Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley

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!