ally), broadening and deepening the possibilities of accessibility, which puts the focus back on human intervention and on raising awareness of the importance of accessibility not as an “extra possibility” but as an obligation in the production of knowledge.
  • I think one of the biggest challenges in terms of knowledge creation has to do with influence. The mechanisms by which certain power groups exert their influence on the content that is created and on people’s knowledge are becoming more and more subtle but more important. Understanding how these mechanisms work can be one of the great challenges in educating the influenced and in promoting certain sources of influence.
  • In these times of content creation, the challenge of making content creation teams visible is becoming increasingly important. Classical citation standards (surname only, first author “et al”) do not meet these standards.
  • The broadening of distribution channels to wider geographical spectrums and the decolonisation of discourses is a growing challenge.

I think there is a challenge that is perennial in this society of overabundance, the challenge of curating the content that is consumed and generating its own knowledge. One of the challenges is how to equip people with tools (technological and personal) that allow them to curate the content they want to consume in an efficient and ethically desirable way.

These are not simple issues and certainly far beyond the capacity of our personal efforts to respond to such important and complex challenges, but like everything else in the world, I think the first part is to recognise them and understand that they are not the only ones, not the most important ones, but they are there and they are part of our immediate future of human development with technology.

Learning in TikTok: about plagiarism, IA and being on the shoulders of giants

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

A video with an on-the-fly reflection on the need to seriously rethink models of knowledge production and the importance and format of theoretical reviews in social sciences. Thanks to TikTok and the Instagram reels from which I am learning so much 🙂

REFERENCES

Daanen, H., & Facer, K. L. (2007). 2020 and beyond: Future scenarios for education in the age of new technologies. Futurelab.

Methods and Theories for Innovative Critical Research on Educational Technology

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

For years we have been thinking that the methodological tools and fundamental theoretical approaches of educational technology have fallen short of what we need. Educational technology, as a field of knowledge, as a workspace and as a market, has changed and we need to approach it differently.

For this reason, more than a year ago, at the invitation of the team of the NAER (New Approaches in Educational Research) Journal, together with Professor Ben Williamson from the University of Edinburgh, we undertook the work of trying to bring together some articles that would substantially address not only what changes are needed, but also shed light on how to carry out these changes.

The idea was to get people who have been working with ” Methods and Theories for Innovative Critical Research on Educational Technology” for a long time to come up with fundamental questions on the subject. Here you have the editorial “Assembling New Toolboxes of Methods and Theories for Innovative Critical Research on Educational Technology” signed by Ben and me (and here translated into Spanish), in which we explain some of the thoughts that encouraged us to start this work.

The result is a special section in NAER’s Vol. 10, issue 1  which has just been published. The section consists of 5 articles, some of which make committed and activating approaches from a theoretical point of view and others that break down methodological aspects and approaches that can be used by us, researchers in Educational Technology, to try to do things in other ways… I sincerely invite you to read them all:

I would like to sincerely thank NAER’s Editorial team for their trust and for keeping the magazine open, without cost to the authors and with very high quality in these complicated times. In addition, I would like to thank the authors for their extraordinary work and Prof. Ben Williamson – whose work I deeply admire – for lending himself to this adventure so generously. I have learned a lot in this endeavour and I can only be grateful for that.

I wish these papers could suggest as many things to you as they do to me… I would be delighted to have a good conversation on these subjects… hope to have the occasion soon.

Remain safe and sane…

The exam of #rict1920 in confinment

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

This is a video (just in Spanish I’m sorry), to talk about how I’ve converted the normal oral exam of my class into a different kind of exam in confinement.

With this, I want to share with you my decisions, motivations, expectations and how I have organized everything to do this exam; below the video you can find the complete exam details.

 

The final exam will be presented in a public online video with the following characteristics

Content:

The video will compulsorily include two parts:

PART I:

(Maximum 10 minutes in total, 5 minutes of video for each answer, and each answer would have a maximum grading of 4 points)

Please answer the following questions:

QUESTION 1:

Choose 3 aspects/elements of the Teaching Competence for a Digital World that you consider more relevant, and from each element, please explain and justify:

  • What does it mean?
  • Why this element is essential?
  • Two actions (what do you do?) with which you can develop this element of your competency, in your day to day as a teacher. Including what tools do you use for them, how those tools can be used by teachers and/or students, and how this would affect your teaching design (ACAD framework).
  • Two elements that you would include in your PLE to continue learning about this specific element

QUESTION 2:

From your point of view, what are the 4 more important concepts that we have explored during this course (2 theoretical and 2 technological). From each one of those, please:

  • Create a short definition that makes them clear (min 100 words, max 400)
  • Make an example of using it or contextualize it in a case (the clearest you explain the case -details- the better).

PART II

(Maximum 2 minutes in total, 1 minute of video for each answer, and each answer would have a maximum grading of 1 point)

Please answer the two following questions:

QUESTION 3:

Answer with a reflection about these three aspects:

  • What is the mark you earn?
  • What is the most important role you have performed in this course?
  • What is the most challenging role you have performed?

QUESTION 4:

What are the key elements of this course that you would like/should include permanently on your PLE?

Format:

The exam will be presented in a video format. The video will be upload to an online streaming video service (as YouTube or Vimeo) and will be published under a Creative Commons License.

The video could be adapted to the format that you decide (creativity is very welcome) but be sure that you take into account -carefully- all the assessment criteria included in the assessment rubric.

In order to guarantee that all the ideas you express on that video would be perfectly understood by your teacher, and minimize the impact of wrong pronunciation or sound, please write down the content of the whole video in a text document (ONLY with the content of the video) and upload it to the internet in pdf format (no other formats will be corrected).

Assessment guidelines:

The exam will evaluate the course’s competencies. Consequently, the rubric will be closely followed, and incomplete, or partially correct answers cannot be considered.

Criteria Poor Enough Good Excellent
Content The answer does not include ALL the theoretical elements requested or are included in a too superficial way or without doing any relationship between them. The video content includes and makes the relationships between all the theoretical elements requested, but in a superficial or just in a descriptive way. The video content includes and makes the relationships between all the theoretical elements requested, in a dialogical way[1]. The video content includes and makes the relationships between all the theoretical elements requested in a socio-critical way.
Originality ANY part of the video’s content includes (literally) words from another resource (from the Internet or included in the work of any course-mate). The video content includes some phrases from other authors but are correctly referenced. The video content includes some phrases from other authors but all of them are correctly referenced, and always remarking the relationship with your own opinion. The video content includes only your own reflections but in these you have included, as in a dialogue, ideas from other experts, correctly referenced.
Video style The video consisting of a voice-over with some (few) still images appearing and disappearing on the screen. The video takes advantage of the audiovisual character of the media.
Language skills Pronunciation, speech fluency and the use of grammar and typos in the exam are neglected. Recurring grammatical errors are reflected in the same way in the text document.

It is complicated to understand the video discourse due to the low volume of voice, inadequate speed or a generalized wrong pronunciation.

 Pronunciation, speech fluency and use of grammar and typos in the exam are not excellent, but speed, volume and pronunciation are enough good for following the video discourse.

There are recurrent errors in some of them, although it is evident that there is an effort to make speech fluent that sometimes leads to some error.  However, in the text document those details have been corrected and grammar and spelling is taken care of.

 Pronunciation, speech fluency and use of grammar and typos in the exam are not excellent, but speed, volume and pronunciation are enough good for following the video discourse.

It is evident that there is an effort to make speech fluent that sometimes leads to some mistake. The text document grammar and spelling are good.

 Pronunciation, speech fluency and use of grammar and typos in the exam are perfect.

The speed, volume of voice and pronunciation are enough good for following the video discourse without any difficulty.

 

[1] Please remember theory about reflections to learn.

Para algo más de contexto:

Mi propuesta didáctica Castañeda, L. (2019) Formación inicial del profesorado en el uso educativo de la tecnología, una propuesta curricular. Quaderns Digitals, 89. 1-49. http://www.quadernsdigitals.net/index.php?accionMenu=hemeroteca.VisualizaArticuloIU.visualiza&articulo_id=11517

La crónica del examen del año pasado del que hablo en el vídeo: http://www.lindacastaneda.com/es/mushware/un-examen-diferente-od1819/

C4P: Educational Technology in Higher Education: Emergent Practices for Teaching Future Educators.

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

Dr Leigh Graves and myself have the privilege of work as guest editors of an Speical Issue of the UTE Journal (UTE (Universitas Tarraconensis. Revista de Ciencias de la Educación) which aims to bring together extraordinary educational experiences, focused on the training of educators to take on the impact of technologies at different educational levels. The Special Issue will be titled:

Educational Technology in Higher Education: Emergent Practices for Teaching Future Educators

And we cordially invite researchers, faculty and Higher Education trainers involved in educators’ training to submit their papers and help us with this effort. To be considered for this Special Issue papers would take into account the following considerations:

  • Papers must be based on a higher education teaching practice with a profound educational/epistemological base, (not ICT-only focused implementations).
  • Clear pedagogical description (where does this practice come from? What are the theoretical or epistemic supports of this approach?).
  • Clear practical description (how many students by class, online/face2face, year at the university).
  • Sharing viewpoints of all stakeholders involved in the practice (teachers, students, administrators)
  • Strong theoretical and pedagogical conclusions
    • Why is this practice innovative in educational terms?
    • What does this practice “add”, “change”, “improve?”
    • What’s next?

The manuscripts can be written in Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, French and English and should be original, those can be accepted for publication if they have not been published before, nor submitted for review to other scientific journals.

Universitas Tarraconensis. Journal of Educational Sciences (UTE) is a scientific journal published twice a year the Department of Pedagogy of the Rovira i Virgili University of Tarragona. It is an open-access journal reviewed by experts. Its main thematic line is educational research. Its main objective is to contribute to the development of the Sciences of Education and to promote the dissemination of new methodologies and approaches to the teaching and learning of science, responding to the challenges of 21st-century society. To ensure the publication of quality articles, the journal applies a rigorous editorial process and follows the Open Journal System (OJS) model that supports the open-access academic publication.

