Reflection about the theory!

Hey Hey Hey its Beckie here and I was the facilitator for this last week before Easter. It has been a fun week in ICT as Linda`s tasks for us have been pretty cool. On Friday we watched all of our adverts and read Ana`s group`s story and had a good laugh as some of the bloopers were hilarious.

After all of this though, I have to write some of the theory and what we have learned from these fantastic classes. Here are all the ideas we took from each one of the groups works:

GROUP BROKEN DREAMS

1.      Textbooks tell the truth to a certain extent.

2.      It is better for a friend to explain something than a long definition in a textbook.

3.      There are more methods than the ones in textbooks.

4.      Theories in textbooks can cause problems as some students might investigate a certain topic more and the teacher or other students might judge them by saying that the textbook is the only source that is right.

GROUP CAMALEONES

1.      Children/teachers that read textbooks think that everything they read is true, they believe everything they read…

2.      Textbooks are an economic problem.

3.      Textbooks have become a business.

4.      Editorials choose our children’s topic of learning.

5.      Teachers should choose what resources they want to teach with.

6.      Textbooks produce only one way of thinking.

7.      Use ICT in the classroom.

GROUP HAKUNA MATATEROS [best videos]

1.      Some things are better understood by practicing them and not by reading them.

2.      An average of 350 euros per family is spent on books every year in Spain. But is this really necessary? With the new technologies it is not...

3.      Books are not a religion and not everything in them is true.

4.      It is better to spend more money on technology than books.

GROUP I KNOW WHAT YOU DID IN THE LAST BLOG

1.      Not all things are true just because the book says so…

2.      You can find the same or even more information on the Internet.

3.      With new technologies you don’t have to carry around heavy books.

4.      Women are mentioned much less in textbooks. The information in the textbooks is the opinion of just one editorial and this information can be quite sexist.

GROUP NEVER TOO LATE

1.      Editorials are not interested in digitizing textbooks or changing anything.

2.      Education is not being changed, only the resources, not the actual education.

GROUP THE CHALK DRIVERS

1.      It is possible to learn with the new technologies. Classes can be much better and more entertaining with the new technologies.

2.      Change can be for the better.

3.      Some teachers have different perspectives on things (mostly older teachers), but change is good.

Ande here is our reflection on the topic:

We all agree on the fact that the new technologies have many advantages in the classroom, as a laptop as a tablet as an iPad as a netbook etc all consist of just one light piece of technology. Books on the other hand weigh a lot more and in the long run are much more expensive! It would seriously just be better and more economical to buy a laptop (with unlimited access to Internet) than buy an overall of 10-20 books every year.  The editorials always seem to be changing the content in these books aswell, obliging us or better said out parents, to buy even more books as the ones from the previous years are now not valid...

I honestly think, as my group does too, that it would be much better to introduce the new technologies into classrooms everywhere. We know that there might be some problems, like when some children get distracted from the class by talking on Tuenti or Twitter, but if we think about it, books have much more disadvantages... Here are a few, as I could go on for hours talking about this subject:

1. They are more expensive in the long run.

2. They are too heavy and can cause major back problems in the future.

3. Their content is changing every 2-3 years, which means basically throwing them away after.

4. Children aswell as teachers are taught to believe everything they read in their books, when sometimes its not always like this...

5. Some children might not understand a certain topic in the book but the teacher might not be able to make this topic understood or easier, causing the pupil to go on without understanding this.

6. Women are not mentioned much in some of these books, which can be quite rude for us girls!

7. Some students might investigate a certain topic elsewhere (Internet) and realize that what is written in the book is not quite true and therefore cause problems with the teacher by telling him so (as everything in the book is true... not).

8. Textbooks have now become a buisness...

9. Books can really become boring and sometimes we feel like burning them when we do not understand something. Internet at least provides a series of webpages and information on one subject.

10. Finally, summing it all up, textbooks provide only one way of thinking, and this is wrong...

Beckie xx