Some of my feelings… Some of my thoughts… Diary of my learning process
Carolina Gálvez Santos UAB – 2014-2015
Wednesday, 17th September 2014  Today I have learned about a new way of teaching and learning, namely flipped classrooms. It is an interesting and powerful tool to take advantage of the little amount of time teachers have for implementing the tasks in the classroom. In addition, it fosters learners’ autonomy since the teacher provides the material needed to carry out an activity or task, and it is up to the student to go through it, organise and plan his/her own work. Likewise, the more background the pupil has, the better he/she will build knowledge and more interesting discussions will sprout in class.
On the other hand, I believe that flipped classes allow students to realise if they need to look for complementary information whenever they do not understand a specific point. Nevertheless, I must admit that this way of proceeding is not easy for the children to follow, specially throughout the first years of Primary Education since pupils need time to get used to this approach. Moreover, this methodology let them choose different inputs of data according to their learning styles. That is to say, if the student has a visual and/or audio style and gets confused and demotivated when he/she has to read an article, there is the possibility of seeking a video about the same topic. Obviously, in the
case of Primary Education, it would be the teacher who would provide a variety of materials depending on the pupils’ learning styles –the instructor could even give different materials to those learners with specific difficulties in order for them to familiarise with a specific topic prior to attending the class. In doing so, the pupils’ self-esteem could improve hugely. This is me watching the video where Aaron Sams explained why and how he had flipped his classroom (he was one of the first teachers to flip his classrooms):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H4RkudFzlc
https ://sites.google.com/site/nhinstitutes/interactive-classrooms/theory-behind-the-flipped-classroom
Wednesday, 1st October 2014 Today
I
have
learned
that
VIRTUAL
WORLDS
are
a
powerful
tool
to
communicate with other people all over the world. Furthermore, it is an interesting tool for language learning since pupils are very motivated when they chat with other peers online. They learn more language unconsciously because they do not realise they are repeating and they do not get bored.
Even though the educational purpose of 3D environments, there are some disadvantages we should take into consideration, such as time management, internet management in schools (not all of them have access to this), great
effort to show how to use it (how to move an avatar, how to communicate, etc.). Likewise, some projects are not funded and, as a result, you risk having to abandon some of them (of money). I liked the way we went through the bibliography we were supposed to review before our meeting. As usual, we worked in small groups in order to build knowledge by learning with our peers. Hence, we could take different ideas concerning distinct theories. http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=10967222&height=267&width=200