ISSN: 1135-1438. Indexed: DICE, CIRC, CARHUS+2014, DIALNET, Latindex.

Further instructions for submission of manuscripts: https://revistes.urv.cat/index.php/ute/about/submissions

Timeline: 

  • Opening Call for papers: 1st of October 2019
  • Deadline: 30th of March 2020

Due to the tough times we are living around the world and the stressfull last month, the Special Issue decided to extend its deadline until 30th of June. 

  • Feedback: 30th of June 2020
  • Publication: 1st of November 2020

Here is the complete call in English. If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact us.

Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

Since June the 3rd and until September the 30th, I am doing a research stay at the University of California Berkeley. Specifically, I am at the Graduate School of Education and my host is Professor Glynda Hull.

Although UC Berkeley does not have an Educational Technology (EdTech) group as such, the truth is that there is a lot of approach to EdTech from many sides and those are the ones I have come to explore.

Specifically, my objective is to get closer, thanks to the plurality of the GSE, to the more socio-cultural perspective of research in education in general (which is surely the clearest sign of identity of the programs of the GSE of the UCB) and in EdTech in particular. Not only with my work with Professor Hull, but also by integrating myself as far as possible into the school’s activity, looking very openly at the work of the Principal Leadership Institute (PLI), as well as with the members of the BE3 initiative (Berkeley Educators for Equity and Excellence), which is the GSE’s teacher training initiative, learning a lot and exchanging some impressions and ideas with its members. And, of course, also taking advantage of the fact that I have an old friend here at the School, Prof. Jabari Mahiri (we met and worked together at the FIET 2015 ), who has kindly also opened some friendly doors for me.

In addition, outside the GSE, I have wanted to get closer during these months to other approaches that are made in the UCB to the EdTech, both from institutional initiatives of implementation, as from other perspectives of research made from more social fields, as well as from the world of the media, and, off course, from more technological and engineering fields.

Moreover, in these months, I have been trying to understand what is and how it works a top public university in this part of the world, California, and in this small bubble called Berkeley … a wonderful adventure … the immense possibility of learning and learning and briething new airs to try to be a little better in my work at the UM.

Some time out of thinking, reading, talking, seeing in other directions, financed by the Seneca Foundation ( Agency of Science and Technology of the Region of Murcia), and the grant 20554/EE/18 that I was awarded under the Regional Program of Mobility, Collaboration and Exchange of Knowledge “Jiménez de la Espada” and, as always, with the invaluable support of my family.

I am already in the third month, in fact, about to start the fourth and last month of stay. It has been three very curious months and a stay in a vital moment completely different from the previous ones, which has a load of novelty that I love. Now “the return” begins.

As on previous occasions, I have made a blog for this stay, in this case, a have innovating bit doing a 5-minute Videoblog of reflection and “company”, which I started a month before coming and in which I tell some of the things that most attract my attention from day to day. If you want to take a look I’ve added it to my stay blog (which I opened in my first predoctoral research stay and which I continue to use in these cases) and is supported in a specific Youtube channel that is organized by weeks.

In addition, there are photos in Instagram and Flickr of this adventure… for the most curious.

I have to say that, thanks to the extra time that a visiting scholar time gives me, some other projects are also materializing… I hope to tell you more things soon and that are for good.

We continue, I wish you a great end of August!

A different exam… #od1819

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

This year, as usual, I teach in the first year of the bilingual group of the degree in Primary Education (for future primary schools teachers) in two different subjects, “Resources and ICT in education”, and the part dedicated to the School Organization of the subject “School Organization and Educational Diversity”.

For the subject of School Organization, I have implemented this year a modality of “different” examination. In practice, this is a long answer exam, which must be done in writing, but which has a multimedia part.

Let me try to explain myself better:

At the end of “my” part of the subject (which works only in the first half of the second semester -spring semester indeed), I have given my students the instructions for the exam (I link here the instructions, as well as the assessment rubric, so that you can read them in full).

But, why do I ask them something like that?

  • Because I think the best thing they can learn in this subject is to ask them important questions about the school organization, which have to do with more than one subject and are always complex, so rarely have a single possible answer.
  • Because as they know many weeks in advance the questions, they can read a lot, not only from the documents we have handled in class (which they have re-read, I’m sure), but from other things in even other subjects that help them look at them from a different perspective
  • Because I think it gives them space to decide what kind of result they expect from the subject.
  • Because by asking them to transcribe the text I avoid problems of misunderstanding due to their pronunciation or my hearing, and it also allows me certain types of comparisons that avoid copied examinations, cheating and so (although from the beginning I encourage them to prepare the exam together and seek inspiration).

Well, I have to say that the result couldn’t be more satisfying.

Other years I had asked for videos, although I’ve been trying to fine-tune the call more and more and this year I’ve been left with an extraordinary feeling. why?

  • I think that EVERYONE has learned important things about the school organization that will make them better teachers and that, I have the impression, they will always be clear… even if they forget the wording of the themes or the authors of the themes (that they will forget them as I do).
  • Because they have shown abilities to tell stories and organize their thinking in diverse, creative, interesting, fun ways… Because they have overcome their fears and limitations and have made real efforts with their English and many have improved it a lot for this work…
  • Because the brilliant works, which are a lot, all have a level of depth in their proposal that goes beyond in many cases the pure written reflection and is complemented with visual reflection…

From the results there are ways to tell the story very varied:

We have Hand Writing Visual Thinking:

Web 2.0 tool enhanced Visual thinking:

Hand Crafting Story Telling:

Something more Documentary or Movie Story Telling:

And much more… I leave here a playlist that only includes those who have scored above 9 (which are already 12), in the range of 8 to 9 points there is another great pile of videos, but I wanted to make a selection and only go those who have more than 9.

Warning! many of those who do not appear in that list have also make me happy, I confess that I hesitated long before making the selection, but in the end I chose to make it, because I do not want the fear that some of my students feel excluded from the selection, end up not highlighting how wonderful they are and the many joys that give me all.

Apologies beforehand if anyone thinks I haven’t valued their work as well as I should, but I’m afraid that’s inevitable.

Congratulations to everyone. I hope that besides the feeling of having worked too much, you share some of my happiness.

As always, thank you to my students for teaching me so much and making me happy.

Un dia en el cole de mi maestro

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

The next three weeks, my students will have a fantastic opportunity to work with real students from the schools who come to visit us at the Faculty of Education. Each group will be at our faculty one morning and will be with us (my group are students of the first year of the degree in Primary School, in the course of  “Resources and ICT in education”) from 10:30 to 11:30 on Tuesday (each Tuesday we will work with different students).

This is a VERY punctual experience, but for my first year students I think it can be a perfect first contact with the students and also serve as an excuse to approach three technologies that can be used in the classroom (in this case we are going to use: stop-motion, augmented reality and robotics), and since we do not have robots for everyone, we have decided that each week 3 class groups work with a different activity on a rotational basis.

To try to make the most of this opportunity, I have asked my students to work with the students on Tuesday on an activity predesigned by me, open, small (minimum), adjusted, but for which they must plan the strategy to do it in practice. For each of the activities, I have given them a general guide to developing with the students and they, as teachers, have to prepare all the materials, resources, spaces, etc., to do it.

The idea is that, once we finish the activities with the students here (after March 26), my students will have also to develop three similar activities for an imaginary group of students. That is, one using stop-motion, one using augmented reality and one using robots. Those activities that they create later must be different from the ones I give them to use with the little ones, and they will be what they will exhibit this year in our traditional May fair.

The goal is for you to pay close attention to the details of the work of the next 3 Tuesdays and to the problems and ideas of the children who will be working with us.

This is the distribution of the activities to develop these days:

  5th of March 12th of March 26th of March
Stopmotion Expe

ICT Squad

Six in one

 Avengers

Facultad de papel

Oral B

 Pejims

Teacher in process

Squadra
Robots Avengers

Facultad de papel

Oral B

 Pejims

Teacher in process

Squadra

 Expe

ICT Squad

Six in one
Augmented Reality Pejims

Teacher in process

Squadra

 Expe

ICT Squad

Six in one

 Avengers

Facultad de papel

Oral B

Some of these coming children speak some English, but most do not, so the activities will try to be flexible and our Erasmus students will play the role of teachers who only speak English (as an English teacher on their normal schools). However, due to time constraints, the activity should be completed in Spanish.

In addition, as for each activity, we have less than an hour, so we will have to be practical and try to survive the unforeseen in the best possible way:

So, before Tuesday, my students should:

  • Read the activity carefully as soon as they can, make sure they understand correctly what they have to do and that they know how to do it with them.
  • Any software to develop the activity must be installed on more than one device to work WITH their students. They should make sure they have it installed on at least two devices (always prepare a plan B for the technology) and that all of them are full of battery on Tuesday.
  • Make sure they bring whatever physical things they would need to work with them (white and coloured papers, crayons, playdough, dolls, toys, rulers, rules for calculating angles, pencils, as many cards as you need…). Each group will work with a group of 5-7 students (depending on the day), and should bring enough material for all of them.
  • For those who are going to work with robots, they will bring two different basic ways to create the paths: a square or one with more than 50 cm in length on the shorter side, and a scalene triangle whose shorter side is at least 40 cm.
  • For those who are working with stop-motion: enough copies of the story they are going to represent and enough materials to represent it.
  • For those using augmented reality, enough copies of the photo from https://chromville.com/wp-content/uploads/laminas/chromville_science/EN/Demo_water_cycle_trigger.pdf and a plan for encouraging them to work collaboratively.
  • They should foresee the strategy of working with the learners (how to do the activity), plan it carefully and explain it on their blog.
  • Stars and journalists should be responsible for collecting and publishing data and evidence of the work (photos, recordings, etc.) using the hashtag #rict1819. The Stars would be up of the children’s performance, and the journalists of their work as a group at that time.
  • They should show in their blog the work of the children with a brief reference to how was the development of the hour, as well as the assessment standards (from the official CARM curriculum) of the subject that are being developed with this activity.

In addition to all this, it should be fun for the children and for us, but it should also be of benefit to both.

The truth is that seeing my students work this week preparing things, I am optimistic is going to be all fantastic … hopefully, it will go very well and that we learn many things from this experience.

