Last news in Crete!!!!

 Nuestra compañera Guiomar Patiño, profesora de griego y latín del IES Francisco Salzillo,  ha estado trabajando con los alumnos de 1º de Bachillerato, los mitos clásicos de origen cretense.

Junto con sus alumnos le ha dado forma de periódico digital , al que han llamado, Las sandalias de Hermes.

Aquí os dejamos el enlace para que podáis leerlo.

 Our colleague Guiomar Patiño, Latin and Greek teacher, in the high school Francisco Salzillo,has been working with her students different myths.

Latest news in Crete!!!

Can co-teaching and blended learning coexist in the core curriculum secondary schools?

M. Pitsaki, I. Kassotaki, C. Dimitrakopoulos (2015). Can co-teaching and blended learning coexist in the core curriculum of secondary schools?-A project in Spanish and Hispano-American culture, 8th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, 7798-7808

The article discusses the use of blended learning and co-teaching in interdisciplinary fields in group activities at Greek secondary school level in an elective course. Three secondary school teachers from different fields (Biology & Spanish Language, English Language, Greek Language) cooperated to attain the goal of involving 46 students in learning through group activities the Spanish and Hispano- American culture employing ICT skills such as interactive whiteboards, blog and website. The project was based on the principles of collaborative teaching and learning cross-culturally involving interdisciplinary topics such as art, culture, history, sports, language, literature, geography, cuisine, music and cinema. Discovery learning was applied through students’ presentations and was further reinforced by our experiences in the educational trip to Madrid, Toledo and Segovia. The article recommends the possible adoption of co-teaching and blended learning in the core curriculum of secondary education as a means of acquiring and retaining knowledge in a creative way and argues for a shift towards the integration of student-student interaction and collaboration.

Keywords: Blended-learning, co-teaching, discovery learning, ICT skills, interdisciplinary, cross- cultural, cooperative learning. 

You can read the article:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxtEGTnRjuI8SzNIcEZ3dHpDYmM/view?usp=sharing

Flipped Classroom: To Flip or Not To Flip, That's The Question!

As it was already said in the old song, It's a bad time for lyric  poetry... Many times, teachers wonder what we are doing when we explain something in which our  students are not interested or we see them bored to death! . Laziness invading us is also the worst thing that may happen. The "relationship" between learning and teaching is really difficult in these situations, and then the results could become negative.

That society is changing, is a fact.  We don´t have students who only obey their teacher without  questioning any more. Our students live in a frantic  society , in a digital era. They think that a picture is worth a thousand words. However, when they are at school, the time stops: they have to pay attention, they must do boring exercises without moving around , and then... they get bored. they aren´t used to learn in this way...and they start asking themselves :"Why do I have to study Literature, Maths... even languages?"

  Flipped classroom was born to avoid this pessimistic view of education. How can I get my students be the agents of their own learning? With this new methodology the teacher is a guide of the learning, not the only source of knowledge. The time in the classroom is not to explain, is to work and solve queries. The teacher leads to knowledge, but the pupil is who chooses  how to learn.

They learn to learn.

It's not easy to change all the way. Teachers need a great amount of time to create new classroom materials instead of using the " text book ". And the most important thing, we need the commitment and effort of our  students. But well managed , it is worth . Students feel integrated in their educational process , many times they are the searchers  of their subject matters. The teacher gives the index , they fill up the gaps and the teacher tells them if they are on the right track .

Many of us want to "flip" the classroom. This is easier in a digital education, because every student has got a laptop or tablet. The point is adding competences, and the digital competence is really important in our society. The school can´t close its doors to changes. We can't turn our back on the new way of acquiring  knowledge. Nowadays, any thing can be found on the internet and we have to teach them how to browse, how to manage all that information and consider these concepts.

So from optimism we, all the teachers who are already  "flipping", are trying to adapt our classes to this new methodology, a new type of learning. #flipanndoelSalzillo

Translation by Dª Bárbara Vicente

Jefa de Departamento de Inglés

IES Francisco Salzillo

FLIPPED CLASSROOM...FLIPEAR LA CLASE O NO FLIPEAR, ESA ES LA CUESTIÓN

 Ya decía la canción que eran malos tiempos para la lírica...En muchas ocasiones, los docentes nos preguntamos qué hacemos explicando una materia que no le interesa a ningún alumno o vemos en clase como bostezan de aburrimiento, o , lo peor que nos puede pasar ,que la desidia nos invada también a nosotros.La relación enseñanza-aprendizaje, en estos casos, se hace tan dificultosa que los resultados son negativos.

 Que la sociedad ha cambiado está claro, ya no tenemos un alumnado educado en la obediencia que acepta los preceptos que les da su profesor sin rechistar. El alumnado viene de una sociedad que vive a un ritmo vertiginoso, de una era digital;está educado en la idea de que una imagen vale más que mil palabras. Sin embargo, en la escuela, ese tiempo se paraliza, se vuelve inmóvil. Les decimos que tienen que escuchar lecciones para aprenderlas, hacer ejercicios monótonos, y ellos, se aburren, no están acostumbrados y empiezan a cuestionarse...¿qué he hecho yo para tener que estudiar sintaxis, álgebra o geografía?

