It consisted in developing a presentation giving reasons to explain why textbooks are not the best resource to use in schools because of the political interests that they reflect or that they can distort the reality, among other things.
IWe used a timeline on Twitter, here there are some tweets, if you want to know more about it, visit us https://twitter.com/Tuttifrutieduca
Roles |
Stars: María Alcolea Castillo
Curator: Alicia Franco Prieto Analyst: Inma Haba Ortuño Facilitator: Teresa Abad Martínez Translator: Ana García Mesa Journalist: Marta Castaño Hernández |
Summary |
That week we had a quite exciting task: the dark side of the textbooks.
In my opinion, this kind of activities are important for our life, because we have to be critical to take decisions, and for doing so we have to know both sides of the same coin. Last year, in Spanish subject, I learnt that for having an opinion we must have enough knowledge, knowledge about why some people are in favour and other are against, for justifying it, if not it will be meaningless. That’s what our teacher said, through these years many teachers are going to tell us that books are the best tool ever, but, as the majority of the things, it can have positive or negative characteristics depending on the way we see it. We will have to choose how to develop our lessons, that’s why the importance of this task is so high, we must know different points of view to can justify our decisions. We also had to choose between three different ways of showing our works: a comic, an infographic or a timeline on Twitter. It is a good way of explaining our opinions but we usually spend a lot of time to agree and we haven’t many opinions. I think that this is the worst part of each task: the amount of time we lose to take some decisions. The best moment of the group work of this week was when we had to solve some problems before the performance of the Wednesday, because in the worst moment we usually see the best of each person. We had to work actually as a group for it and we have to try to relax between us in order to think the best way of solving the unexpected event. This experience was more rewarding than others because we have learnt that all can change in a moment and that’s why we mustn’t have fixed ideas and we have to learn to adapt us to surprises. Summing up this week, all isn’t always as we think it will be, this is the life, therefore we must be ready to deal with problems and to try to solve them. |
Translator |
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Self-evaluation |
Marta: 4 because it has been a difficult and hard week trying to give the best of us, I have worked a lot for achieve it but unfortunately it had not been our best week. I did not stay in the classroom during the performance because I was taking care of María, who was dizzy.
Alicia: 6. I recognise that this week we were a little bit low of motivation, including myself of course. We tried our best, as always, but we didn't have really clear what we had to do. However, I worked really hard the day María was feeling sick and tried my best to do a good presentation in just one hour of preparation Teresa: 5: this week wasn't one of our best, maybe because we didn´t know exactly what we have to do and because on that week we didn´t work as together as in the other's works, maybe we were a little distracted and also the day of the exposition we had a few problems that we had to solve in the same moment of the exposition. Ana: 5, in my opinion this week was a little disastrous, we worked, but not like other weeks that we tried to do our best. We had a problem in the moment of the exposition, however we could solve it thanks to Alicia. Inma: 3 because I worked at the beginning of the week reading the disadvantages of the textbooks, but later I didn’t know how reflecting it on the ways (I think they were infographic, comics or Twitter timeline) we had to do, and neither my mates. I think it was our first problem, not being sure of showing the topic, and, like it wasn’t enough, we had another problem the day of the presentation, we weren’t prepared for it and we tried to do the best as possible despite the circumstances, but I didn’t do a lot because I stayed with Maria outside. Maria: 4 because I worked a lot because this week I was the star of my group and I summarize all the principal ideas to expose it in class and I studied hard the day before, but the day of the presentation I was so nervous and I was dizzy and finally I can't expose and I know that it caused troubles to my group because Alicia had to talk and she was not prepared but me I was prepared and I disappointed my group. María Teresa Chico: 4, I have to recognize that this week I didn’t work so hard as in the other tasks and also we have a last hour difficulty. GROUP: 6, although we worked too hard for doing the activity, we had some problems because María was not able to present the work and any of us was ready enough for presenting the task, but Alicia did it. Our timeline on Twitter was not as the teacher expected because we shew it through the app of Twitter and not by hand. |
Relation with competencies |
With this activity we opened our eyes because we had never thought that textbooks are not a good resource. We felt that books were fended for themselves and we have discovered that it is not true.
Most of them reflect personal opinions or political interests giving more importance to some things than others. Also we have seen that some of them can show discriminatory messages. So we have learnt that teachers should work by their own, develop their personal activities or look for others on the internet, and don't follow the determinism, using the traditional textbook. According to using the Internet, we have learned with this activity to create a debate or a conversation through a social network as Twitter. Teachers should valorate more themselves and use their knowledge creating interesting activities using technology, just at this way children will be more motivated. In addition, teachers can go beyond the use of textbooks, promoting the cooperative work, at this way children will improve their knowledge and their performance. Also they can motivate children if they use ICT in their activities, at this way they will learn in a different way at the same time that children are enjoying it. |