In order not to collapse this blog too much, I will try to publish the approximations that my students make as the weeks, and we will see.

Oh! and if you want to see what we do, may be you can check our SNS activity here

Debates regarding Technology and Education: contemporary pathways and pending conversations

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

A little more than a year ago, the Editorial Board of the Iberoamerican Journal of Distance Education, RIED, commissioned me to launch an Special Issue on Educational Technology to try to compile in a publication some ideas of relevance that I considered that could help better understand some of the issues we are dealing with in recent times.

Probably because of my “recent history”, my proposal was to launch a special issue that would serve to situate, even if partially, some of the issues that mark the current research on the impact of technology in education.

I believe that those of you who know me more or less know that I am very interested in the future of Educational Technology and how we “breathe” right now, and that lately I am aware of the immense need to approach the criticism of what we do, as well as to undertake critical processes of transformation based on educational reflection. That is why my proposal was not a Special Issue focused on ONE topic, but a monograph that addressed several of these “hot topics” from diverse and interesting perspectives.

This attempt has resulted in this special issue that inaugurates the new year of 2019 in RIED and which, under the title Debates regarding Technology and Education: contemporary pathways and pending conversations, includes 10 articles signed by researchers from very diverse contexts (half of those articles are in English and half in Spanish), which address some of the concerns that research in the field of educational technology lives today.

You can read my introduction to the monograph in the article:

Debates regarding Technology and Education: contemporary pathways and pending conversations
Linda Castañeda
 PDF
29-39

All the other articles are the following:

A Visualisation Dashboard for Contested Collective Intelligence Learning Analytics to Improve Sensemaking of Group Discussion
Thomas Daniel Ullmann, Anna De Liddo, Michelle Bachler
PDF
41-80
Learning about Careers: Open data and Labour Market Intelligence
Graham Attwell, Deirdre Hughes
PDF
81-106
What future(s) for distance education universities? Towards an open network-based approach
Antonio Moreira Teixeira, Tony Bates, José Mota
PDF
107-126
Student Perspectives of Technology use for Learning in Higher Education
Nada Dabbagh, Helen Fake, Zhicheng Zhang
PDF
127-152
Technology for teaching and learning foreign languages: a literature review
Fernando Trujillo Sáez, Carlos Salvadores Merino, Ángel Gabarrón Pérez
PDF (ESPAÑOL (ESPAÑA))
153-169
The discussion on computational thinking in education
Jordi Adell Segura, María Ángeles Llopis Nebot, Francesc Esteve Mon, María Gracia Valdeolivas Novella
PDF (ESPAÑOL (ESPAÑA))
171-186
Teaching Digital Competence Certification: a proposal for university teachers
Marta Durán Cuartero, Mª Paz Prendes Espinosa, Isabel Gutiérrez Porlán
PDF (ESPAÑOL (ESPAÑA))
187-205
Whose interest is educational technology serving? Who is included and who is excluded?
Caroline Kühn Hildebrandt
PDF
207-220
The PLE and its impact on the educational literature: the last decade
Linda Castañeda, Gemma Tur, Ricardo Torres-Kompen
PDF (ESPAÑOL (ESPAÑA))
221-241

If you would like to download the whole Special Issue you can also find it on the journal’s website.

I am convinced that the reading of all of these papers will be very suggestive, I hope you enjoy reading them.

I would like to thank all the authors who have participated in this effort (those who finally published and those who sent their work for evaluating) for sharing your ideas and reflections with us, and RIED Journal for its generous opportunity.

Good reading!

Happy 2019!

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

Feliz Navidad - Merry Christmas

Thanks to all of you who have made 2018 so happy, interesting, fun, charming, hopeful, challenging and intense… and thanks especially to all of you who have encouraged me with your love not to miss a second of all that happiness, fun, love, music, hope, readings… Thank you!

And what about the coming year? It will be a year of challenges, adventures and a lot of work, but I hope to continue to count on you.

I wish you a 2019 full of life and love!

(Español) ¿Cómo hacer un Proyecto Docente?

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

Sorry, this entry is only available in Español.

Hoy me he presentado (con éxito :-)) a un concurso para la provisión de una plaza de Profesor Titular de Universidad en el Área de Didáctica y Organización Escolar de la Universidad de Murcia. Hoy ha pasado por fin y ha sido estupendo (:-)), pero este post no es un post sobre este dia, (todavía no tengo tono para hablar de este día)…  este post estaba esperando a que pasara y va sobre algunas de las cosas que hacen falta para llegar hasta aquí.

Como todos los que se embarcan en una historia como esta, he tenido que escribir mi Proyecto Docente e Investigador y, aunque tenía ideas, empecé a leer cosas variadas (de lo mio) antes, y no me daba ningún miedo la tarea (¡a mí las tropas!), lo cierto es que cuando “me puse”… no tenía NI IDEA de por dónde empezar… entonces sí empecé a preocuparme… ¿cómo demonios empiezo?

Así que, una vez terminada la faena (si queréis ver cómo se hizo y qué se hizo con algunos de los materiales, tenéis aquí todo el material), en este post tengo que agradecer a otros que pasaron por esta duda antes que yo y que dejaron para la posteridad su trabajo y/o reflexiones que me han servido como fuente de inspiración y de apaciguamiento de la inmensa incertidumbre de estos meses, y además de agradecerles, dejo aquí su “rastro” para que, con suerte, a otros que os veáis en esta misma tesitura os sirvan también:

  • Gracias Marga Cabrera de la UPV por su post “Cómo hacer un proyecto docente e investigador para plaza de titular“, porque sobre todo me ayudó a no sentirme tan increíblemente inútil ante una tarea que parecía excesivamente básica. Explica los básicos antes de empezar, para todo el mundo. Y gracias Marga por tu disposición 🙂
  • Gracias Esteban Romero, por dejar abiertas y disponibles las presentaciones que utilizó en el concurso. Esa es otra locura… cómo presentar el CV y que no parezca una lista de la compra, o no dormirte mientras tanto.
  • Gracias Ruben Béjar, por dejar su proyecto (encima de 2017, es decir, reciente) disponible. Insisto en que no he incluido en mi trabajo nada del proyecto, pero su aproximación, especialmente a los asuntos contextuales, me abrió los ojos a unas cuantas cosas interesantes que me estaban pasando inadvertidas.
  • Gracias a los autores de otros proyectos docentes que también están abiertos en Internet, también me dieron ideas. De área cercanas a la mía el de María José Rodríguez Conde,  o el de Alejandra Bosco, o el de… cada vez hay más… este post lo empecé a escribir la primera vez que busqué (para no olvidarme los nombres) y, ahora -7 meses después- que hago un repaso ¡hay cientos!… bueno, igual me he pasado… ¡hay decenas!

Gracias a todos por vuestra generosidad.

Hay mucha sabiduría por las redes sobre este y todos los particulares, pero desde mi experiencia yo quisiera compartiros alguna idea que apuntaría por si me pilla otra vez, mi versión de cómo afrontar un proyecto docente:

  • Lo primero: léete la normativa de la universidad que convoca el concurso al que quieres presentarte. Léetela y reléetela. Cada universidad tiene su propio estilo y definen (o no) el proyecto de formas MUY diferentes.
  • Empieza viendo… no leyendo… viendo… busca tu estilo.
  • Recuerda que vas a invertir más horas de las que quieres (y muchas más de las REALMENTE necesarias -si esto no fuera una carrera de hamsters y bla bla bla-)… así que… busca un aliciente… disfruta con algo de lo que estés haciendo… no rellenes papel… y si no tienes más remedio… dale un sentido… (si no eres pedagogo, no le ves el sentido y quieres que te de la chapa, me ofrezco a contarte por qué el proyecto docente mola como proyecto curricular).
  • Recuerda que puedes soñar e imaginar tu asignatura… en el contexto en el que estás y con los alumnos que tienes, pero puedes ir más allá de planificar lo que ya haces… plantéatelo como un proyecto de innovación docente para tu aula… y de eso que te gusta tanto (como para hacer una Tesis, un post-doc, mil papers, ¡si tu eres un friki de eso! etc.)
  • Piensa en el proyecto investigador a lo grande… escribe una propuesta de proyecto que te sirva para presentarla a tu nombre en la próxima convocatoria… será trabajo ganado… y aprenderás más…
  • Recuerda que es TU proyecto… incluye lo que entiendas y SOLO lo que hayas leído… descubrí que hay alguna referencia que citan muchas personas en sus proyectos docentes  y está descatalogada de casi todas las bibliotecas españolas en que pregunté (tuve que hacerme con el libro por Internet en una librería de 2ª mano… en la red… creo que me lo trajeron desde alguna librería perdida en Inglaterra)…
  • Mi objetivo inicial era hacer un PD de menos de 100 páginas… no lo conseguí (aunque por la longitud de este post imaginas las razones ;-))… ¿y si entre todos empezamos a dejar de repetirnos?
  • Léete los proyectos de la gente que realmente admires intelectualmente. ¡Vas a aprender horrores de tu ámbito… de las “bases” de tu ámbito!.
  • Abre un poco la mirada. No estaría mal que no leas “solo” de lo tuyo… igual algún paseo por los alrededores hace el camino más divertido intelectualmente. Gracias Paco Llorens por la selección de filosofía de la tecnología.
  • Mira proyectos (no te los bajes y los “atesores” en tu ordenador… míralos en la red)… también de otras áreas… he visto proyectos super interesantes y preciosos de las áreas más dispares (arquitectura, historia, ingeniería, comunicación) y me han servido de inspiración (aunque no se note :-P).
  • Ahora, busca TU VOZ, que suene a ti…
  • Si puedes, atrévete con algo… sé intrépido intelectualmente, o metodológicamente…(insisto, si puedes), y antes de tirarte a la piscina, busca a alguien en quien confíes plenamente -y que intelectualmente te sorprenda- pídele que lea tu atrevimiento y te de su opinión descarnada. Gracias Paco Martínez por tu opinión descarnada.