 Desde ese sentimiento pesimista nace el concepto Flipped Classroom. El aula invertida. ¿Cómo puedo hacer que el alumno actúe en su educación más allá de simplemente estudiar las lecciones vistas? Esta metodología hace que el profesor ya no explique en clase. El tiempo en el aula no es para la explicación, es para trabajar, para resolver dudas.El docente se convierte en un guía, en una mano que te señala dónde está lo que debes saber pero es el alumno el que actúa, el que va aprendiendo a aprender.

 No es un cambio fácil, se necesita mucha labor del docente en preparación de material que el alumno debe trabajar en clase;requiere un compromiso del alumnado de trabajo y esfuerzo. Pero bien gestionado, merece la pena. Los alumnos se sienten integrados en su proceso educativo, muchas veces ellos son los investigadores de sus contenidos. El profesor da el índice , ellos rellenan y el profesor les va indicando si van por el buen camino.

 Somos muchos los docentes partidarios de dar la vuelta a la clase. Resulta muy fácil, por ejemplo, llevarla a la práctica en clases de enseñanza digital en las que los alumnos tienen dispositivos móviles(ordenadores). Se trata de sumar competencias y la competencia digital es muy importante en este tiempo que nos ha tocado vivir. En la escuela no se le puede dar la espalda. Tampoco se le puede dar la espalda a la nueva forma de adquisición del conocimiento. Casi todo puede encontrarse en Internet. Hay que enseñar al alumnado cómo buscar, cómo gestionar y como reflexionar sobre esos conceptos.

Por eso, ya desde el optimismo, los profesores que ya damos la clase al revés,  estamos intentando adaptarnos a una nueva forma de aprendizaje. #flipanndoelSalzillo

                                                                        María Belén Martínez Carrillo

Profesora de Lengua Castellana y Literatura

Coordinadora Enseñanza XXI

IES Francisco Salzillo

The description of our project

“Spanish: a passport between cultures” is a project which involves the strategic association of three European schools: 

- IES Francisco Salzillo, Alcantarilla, Murcia, España

- Vaskivuoren lukio, Vantaa, Finlandia

- Model Experimental General Lyceum, Herakion, Creta, Grecia,

Its goal is to advance and consolidate the Spanish language as a second linguistic choice, offering a European vision of our language, not only as a means of communication, but also, as a means of cultural promotion, opening the doors of our schools to Europe so that European students can learn about our educational system, our methodology, our literature, our music, … and, at the same time, we are able to make our students become aware of the fact that they are European citizens, too. So, through the development of the linguistic competence and the technological competence we will try to put our students in touch with the young Europe which they are part of, which will open the doors for them and will let them share educative experiences that will become work experiences in the near future, as it is established in the European Strategy 20.

Bearing in mind the full priority of the development of the basic competences as the most important element, the three schools have made a plan to develop the project, whose main objectives have been: 

- Develop on the part of the Spanish students the linguistic competence in their own language, as well as a second language on the part of the students of the other two countries. 

- Integrate the use of ICTs into the teaching-learning process. 

- Build awareness of European citizens.

- Update the methodology inside the classroom.

This way, the teachers will get: 

- Direct knowledge of other educational systems. 

- Better use of the ICTs in the class.

- Development of methodological strategies in the teaching process of languages and other subjects.

- Methodological updating.

- Open management of a resource bank.

The best ones to benefit with a project with these characteristics will be the students as their involvement in the activities will let them:

- Get awareness of the cultural dimension of the Spanish as a lingua franca.

- Understand the importance of learning more than one language.

- Use the ICTs not only to communicate but also to improve their learning process.

- Build up motivation to learn and take part in the life of their schools, contributing to create an encouraging element which helps overcome aspects such as the lack of interest or the idea that learning is not part of their daily life.

- Improve their academic performance, not only of their linguistic skill of their mother tongue.

The different activities suggested in this project, such as the theatre workshop or the selfie exhibit, try to rely on class methodologies in which the student acts as an autonomous agent of his own learning process, which is the basic principle of the flipped classroom.

We also want to bring in the largest number of participants, including those students who, for socio-cultural reasons or learning difficulties, are dissociated from their school, so that the project and the activities included become a unifying element with the school where they study.

Our goal is also to develop some activities which involve a great number of teachers from the three schools so that they will find the educational context Erasmus + not only an encouraging factor but they will be also able to establish relationships which will steady beyond the project itself:

- The digital magazine.

- Good practice blog.

- The methodology supported by the new Etwinning projects, which will be widely worked on in our project. 

- The possibilities the foreign exchanges with other European schools beyond the language immersion programs relate to English bilingual teaching.

In our opinion, the impact of this project in the life of the three schools through the elaboration of some products within the Erasmus + context is crucial, since without that European context, binding and motivating for the teachers, wouldn’t be possible. In this sense, the project will help generate some guidelines to lead to a methodology and a way of understanding the inclusive teaching-learning process. This will be possible by opening our classes to European schools, by overcoming physical barriers through the formative use of the ICTs, which the students from the three schools will benefit widely from, through the synergies created amongst the partner institutions.