Claro, todas estas bobadas dependen de cómo sea tu concurso, si es tu área o no, cómo sea el ambiente del examen, el tribunal, la cantidad de candidatos, mil cosas… pero esta fue mi experiencia…

Solo una cosa más: recuerda que tu misión es demostrar que eres LA PERSONA para ese puesto de trabajo (para ese en concreto), no es una tesis doctoral, no es una comunicación a un congreso. No olvides que se trata de un proceso de selección y que tu misión es demostrar en ese proceso que eres quien debe ocupar ese sitio y que llevas trabajando por él todos estos años. ¡A por ello!

Addenda (por si os anima a los que estáis escribiendo ahora y pasáis por aquí):

Fruto en parte de semillas sembradas durante el trabajo hecho para los materiales de esta oposición, surgieron conversaciones y trabajos que -muy trabajados y mejorados por mis compañeros de aventuras y colegas- han desembocado en algunas publicaciones de las que estoy particularmente contenta porque confirma que no perdí el tiempo sino que me sirvió para aprender un montón de cosas:

“The goal is not improving… is deffending”

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

A couple of weeks ago, I had the good fortune to meet in person one of the authors I have found most suggestive in recent times in the literature on educational technology (I confess that the list of suggestive in recent times is quite long), and one of whom has also made me think more about, what I want to do from now on Ed Tech: Maarten Simons from UK-Leuven.

Professor Simons, together with his colleague Mathias Decruypere have written some very interesting papers on socio-material analysis of educational environments. And, answering to my interest in meeting them and seeking some synergy between our work, they kindly agreed to meet me for a short while on my recent visit to Leuven.

This is not a post about socio-materiality, neither about research methodology in educational technology (although I highly recommend the works not only of Simons and Decruypere, but of Martin Oliver and Leslie Gourlay, among others). It’s about something we talked to Professor Simons about.

When we were trying to understand better what the “other’s” starting point was, and why I had asked for a meeting, Professor Simons gave me a “warning” (a “warning to sailors” to be more precise), which I found difficult to digest in the beginning, but which gave me much to think about. He told me something like (attention to the fact that these are my memories, maybe I’m wrong about my words between my nerves and my poor English):

I do not seek to improve education, I do not believe in the need for everything we research to “improve” education. And I don’t care if I look conservative with a position like that, but I want to know better, understand, even defend education.

In the same line of research, this open access book, signed for the two authors

Masschelein, J., & Simons, M. (2013). In defence of the school. A public issue. Leuven: E-ducation, Culture & Society Publishers. https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/400685/1/https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/400685/1/

He emphasized VERY clearly that he is not one of those who try to justify everything they do in education with an interest in the “improvement” of education (while I was listening to him, it rumbled in my head that school is not a company because we are not looking for infinite improvement). He wants to know, understand and, why not, defend education of the elements that impact on them at the moment when it is inserted (political, economic, technological, epistemological, social)…)…

and I confess that, granted the current Spanish and Worldwide situation, it’s one of the most revolutionary things I can think of lately.

Simons has written a lot about school learning, which moves away from the school as a building or as an organization, and becomes a different reality and I invite you to read it. To begin with, I invite you to read this work from 2015:

Masschelein, J., & Simons, M. (2015). Education in times of fast learning: The future of the school. Ethics and Education, 10(1), 84-95.

In that meeting, I learned many things from my interlocutors (and I will intend to learn more in the future), from myself, from education in general and from educational technology in particular, but today I just wanted to share with you this little bit of my experience, and recommend to you vividly the reflection of this author.

I hope it gives you a lot to think about.

Notes:

  • Professor Simons is Professor of Theory and History of Education at UK Leuven.
  • And what was I doing in Leuven? I was participating in the International Week of the UC-Leuven Teacher Training School, thanks to the invitation of my colleague Karine Hindrix. Thanks to her I had this wonderful learning opportunity.

Thinking on Teaching Competence for a Digital World

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

For some months now, in informal conversations with other colleagues and, more in depth with my friends Francesc Esteve and Jordi Adell, we have been thinking about the idea that the definition of Teaching Digital Competence (hereinafter TDC), as it is proposed in most of the available models, left us with too many “unfinished ideas”…

Basically, we believed – we still believe – that the existing TDC models are based on a vision of what is digital competence (generic), that is used as fundamentals, and on top, pedagogy is “spread” as a layer (like butter)… but definitively in a too thin layer. As a result, these models – and their developments – are guilty of three main evils at least:

  • They do not understand teaching action as an integral action beyond the performance of the classroom.
  • They have a reduced and reductionist view of technology
  • They do not make explicit the type of competence model that underlies them, and if they do, they tend to coincide with models of mangerialism models, rather than integral development ones.

So we decided to work on these ideas and, in addition to a more in-depth analysis of existing CDD models, we would like proposing at least a first outline of what a Model of Teaching Competence for the Digital World would be. That is to say, a model that understands that the base is the teaching action and on it, is “spread” (to follow with the metaphor) the technology by all the corners, and in its wider perspective.

As a result of these joint thoughts, we have written two papers that have just been published and that I would like to share with you today. I know they are just in Spanish (we hope continue working on it in English in the near future), but if you are interested, I’m sure translator could help you (I’m open for chats too :-)).

Every comment and suggestion is welcome….

(Español) Crónica tardía de la Wifi: la Falsación de una creencia

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

Sorry, this entry is only available in Español.

Hace un poco más de un año se generó en mi facultad una discusión sobre si deberíamos quitar a wifi de la universidad o no (como no hay asuntos educativos importantes para discutir, discutimos de eso #modeironiaoff).

Para abrir tal discusión un profesor de la facultad de educación (sí, pedagogo a secas como yo), presentó un “informe” en el que esgrimía todos los argumentos y “datos” que supuestamente no dejaban lugar a dudas sobre por qué teníamos que convertirnos en una zona  sin wifi ni radiaciones (él la llamó “blanca”, yo la llamaría “oscura”, incluso “oscurantista”); y para unirme a la discusión y expresar mi opinión en defensa de algo que considero un derecho yo hice un escrito en el que intentaba hacer un mero ejercicio de falsación del “informe” original, de manera que pudiéramos discutir con algunos argumentos a favor y en contra por en medio y no sobre verdades “inmutables”.

El resultado de tal discusión ha sido decepcionante para mi en todas las formas posibles, no solo porque la osadía de disentir de su criterio de forma explícita me ha granjeado un enemigo público y notorio, que incordia a mis estudiantes y a sus actividades y me ha llegado a faltar al respeto públicamente, sino porque he perdido mi tiempo y mis ganas de discutir en ese contexto, pues yo esperaba una discusión en el terreno de los argumentos y aquello era una discusión de creencias (cosa que yo dejaba como terreno sobretodo de las religiones…) que derivó en algo no solo poco interesante, sino deliberadamente desagradable.

Había intentado olvidar aquel capítulo decepcionante de mi participación en mi facultad y sus discusiones, PERO en las listas de distribución de mi uni se ha vuelto a “abrir el melón”, así que he decidido compartir esta historia con aquellos que puedan estar interesados y sacar del cajón aquella falsación por si a alguien le interesa… Pido mil perdones a los científicos de áreas afines al objeto de la discusión por mi atrevimiento.

A partir de aquí el documento presentado a la CEM en Abril de 2014

Nota al lector

Las siguientes líneas son sólo el trabajo de lectura crítica de una pedagoga sobre un asunto de interés colectivo en el que se contraponen intereses y visiones.
Entiendo que todos estamos preocupados no solo por las radiaciones, sino por todos los agentes que pueden ser perjudiciales para la nuestra salud y la de todos los miembros de la comunidad. Yo misma estoy preocupada por todos ellos.
Sin embargo, entiendo que por la importancia de las decisiones que se pretenden tomar a la luz de los datos y de las repercusiones que esas decisiones pueden tener en la vida diaria de nuestros compañeros estudiantes e investigadores, no podemos asumir con ligereza ninguna de las conclusiones que nos llegan desde ningún organismo, plataforma, institución o colectivo. Menos aún cuando los informes provienen de otros que, como nosotros, no tenemos una especialidad que nos permita un juicio crítico certero, más allá de nuestra opinión.

Este es un pequeño documento de análisis, no es un informe exhaustivo, ni pretende serlo, aunque todos los argumentos que se esgrimen y todos los informes de los que se da cuenta (y otros más) han sido examinados personalmente por quien lo firma. La cantidad de datos a favor y en contra es abrumadora y espectacular.

Creo sinceramente que analizar toda la información disponible desborda lo que debe ser un trabajo de tiempo libre (no creo que debamos gastar el dinero de nuestra facultad -ni el tiempo de sus profesores, que es también dinero público- en hacer informes que ya hacen instituciones más y mejor cualificadas para ello) y para un trabajo más pormenorizado y exhaustivo ya hay entidades especializadas –y oficiales- a todos los niveles que lo hacen. Entrar en si esas entidades tienen “intereses espurios” no es un argumento que pueda ser probado en igualdad de condiciones y es, cuanto menos, arriesgado.

Simplemente he querido hacer una revisión crítica de los datos que nos han ido llegando a la luz de los datos oficiales más sobresalientes.

Se trata de entender que debemos ser precavidos, pero rigurosos y salvaguardar nuestro bienestar y el de nuestros estudiantes sin caer en el alarmismo.

Valga apuntar que soy investigadora en tecnología educativa desde la perspectiva de la didáctica (por lo que mi interés en los “cacharros” es limitado), soy profesora de esta facultad, madre, esposa, amiga, mujer y que no tengo interés económico alguno en ninguna empresa de tecnología vía wireless o móvil, ni por producción, diseño o distribución.

Además quisiera resaltar que algunos de los modelos pedagógicos emergentes a nivel internacional en todos los niveles educativos y especialmente en educación superior (Sharples et al., 2013 y Johnson et al. 2014) aluden precisamente a la oportunidad que supone el uso de dispositivos móviles dentro y fuera de las aulas, que permitan la permeabilidad de las acciones de aprendizaje más allá de los límites de las propias paredes de la misma y acercando con los dispositivos móviles las acciones cotidianas a nuestras dinámicas de clase, con la incidencia de las mismas en unas prácticas más auténticas, en el sentido más constructivista de la palabra.

Todo ello sin mencionar los avances en los niveles de alfabetización que han supuesto iniciativas educativas en toda África y que tienen como centro el uso del teléfono móvil y de tecnologías Wifi. En consecuencia, entiendo que imposibilitar el uso de dispositivos móviles en todas las dependencias universitarias y precisamente en la Facultad de Educación, nos aleja de las tendencias internacionales y que es preciso que el análisis de una decisión TAN trascendente sea profundo y concienzudo.

Espero que alguno de los datos sirvan sólo para ampliar la perspectiva.

Una lectura crítica de los informes

Si bien es muy extensa y variada la literatura de países y organismos referentes a nivel internacional que ponen de manifiesto que las Radiaciones electromagnéticas que sustentan servicios como la telefonía móvil y los accesos Wifi NO se consideran peligrosos, al menos en sus usos actuales. Entendemos que es preciso que nos centremos en aquellos informes y presentaciones que nos han llegado y en los que se han esgrimido básicamente dos fuentes como pruebas fundamentales de la peligrosidad de las radiaciones: la Organización Mundial de la Salud, en concreto la IARC, y el meta- estudio de la plataforma Bioinitiative.

Veamos ambos acudiendo a las fuentes primarias:

¿Qué dice EXACTAMENTE la OMS sobre si son peligrosas las radiofrecuencias de los móviles, wifi y estaciones de emisión?

En su informe público de septiembre de 2013 (público en su página Web, OMS, 2013), la OMS dice que debido a que la exposición a la radiofrecuencia (RF) que emiten los teléfonos móviles es, por lo general, más de 1.000 veces más alta que a las estaciones base, y hay una mayor probabilidad de que un efecto adverso se deba a los teléfonos y no a las estaciones mismas. No obstante, con base en la investigación existente, se ha llegado a la conclusión de:

“Sobre la base de las pruebas epidemiológicas mixta en los seres humanos con respecto a la asociación entre la exposición a la radiación de radiofrecuencia de teléfonos móviles y el cáncer de cabeza (glioma y neuroma acústico), los campos de RF han sido clasificados por la Agencia Internacional para la Investigación sobre el Cáncer como posible carcinógeno para los humanos (Grupo 2B )”. Asunto en el que profundizaremos más adelante (el informe de la IARC del que se nos ha hablado en otros informes).

“Los estudios realizados hasta la fecha no indican que la exposición ambiental a los campos de RF, como las estaciones base, aumente el riesgo de cáncer o de cualquier otra enfermedad.”

Además se dice que “Los científicos han reportado otros efectos en la salud del uso de teléfonos móviles que incluyen cambios en la actividad cerebral, tiempos de reacción y los patrones de sueño. Estos efectos son menores y no tienen importancia para la salud aparente”.

¿Qué dice exactamente la Agencia Internacional de Investigación contra el Cáncer de la OMS? (IARC- WHO):

En su informe de 2002 (IARC, 2002) sobre la posible relación entre las radiaciones electromagnéticas y el cáncer, la IARC decía que:

“There is limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of extremely low-frequency magnetic fields in relation to childhood leukaemia.

There is inadequate evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of extremely low-frequency magnetic fields in relation to all other cancers.

There is inadequate evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of static electric or magnetic fields and extremely low-frequency electric fields.

There is inadequate evidence in experimental animals for the carcinogenicity of extremely low-frequency magnetic fields.

No data relevant to the carcinogenicity of static electric or magnetic fields and extremely low-frequency electric fields in experimental animals were available.” (página 7)

Y toma una decision:

“Overall evaluation: Extremely low-frequency magnetic fields are possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B). Static electric and magnetic fields and extremely low-frequency electric fields are not classifiable as to their carcinogenicity to humans (Group 3).” (página 8)

¿Y eso qué significa?

Que NO HAY PRUEBAS SUFICIENTES de la carcinogenicidad del agente, NI en humanos, NI en animales de experimentación. Que se incluye a los campos de radiación magnética de baja frecuencia entre los agentes que potencialmente pueden ser cancerígenos para humanos. En la misma lista que incluye 285 agentes (IARC, 2014) está la gasolina, el diesel que se usa en los barcos, el café (aunque se especifica que solo en el caso del cáncer de vejiga, porque en otros hay pruebas de que puede ser incluso beneficioso), las fibras cerámicas refractarias, algunos tipos de implantes quirúrgicos metálicos que se siguen usando en la medicina occidental.

Pero eso fue en 2002, ¿no hay nada más reciente?. En 2013 se vuelve a hacer un informe específico por parte de la IARC que dice que:

“There is limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of radiofrequency radiation. Positive associations have been observed between exposure to radiofrequency radiation from wireless phones and glioma, and acoustic neuroma”, pero indica que “A small, recently published Japanese case–control study, which also observed an association of acoustic neuroma with mobilephone use, contributed to the evaluation of limited evidence for acoustic neuroma” y lo que es más preocupante, indica que “There was, however, a minority opinion that current evidence in humans was inadequate, therefore permitting no conclusion about a causal association” (IARC, 2013 pp 419).

Y se sigue incluyendo a los campos electromagnéticos en el grupo 2B (IARC, 2013 pp 419).

El estudio Bioinitiative: Salvedades y reservas ante los datos

Entiendo que no podemos adherirnos sin más a los informes esgrimidos desde las plataformas anti-radiofrecuencias porque algunos de los argumentos y los informes que se presentan en ellas han sido ya refutados o puestos en duda desde diferentes agencias estatales y de salud pública nacionales e internacionales.

Sin ir más lejos, existe variada literatura científica (aparte de gran cantidad de documentos firmados unilateralmente por científicos de todo el mundo, algunos que directamente acusan a Bioinitiative de fraude en el uso de los datos) e informes de agencias nacionales e internacionales que critican fuertemente la independencia, cientificidad y veracidad de los resultados del informe Bioinitiative. Nos gustaría destacar sólo a modo de ejemplo:

  • El consejo de salud Holandés que concluye que “ The Committee concludes that this report is not an objective and balanced reflection of the current state of scientific knowledge and does not provide any grounds for revising the current views as to the risks of exposure to electromagnetic fields.” (Health Council of the Netherlands, 2008)
  • El centro Australiano para el estudio de los efectos biológicos de las radiofrecuencias (Australian Centre for Radiofrequency Bioeffects Research – ACRBR) indica que “As it stands it merely provides a set of views that are not consistent with the consensus of science, and it does not provide an analysis that is rigorous-enough to raise doubts about the scientific consensus.
    It is worth noting that the state of science in this area is continually being debated and updated by a number of expert bodies comprised of the leading experts in this field. For example, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) project, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), the UK Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR) programme, and here in Australia the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Science Agency (ARPANSA) have all provided authoritative analyses of the electromagnetic radiation bioeffects research. The WHO Environment Health Criteria 238 also provides a thorough analysis of the literature to date in relation to extremely low frequency (ELF, or powerline electromagnetic fields)” (Croft et al., 2008 pp. 3)
  • La iniciativa EFM-NET financiada por la Comisión Europea, que en su informe indica que en la iniciativa Bioinitiative se excluyen sistemáticamente aquellos estudios que no se alinean con las ideas de la plataforma que soporta la iniciativa y que ignora sistemáticamente los informes nacionales e internacionales al respecto (EFRT, 2007).
  • El COMAR (Committee on Man and Radiation) del IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, que indica que “que el peso de la evidencia científica en la literatura sobre los efectos biológicos de las Radiofrecuencias no admite los límites de seguridad recomendados por el grupo BioInitiative. Por esta razón, la COMAR recomienda que los funcionarios de salud pública continúen basando sus políticas en los límites de seguridad de radiofrecuencia recomendados por las organizaciones internacionales establecidas y sancionadas, como el Instituto de Ingenieros Eléctricos y Electrónicos Ingenieros, el Comité Internacional sobre Seguridad Electromagnética y la Comisión Internacional sobre No-Ionizantes Protección Radiológica, que están formalmente relacionados con la Organización Mundial de la Salud” (COMAR, 2009 pp 26).
  • La agencia federal alemana de protección antirradiación (BfS por sus iniciales en alemán, Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz ) indicó que el informe Bioinitiative tenía deficiencias científicas claras. En particular, llama la atención sobre la imposibilidad técnica de combinar los efectos en la salud de los campos de baja y alta frecuencia. Además, dice que la abrumadora mayoría de los estudios que sustentan el informe no son nuevos y ya se han tenido en cuenta en las normas de radiación que se aplican en la actualidad (BfS, 2008)
  • La agencia francesa para la seguridad medioambiental y en el trabajo.
  • El consejo médico Indio.
  • Y más que entiendo que no es preciso incluirlas en este mini-informe.

¿Hay más estudios?

Muchos más y con resultados variados y de complicado entendimiento (especialmente para alguien que se dedica, como yo, a la investigación social). Pero hay una base de datos sobre estudios de todo tipo que hay al respecto y con un buscador que es muy sencillo de usar, por si tenéis curiosidad
http://apps.who.int/peh-emf/research/database/emfstudies/
No obstante, con base en todo eso, la OMS, ya se ha pronunciado.

¿Y las mediciones?

Los datos que muestran algunas de las medidas son científicamente poco relevantes, fuera del marco de ninguna investigación concluyente sobre los efectos de esas cifras. ¿Debemos hacer algo? Seguramente, pero –al menos en esta facultad- no tenemos criterio científico alguno para tomar decisiones con esas mediciones sin más.

Referencias:

BfS (2008). Ergebnisse des deutschen Mobilfunk Forschungsprogramm (DMF). http://www.emf-forschungsprogramm.de/abschlussphase/DMF_AB.pdf

COMAR (2009). COMAR technical information statement: expert reviews on potential health effects of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields and comments on the bioinitiative report. Health Phys. 97(4):348-56. doi: 10.1097/HP.0b013e3181adcb94 .

Croft, R.; Abramson, M.; Cosic, I.; Finnie, J.; McKenzie, R. & Wood, A (2008). ACRBR Position Statement on BioInitiative Report. Australian Centre for Radiofrequency Bioeffects Research (ACRBR). Disponible online en http://www.acrbr.org.au/FAQ/ACRBR%20Bioinitiative%20Report%2018%20Dec%202008.pdf

EFRT (2007). Comments on the BioInitiative Working Group Report (BioInitiative Report). Disponible online en EMF-NET Comments on the BioInitiative Report 30OCT2007.pdf (38 KB)

Health Council of the Netherlands (2008). BioInitiative report. The Hague: Health Council of the Netherlands, 2008; publication no. 2008/17E. Disponible Online en http://www.gezondheidsraad.nl/sites/default/files/200817E_0.pdf

IARC (2002). Volume 80: Non-Ionizing Radiation, Part 1: Static and Extremely Low-Frequency (ELF) Electric and Magnetic Fields: Summary of Data Reported and Evaluation. IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans. WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION. INTERNATIONAL AGENCY FOR RESEARCH ON CANCER. Disponible Online en http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol80/volume80.pdf

IARC (2013). Non-Ionizing Radiation, Part 2: Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields. MONOGRAPHS ON THE EVALUATION OF CARCINOGENIC RISKS TO HUMANS, Vol.102. Disponible Online en http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol102/mono102.pdf

IARC (2014). Agents Classified by the IARC Monographs, Volumes 1–109 . WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION. INTERNATIONAL AGENCY FOR RESEARCH ON CANCER. Disponible Online en http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/ClassificationsGroupOrder.pdf

ICNIRP (2009). Comisión Internacional de Protección contra las Radiaciones No Ionizantes . directrices disponibles Online en http://www.icnirp.org/documents/StatementEMF.pdf

IEEE (2005). IEEE Std C95.1 – 2005. IEEE standard for safety levels with respect to human exposure to radio frequency electromagnetic fields, 3 kHz to 300 GHz.

Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., Freeman, A. (2014). NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium

OMS (2013). What are the health risks associated with mobile phones and their base stations?. WHO Online Questions & Answers. Página Web de la OMS. Disponible online en http://www.who.int/features/qa/30/en/

Sharples, M., McAndrew, P., Weller, M., Ferguson, R., FitzGerald, E., Hirst, T., & Gaved, M. (2013). “Innovating Pedagogy 2013: Open University Innovation Report 2”. The Open University. Milton Keynes: The Open University.

TACCLE2, libros con ideas para hacer cosas con TIC en el aula

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

Hace unos años, un proyecto europeo llamado TACCLE editó un libro de introducción al uso de las tecnologías por los profesores, una especie de, “aquí las TIC, aquí unos amigos, léalo, que no muerden”. En su momento confieso que me sorprendió el hecho de que fuese un libro y que además fuese un libro impreso el que quisiera servir de “gancho” de entrada para los profesores en esto de las TIC. Pero lo cierto es que el libro aquel, que se editó hasta en 5 idiomas diferentes de la unión y con una licencia CC de atribución-no comercial, fue un rotundo éxito y no sólo las copias físicas se agotaron enseguida, sino que el número de descargas ha sido masivo en los años que lleva en red.

Al terminar aquel proyecto, los implicados preguntaron a algunos profesores sus impresiones sobre la utilidad del libro y muchos de ellos afirmaban que les había supuesto una herramienta muy útil y muy cercana… algo como “somos profes de libro y para movernos, qué mejor que un libro”…

Poco después, esos mismos profes, acusaron la necesidad de ir un pasito más allá. Ya conocían las herramientas, incluso habían “tocado algunas”, pero seguían sin ver claramente cómo poner esas herramientas al servicio de una clase más participativa, en la que sus alumnos tomaran claramente el protagonismo. Era exactamente tener la herramienta y no saber qué tornillo apretar.

Por eso nació el proyecto TACCLE2 – en el que mi grupo (el GITE) y yo misma – hemos estado implicados los tres  últimos años. Se trata de, siguiendo la misma estrategia, publicar unos libros (si, a los profes que han hablado con nosotros les gustan los libros), que fueran un pasito más allá y mostraran “ejemplos” de actividades enriquecidas con TIC, contextualizados por áreas de interés curricular (sí, están pensados para educación primaria y secundaria, aunque seguramente podréis encontrar ideas para más contextos) que pudieran servir de “detonante” de ideas.

Pues bien, TACCLE2 ha terminado, y ya tenemos todos los libros, traducidos al castellano y a otros 7 idiomas de la unión, disponibles en la web para descargároslos y hacer con ellos lo que consideréis oportuno (misma licencia, mismo espíritu)

  • E-learning para profesores de primaria 4.27 MB
  • E-learning para docentes de humanidades 1.28 MB
  • E-learning para profesores de Ciencias, Tecnología Y Matemáticas (STEM) 2.68 MB
  • E-learning para profesores de Artes Escénicas y Creativas 2.48 MB
  • TIC y Competencias Básicas 1.11 MB

Hay que decir, que las ideas que han aparecido en esos libros son fruto de trabajo y buen hacer de profes que han trabajado con el grupo y cuyas experiencias podéis encontrar también en las actividades que aparecen – más y más detalladas- en la página web del proyecto TACLCLE2.

Espero que os sean de alguna utilidad.

Actividades enriquecidas con tecnología, el trabajo de los R&ICT1314

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

En la asignatura de R&ICT (1er curso del grado en Educación Primaria, grupo bilingüe) hemos trabajado todo el año con un proyecto que me gustaría contaros para lo de siempre, si os gusta que uséis lo que os parezca y si tenéis alguna sugerencia que –amablemente jeje- me la hagáis: durante todo el curso hemos diseñado en grupos de 2 o 3 personas lo que hemos llamado una Actividad Didáctica enriquecida con tecnología.

Para hacerlo lo primero que hicimos fue hablar de metas (goals), la idea era pensar en qué queremos realmente que los alumnos aprendan, partiendo de que si en realidad se trata de “enriquecer” la actividad didáctica, será porque aspiramos a algo más que recordar o entender (aunque ya sabéis que no soy la más Bloomer 😉 ). La idea era, partiendo del tema que quisiéramos abordar (siempre desde el Curriculum oficial y la impresionante revisión de Fernando Trujillo), darle vueltas a qué verbos vamos a poner en marcha con los estudiantes… así que les pedí que pusieran esos verbos en un padlet:

Una vez puestos los verbos en ese tablón, hicimos una reflexión en clase sobre qué significaban y qué consecuencias tenían en las actividades. Ahora con eso, Jane Challinor en su visita (a la que le debo un post) nos hizo reflexionar un poco sobre la importancia de lo multimedia y de buscar y curar información relevante que nos ayude a no diseñar la rueda de nuevo, así que cada grupo hizo un tablón de pinterest para que sirviera como centro de organización de información relacionada con su futura actividad: Captura de pantalla 2014-06-30 a la(s) 01.56.36 Entonces empezamos a trabajar en estrategia metodológica –qué van a hacer tus futuros alumnos- y además tocamos lo que parece que todo el mundo opina que debería ser lo único que deberíamos dar en clase: las herramientas y, cómo no, de evaluación. Para eso tuvimos la suerte de tener en clase a Manel Rives, quien nos contó unas cuántas cosas sobre creatividad, centros de interés, lo que son capaces de hacer los alumnos y herramientas móviles para trabajar con los estudiantes.

Con esa primera aproximación, los estudiantes debían preparar su actividad para presentarla en una feria presencial que hicimos en el hall de la facultad (aquí tenéis algunas fotos de la feria ) El objetivo de la feria era presentar el “todo” preparado y recibir feedback antes de la evaluación: tanto de la profe (yo), como de los visitantes de nuestra feria, quienes después- si querían- podían rellenar una encuesta en red que dejamos disponible con un código QR que pusimos en cada stand. La nota media de nuestros visitantes fue un 8,26 (sí, son muy amables :-)) e hicieron algunos comentarios de los que os enseñamos en la siguiente nube de palabras. Captura de pantalla 2014-06-30 a la(s) 02.22.12 Con ese feedback, los estudiantes debían presentar la actividad reformulada en una página de TACKK (por uniformar decidimos esta herramienta que fuera MUY muy fácil y que dejara un resultado estéticamente similar). En esa página web debían incluirse lo que lamamos “The basics of the activity”: es decir: goals, process, teacher’s guide, assessment criteria and instrument, etc; Tutorial(s) for using the ICT tools that are used on the activity; Example of the final artifact the potential students must do.; Author’s individual PLE & reflection about the subject. Captura de pantalla 2014-06-30 a la(s) 01.40.03 Era importante que todo el proceso (sí desde el principio) se gestionase dentro de los grupos a través de una herramienta de gestión de proyectos llamada Trello que me ayudó a hacer un seguimiento más o menos al día de lo que iban haciendo mis estudiantes. Captura de pantalla 2014-06-30 a la(s) 01.56.36 El resultado de las actividades queremos que sirva en la medida de lo posible a profes, así que hemos realizado una tabla que dejamos buscable a todos los interesados y que, gracias al plugin Tablepress para WordPress, ya se ha agregado a una página de la sección “docencia” de este sitio web . [table “1” not found /]

Eso es lo que hemos hecho… ahora me queda hacer reflexión sobre el trabajo, pero lo dejaré para otro post. Quisiera agradecer sinceramente la inspiración y ayuda que mi amigo y compañero Manel Rives que me ayudó a pensar en toda la estructura del proceso y hacerlo, y obviamente quiero agradecer a mis estudiantes por el trabajo que han hecho y por ser la razón que hace que siga deseando que venga el año que viene y empezar otra vez…

¡Gracias por todo! (y van 34)

con el proyecto ALTER de visita en Dublin

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

La semana pasada (del 21 al 24 de marzo) ambos inclusive estuve, junto a Ana Ferrer (coordinadora de la Aulas Hospitalarias del Hospital Universitario Virgen de la Arrixaca de Murcia), en Dublín.

La visita se enmarca en una de las partes del proyecto ALTER, Alternativas Telemáticas en Aulas Hospitalarias: Una experiencia Educativa, que es un proyecto que Coordina: Mª Paz Prendes Espinosa (directora de mi grupo de Investigación) y que tiene como finalidad principal mejorar la atención educativa que reciben los niños que tienen que permanecer hospitalizados durante largos periodos de tiempo (y que durante ese periodo de tiempo acuden a las a las aulas de las que dispone el hospital), acercándolos, gracias al uso de las TIC, a sus aulas de referencia, aquellas que han tenido que abandonar por motivos ajenos a ellos, como es el caso de una enfermedad. Partiendo de eta realidad, el proyecto pretende diseñar y validar un protocolo de atención educativa en Red para alumnos en situación de hospitalización reiterada o de larga duración, que pueda ser utilizado en los contextos de aulas hospitalarias y sirva como referente para otros centros de esta índole soportados por el sistema educativo español.

He ido desgranando algunas de las actividades que hemos desarrollado en el viaje en post de este blog, así que os dejo la lista y espero que alguna os resulte de interés:

  • Proyecto ALTER en Dublin: En la Universidad
  • ALTER en Dublín: The Our Lady’s Hospital School
  • ALTER en Dublín: The Beaumont Hospital School
  • ALTER en Dublín: The Children’s University Hospital School of Temple Street

    • Ha sido una experiencia fantástica, la ciudad, la gente, el trabajo, la compañía…
    sólo me queda deciros a todos:

    ¡GRACIAS!
    o
    Thank you so much!!
    O mejor…

    go raibh maith agat

    si osáis pronunciarlo es algo como “Göröbmajagot”

    ALTER en Dublín: The Children’s University Hospital School of Temple Street

    Posted on by lindacq@um.es

    Aquí nos Saluda Mary Cambers, la directora de Children’s University Hospital School of Temple Street:

    Quiséramos destacar, antes de nada, que con Mary, aquí en Tempe Street, trabajaron como profes, tanto Mary McCarron como Avril Carey (las directoras de los dos centros en los que hemos estado anteriormente) y que, según ellas mismas nos contaron, su estancia aquí fue el detonante para decidir quedarse en la educación hospitalaria y además fueron nombradas directoras de sus centros. ¿Inspiración? Seguro.

    Este hospital, si bien es un hospital específico para niños, no fue construido específicamente con estructura de hospital, sino que se ubicó en la casa que un caballero cedió para tal fin. Por lo mismo el edificio es precioso desde el punto de vista estético, aunque dentro sea francamente incómodo como centro hospitalario (pasillos estrechos, largas escaleras, etc.). Aún así, como bien nos dice Mary, lo mejor del centro es sin duda la gente con la que se trabaja y el ambiente que han conseguido entre todos.

    Debido a la gravedad inherente a los pacientes de un centro de atención terciaria en Irlanda y a la estructura física del hospital, la mayoría de los alumnos NO asisten al aula de la escuela, sino que cada pabellón cuenta con una profesora que atiende a los niños en sus camas.

    Básicamente la realidad de Temple Street es bastante parecida a la de Our Lady’s en Crumlin, aunque la estructura del edificio en este caso no ha permitido crear un ambiente de escuela tan desarrollado como el de Crumlin.

    En este caso también se ha estado incluído en el proyecto Aite Eile y se sigue usando como videoconferencia, aparte de considerar que los proyectos de digitalización de la información de los alumnos son vitales para mejorar la comunicación de los centros de origen y las aulas hospitalarias, así como para mejorar la atención educativa en sí misma.

    Hablar con Mary ha sido un recorrido, ne gran parte, por la historia de las AAHH en Dublín, una experiencia de cómo han evolucionado y hasta qué punto esperan cambios futuros.

    En los tres centros en los que hemos estado nos han contado que hay un proyecto (cerrado y adjudicado) para construir un único hospital infantil de atención terciaria que congregue a todos los que hemos visto, una forma de evitar desplazamientos permanentes a los niños entre los diferentes hospitales y una forma también de aunar esfuerzos en el ámbito educativo.

    Esperemos que la crisis de un respiro a dicho proyecto y que mantengamos la vista en ellos a ver qué más pueden enseñarnos.

    ALTER en Dublín: The Beaumont Hospital School

    Posted on by lindacq@um.es

    Ahora os presentamos a Avril Carey, directora del Beaumont Hospital School (http://beaumonthospitalschool.ie/):

    Beaumont, al contrario que Our Lady’s y que el que visitaremos a continuación (Children’s university hospital in Temple Street), NO es un hospital infantil, es un hospital de atención terciaria (MUY graves) como los otros dos, que atiende adultos en general y niños en la especialidad de Neurocirugía, y que tiene una escuela infantil en su pabellón infantil.
    Como bien nos cuenta Avril, la escuela sólo se fundó como tal en elaño 2003, antes de eso ella había estado atendiendo a los alumnos hospitalizados PERO sin consideración de escuela por parte del Dpto. de Educación.

    Hablamos de una escuela hospitalaria mucho más pequeña. El pabellón tiene unas 21 camas y actualmente es atendida por dos profes (Avril y Aoife), no hay personal administrativo.
    Ha sido fantástico que Avril nos contara la experiencia de creación de una escuela hospitalaria, prácticamente de la nada.

    Además Avril nos cuenta que considera que las TIC tienen un papel crucial, tanto para la educación de los alumnos, ampliando sus posibilidades de expresión multimedia y construcción del conocimiento a través de herramientas de la Web 2.0 (confieso, mientras la oía a mí me brillaban los ojillos), la motivación que imprimen en los trabajos de los alumnos. Como también entendidas como un medio para mejorar los canales de información y comunicación entre las instituciones educativas (colegios de origen, escuelas hospitalarias y departamento de educación), como entre los niños hospitalizados con otros como ellos, con sus amigos y con sus padres.

    Además, nos contó Avril, que una de sus preocupaciones ahora es todo lo que pasa después de que sus alumnos se reincorporan a la vida “normal” tras haber tenido una intervención quirúrgica neurológica, y cómo está trabajando en un canal de información con pequeños “tips” educativos para profes que trabajan con niños en esa situación que se manejen DESDE el aula hospitalaria especialista. A la par que le da más forma a la página web de la escuela (http://beaumonthospitalschool.ie/) en la que nos promete que habrá mucho más en junio 🙂
    Nuestra visita a Beaumont da mucho de sí, conocemos a Aoife (se pronuncia /ifa/ y significa Eva en Irlandés) que es la otra profe y nos sorprende que es su tercer día como profesora de aulas hospitalarias, así que no nos resistimos a preguntarle dos cosillas rápidas.

    Genial, muy estimulante la visita y, como todo el mundo aquí, gente encantadora.
    Esperamos seguir con un ojito puesto en todo lo que hagáis.

    ALTER en Dublín: The Our Lady’s Hospital School

    Posted on by lindacq@um.es

    Os presentamos a Mary McCarron, la directora de la escuela hospitalaria del Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital de Dublín:

    (El objetivo es subtitular pronto estos vídeos, pero mientras tanto disfrutad del inglés de Mary, el de la que entrevista es un horror)

    Como bien nos explica Mary, esta escuela hospitalaria se sitúa en un centro de atención terciaria que recibe a alumnos en situación de extrema gravedad y con unas especialidades muy concretas. Las escuelas de hospital se consideran escuelas de educación especial, y por lo mismo, la ratio profesor alumno es de 1/10 se atienda al pequeño en las instalaciones de la escuela (el aula general o el aula del pabellón en el que se encuentre), o se atienda en su cama.

    Mary nos explica antes que nada las diferencias entre lo que significa ser director, profesor y gestor en una escuela pública en Irlanda, y nos avisa de sus implicaciones a la hora de manejar o coordinar la estrategia de la escuela. Como bien nos explica, aquí cada escuela recibe un presupuesto que es manejado por un comité dirigido pos la directora, quienes deciden cómo se usa esa financiación y realizan con un procedimiento más o menos complejo, la selección y contratación del profesorado.

    Mary no da clase, según nos cuenta, hace 2 años consiguieron que a los directores se les “liberara” de funciones docentes y que se contratara una administrativa para el centro.
    En la escuela dispone de, además de un par de aulas de pabellçon, el aula general y el aula de secundaria, una pequeña sala multisensorial bien equipada y con “kits” multisensoriales para llevar a las habitaciones.


    En lo que respecta a las TIC, el cole ha estado incluido en el proyecto AIte Eile y de hecho sigue usando la videoconferencia de Aite Eile especialmente cuando alguno de los niños va a cambiar de una a otra escuela de hospital, así lo ponen en contacto con us nuevo maestro, etc. Aparte dello, tienen portátiles con los que los alumnos hacen “alguna” actividad, pero suelen ser cosas MUY puntuales. Además pero nos comentan que hay ciertos problemas con la limpieza de dichos equipos, especialmente en contextos donde la extrema pulcritud de los elementos que entran en las habitaciones es, nunca mejor dicho, vital. Por ello, los portátiles tienen fundas lavables y se está pensando en la compra de iPads.
    Aparte de esto, Mary nos muestra una silla equipada con un monitor y una cámara (webchair) que pretenden enviarse a las escuelas de origen de los alumnos para que los niños puedan asistir a sus clases de forma más o menos regular.

    Ha sido el primer contacto con una escuela de hospital en Dublín y ha sido tremendamente enriquecedor… ahora tenemos otra en el hospital de Beaumont…
    Nos despedimos y os dejamos un abrazo grande a todos.

    Gracias especialmente a Mary por su amabilidad y por abrirnos las puertas de la escuela.

    Proyecto ALTER en Dublin: En la Universidad

    Posted on by lindacq@um.es

    Nuestro contacto inicial para realizar esta visita de trabajo a Dublín ha sido el proyecto Aite Eile (http://yuriko.cs.tcd.ie/switch/) –que se pronuncia algo como /Ochela/ y que significa Nuevo Mundo en irlandés-, y el proyecto SOLAS (http://yuriko.cs.tcd.ie:8080/solas/ ), y con la líder de ambos proyectos, Paula Hicks.

    Paula Hicks, trabaja como project manager en el Centre for Health Informatics http://www.scss.tcd.ie/disciplines/intelligent_systems/chi/ del Trinity College de Dublín y nos ayudó a concretar toda esta visita con esa amabilidad que caracteriza sin lugar a duda a los irlandeses.

    Aparte de contarnos un poco de la forma de trabajar de su centro de investigación, estuvimos hablando diversos detalles de cada uno de los proyectos. Vayamos por partes:
    Aite Eile (http://yuriko.cs.tcd.ie/switch/) es un proyecto que debe ser visto con perspectiva histórica (si es que existe tal cosa en esto de la tecnología educativa). Se trata de un proyecto en el que –en el año 2001- se desarrolló un entorno que permitía a niños y a profesores de forma absolutamente inmediata, sencilla e intuitiva, hacer chats, videoconferencias, publicar material en formato vídeo/audio/texto enriquecido, jugar en red, dibujar e incluso acceder a páginas web a través de un filtro seguro proporcionado por la propia interfaz.

    Claro, hoy se nos ocurren muchísimas herramientas que permiten hacer eso mismo, pero hablamos de un entorno desarrollado completamente en la Web PRE 2.0… cuando eso era prácticamente magia… impresionante. El entorno fue probado por las aulas hospitalarias que conocimos (siguientes posts) y se sigue usando aún como sistema de videoconferencia.
    ¿Problema? El advenimiento y la proliferación de las tecnologías de la Web 2.0 y el fin de la financiación estancaron el proyecto hasta hoy.

    El proyecto SOLAS por su parte (http://yuriko.cs.tcd.ie:8080/solas/), pretende ser una suerte de red social específica para niños, y MUY en concreto se desarrolló para niños con patologías oncológicas. No obstante, ahora mismo se trabaja en entornos similares para otros colectivos de niños hospitalizados en situación de aislamiento (durante nuestra estancia conocimos a un doctorando que trabaja en un SOLAS para sujetos con fibrosis quística).

    SOLAS pretende ofrecer a los menores un entorno seguro para comunicarse con otros compañeros y con su familia (chat, mensajería móvil –sms- y videoconferencia), jugar y subir contenido de forma muy sencilla, y sobre todo, absolutamente protegida. La evaluación de su implementación se ha llevado a cabo en 2010 y es el momento de apuntar que el proyecto SOLAS ganó el Changing Tomorrow Award (http://www.tcd.ie/Communications/news/news.php?headerID=1686&vs_date=2011-2-1).

    En ambos casos, se trata de proyectos que priorizan las necesidades lúdicas de los alumnos en situación de hospitalización, el momento de aislamiento y los sentimientos de aburrimiento y depresión consiguientes a una estancia prolongada en el hospital y pretenden ofrecer alternativas a estos niños, siempre con la atención puesta en la usabilidad de los entornos y la seguridad de los mismos.

    ¿Cuál es el futuro? Según nos contaba Paula, la idea es intentar conseguir financiación para intentar combinar las bondades de Solas con las de Aite Eile y traerlas al momento actual… además de empezar a pensar en formas de hacer el proyecto más actual, internacional y escalable.

    Grandes retos. Continuaremos en contacto a ver qué aprendemos y cómo podemos colaborar.
    Mil gracias a nuestra anfitriona por su fantástica ayuda y esperamos verla pronto visitándonos en Murcia.

    Visiting Trinity College Dublin

    Agradecimientos

    Posted on by lindacq@um.es

    Ha llegado el día. Hoy a las 12 estaré defendiendo la tesis… y como creo que lo que más merece ser público de este trabajo son los agradecimientos… aquí los tenéis.

    Espero responder como merecéis a toda vuestra confianza.

    TESIS DOCTORAL
    Enseñanza Flexible en Red en la Universidad: Modelo de análisis curricular

    Agradecimientos

    Ésta es, sin duda, la parte que más he disfrutado escribiendo en este trabajo, aunque sé que no puedo dejar en estas páginas un agradecimiento como el que os merecéis todos los que formáis parte de mi vida y habéis formado parte de este proceso.

    En primer lugar, y como no puede ser de otra forma, quiero dar las gracias a los directores de este trabajo.

    A Jesús Salinas, gracias por aceptar la dirección de este trabajo, por ser siempre un referente intelectual –he admirado siempre su intensa visión pedagógica de la tecnología educativa-, un modelo profesional y un apoyo cercano. Gracias por su calidez personal, por confiar en mí, por darme letras para leer y por poner música a este tiempo, por enseñarme tanto, por su solidez de pensamiento y por no obviar el valor que tiene aprender en una carrera como ésta.

    A Mª Paz Prendes, gracias de nuevo por aceptarme como alumna interna en su momento y por ser mi tutora, mi maestra y mi ejemplo siempre en este viaje y en los que vengan. Es un honor y un enorme placer, nunca te lo agradeceré suficiente. Gracias por su confianza, por apostar siempre por mí, por todo lo que me enseña todos los días con su brillantez profesional –es una cabeza llena de ideas con un balance increíble entre curiosidad por lo novedoso y solidez en lo fundamental-y su increíble calidad personal. Gracias por su exigencia que es para mí un aliciente y una muestra de su aprecio, por esperar siempre lo máximo, por su consejo, por su amistad que sigue siendo un premio, por su cariño y, siempre, gracias por la paciencia.

    Quiero agradecer a Paco Martínez Sánchez su confianza, su apoyo y la oportunidad de aprender al lado de alguien con su privilegiada visión y extraordinaria calidad intelectual. Gracias por dejarme trabajar a su lado y por contar conmigo, siempre he sentido que es un premio. Gracias por permitirme preguntar hasta el infinito y discutir hasta la saciedad. Pero sobretodo, gracias por enseñarme a ver siempre con los ojos muy abiertos pero con gafas de sol… lo justo para aprenderlo todo pero no dejarme deslumbrar demasiado por las luces de colores.
    Un agradecimiento sincero a todos los profesores implicados en este trabajo (los profesores de las asignaturas analizadas), por su ayuda y por colaborar en el mismo, pero sobretodo por tener la osadía de ser los primeros. Al personal de ÁTICA que nos ha colaborado, mil gracias también.

    Quiero agradecer además a mis dos anfitriones y directores en las estancias que he hecho fuera de casa y sin las cuales esto no habría sido ni parecido.

    Peter J. Scott, I don’t have enough words to explain how important my time in KMi has been, both personally and professionally. Thanks for being having confidence in me, thanks for teaching me so many important things, and thanks for giving me all those opportunities. Thanks for putting up with the difficulties of having such a nightmare student as me. Thanks to you I have been looking into Europe, I have met really interesting people and I have started to see new horizons to explore. Now, I’m trying to do my best, and I promise, I’ll continue doing my best. Thanks to the people at KMI as well, it wouldn’t be the same without that really great time in Milton Keynes (and it was great not “only” because of the city).

    Gracias a Jordi Adell, por ser mi anfitrión en uno de los tiempos más gustosos intelectualmente que he pasado en estos años, por abrirme las puertas del CENT y por compartir conmigo siempre ese extraordinario torbellino intelectual que le ronda siempre la cabeza y en el que me encanta verme arrastrada… creo que nunca podré seguirte el ritmo, pero prometo seguir intentándolo. A mis queridos miembros del CENT (Toni y Carles Bellver, Luis López, Suso Monforte, Puri Andrés), gracias por convertir ese tiempo en un entorno verdaderamente enriquecido de aprendizaje, a ellos y a Anna y a Juan (Jota), gracias especialmente por el cariño.

    Quiero agradecer también a Juan Manuel Escudero por ayudarme tanto en estos últimos tiempos en mi inmersión en el mundo del curriculum. Gracias por sus indicaciones, por sus consejos, su brillantez, por compartir conmigo su pasión por la educación, y gracias por servirme de inspiración, de ejemplo. Para mí es siempre un honor ser su alumna, gracias por convencerme de la importancia de lo verdaderamente importante en educación.

    A todos vosotros mi admiración sincera y el agradecimiento además por vuestra amistad.

    A mis compañeras de GITE, a las que ya han pasado por este paso, a las que empiezan el camino y a las que andan a mi lado: Trini, Malle, Pati, Isa, gracias por todo. El GITE es mi grupo y mi casa, y me gusta como es y es así porque todas vosotras lo hacéis así de especial. Especialmente quisiera agradecer a Isabel Gutiérrez Porlán (Isica/ham) por ser un apoyo tan grande estos años, por su amistad y cariño. Thanks to Paul Clarkson as well, my best English teacher, my great friend and the GITE’s international branch in Murcia.

    A Alejandro Espinosa, Ale, mi marido, gracias por su apoyo irreductible, desinteresado. Su confianza constante, su resistencia, su paciencia, su amor. Por las horas de nuestro tiempo juntos que ha ofrecido gustoso (y resignado) a mi causa. Por seguir siendo mi segundo par de ojos al escribir, por ser mi marido y por ser el mejor compañero de viaje que he tenido.
    A Alicia y Arturo, por ser mi referente personal, mi apoyo y por estar ahí siempre y tratarme como una hija; a mis cuñados y sobrinos, a todos gracias por ser mi familia.
    A mi madre, por volver a tender puentes y cruzarlos. Bienvenida.

    A mis amigos, los de siempre y los de ahora, a mis amigos de la carrera, a mi gente de Valencia, a mis amigos de Murcia, a todos esos amigos que se han ido sumando en estos años de muchos rincones del mundo (rincones virtuales y presenciales). Gracias por sumaros, por acompañarme y preguntar, por apoyarme y animarme, gracias por ser mis amigos.

    Este viaje en solitario debe ser terriblemente aburrido, pero el mío ha sido intensamente divertido y promete mucho más en el futuro. No tengo días suficientes para daros las gracias, ni palabras suficientes. Ni siquiera tengo virtudes suficientes para ofreceros en agradecimiento. Sólo puedo ofrecer todo lo que tengo, lo bueno que hay en mí y que es mejor gracias a todos vosotros.

    A aquél que me ilumina en todo momento, Gracias siempre.

    ______________________
    Hasta aquí los agradecimientos, jeje y la tesis…

    Señoras, Señores… ya está ¡Una cosica hecha!
    😀