I love all the subjects and I defend an interdisciplinary and innovative education.

I’m a concerning with nowadays educational problems and I like to learn more and more. Sincerely, I also don’t want to stop studying, to grow as an educational professional. When we are little, our idols can be a movie character, a musician... but when we grow up, the people we idolize become others. I have a special recognition by education professionals that make the difference in the world. 

Besides, I worry about team working because in this profession I know I can’t isolate on my own and I have to be prepared to get some help and actualized when I need, with another professional. It’s important to note that there is the possibility to learn from colleagues inside and outside school, and that’s one of the reasons why I am doing this course. I hope we can learn together!

Formal learning takes place in an educational institution, so educational systems exist to promote that way of learning. Non-formal learning takes place outside of schools and changes depending on the individual and I think it is primarily self-directed. Non-formal learning is not provided by an education or training institution and typically does not lead to certification, it is, however, structured in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support. Non-formal learning is intentional from the learner’s perspective and that’s I very important idea that teachers should have!

Informal learning occurs in everyday life and is not planned. Besides that, this kind of learning takes place outside school and comes up from the student’s involvement in activities, without purpose. In my point of view, informal learning can be compared to an iceberg. Imagine an iceberg: the tip of the iceberg is the conscious (in the other words, formal learning) then comes the non-formal learning, but under the water there is a much larger part of informal learning. Therefore, I think about informal learning like the results from daily activities related to work family or leisure activities. Furthermore, it is important to note that informal learning may be intentional by teachers but in most cases, it is non-intentional.

I think about self-directed learning as an inquiry-driven approach whose end goal is to place the responsibility of what and how to learn on the student. In this model, the desired outcome is for the student is to approach a learning situation with an appropriate set of objectives, an understanding of the resources and strategies available to them, and a sense of how to accurately assess and validate their learning.

For all this reason, as a future teacher, I may begin to see these disengaged kids start to change their minds about school or at least about what I can offer them as an teacher, because the one thing each of these has in common is trust. Teachers should trust that students can be masters of their own learning, that they are being amply prepared for adulthood and trust in a schooling process that speaks to each student’s interests, readiness, and personal investment.

 

Overall, many informal learning environments, from playgrounds to think tanks to homeschooled families are already doing these things. As teachers, it’s on us to learn as much as we can, no matter how informal the circumstances. I believe that informal or non-formal learning plays an important role in nowadays teachers lifes.

The true is that 21 st century teachers should be tech savvy and it means that we have to try to innovate and improve our teaching using new technologies. As we know, we live surrounded by technologies, social apps and nowadays students are very connected and interested with this themes’. But it’s not just the students, teachers too!  

Sometimes we want to share what’s going in our classrooms and I think it could be a good thing, because we can gain feedback, help other teachers, learn from others, and to celebrate our students. 

However, when it comes to social media in the school setting, it’s essential to know about school’s policies. So, in my opinion, there are some vital pieces of information that we will want to know:

- Can I post pictures of my students?

- Can I use my school’s name?

- Do I have to provide the user account details to my administrator?

- How can I interact with my students?

When setting up our classroom Instagram account, it’s important to know our target audience. Instagram is a platform students, teachers, and parents all use, which makes it a great advocacy tool for a classroom!

Besides everything, we have to decide if the account will be private or public. The answer to this question will most likely be noted in the school policies. In most school, families are asked to sign media release forms.

These forms give us the right to publish photos of students on the web. This same release form will usually apply to any teacher-run social media accounts. If we plan on including our students in our images and are unsure about the release forms, our account should be set to private.

Just one more thing, we should check guidelines for interacting with our students.

One of the best things about having a class Instagram account is the interaction with our students. They must be excited if we share something they’ve created, and it allows for a classroom community to be built outside of the school walls. Although, with an Instagram account teachers can be strongly connected with both students and fellow teachers.

Finally, I would like to mention some of the benefits I found: networking with other teachers; follow education groups (Teachers can learn about new technologies, lesson ideas, and recent studies by following popular education groups on IG); learn more about our context area; showcase student work; express ourself; access teacher resources and promote our class/school!

Traditionally a PLN wouldn’t have reached very far beyond the staffroom, but these days in the blink of an eye we can be accessing information and answers from a PLN that spans the globe.

I think that with this tool, it’s well worth listening to the other views expressed in the voice thread and adding our own voice too. Some of the standout points for me were that a PLN offered the opportunity to:
 - Talk to like-minded, real people;
 - Share and exchange a range of ideas;
 - Inject creativity into everyday practice;
 - Enjoy a constant flow of ideas;
 - Encourage innovation;
 - Discuss and consider controversial thoughts;
 - Develop enthusiasm and passion;

As a result, I found out that a PLN develop thought leaders are it was made to develop the collaborative work.

A teacher can be remembered for a lifetime in the minds of thousands of people, by past knowledge, by lived experiences, by the ability to make a difference!

The teacher has the ability to turn an undisciplined student into a brilliant student, provided you can captivate him and gain his trust, and I think there will be nothing more rewarding than that.

Furthermore, I identify another teachers’ challenge, teacher must be able to identify, understand and assist his students in their difficulties, since they represent great demotivators and contribute to poor school performance. So, knowing exactly where the students are in trouble, facilitates in the direction and realization of pedagogical interventions and, consequently, in the improvement of the pedagogical process.

 

Besides, I worry about team working because in this profession I know I can’t isolate on my own and I have to be prepared to get some help and actualized when I need, with another professional. It’s important to note that there is the possibility to learn from colleagues inside and outside school, and that’s one of the reasons why I am doing this course. 

In my opinion, propose a homework using the internet in order to provide students with the possibility of practicing any theme it will be a creative way to do homework.

To begin, the teacher begins his technological foray using tools such as projectors, computers, interactive whiteboards and the internet to present classroom content in a new and dynamic way. After the class, teacher propose a different homework where students begin to use computers to access a platform created by the teacher, just for “The Homework Challenge”. On this platform, teacher will put a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FIwBEGC9gc) with some questions about it. Children are questioned about the moral of the story and what they draw from the important of the video for their life. As I already said, there will be a needed to create a space to communicate with students and vice versa, a space to publish tasks with instructions and links and finally a space for students to publish the works developed sharing not only with me, but with the whole group. For these reasons, I chose the Padlet.

They should write their opinion on a Padlet and in the school, they will discuss all the ideas. 

The goal of the challenge was to offer students the opportunity to practice at home the ability to think and reflect about what surrounds them (reading, writing, speaking and listening comprehension). Students can prepare an presentation and they will be free to use different internet tools to create recordings about what they thought, animations, texts and comics, making the "Homework" experience more personalized and perhaps more motivating.

So, if I had a budget of 25 000 € to spend on technology for the classroom, I will spend it on interactive whiteboards. In my opinion, there are some benefits about this technological tool: it makes learning more enjoyable, safe and participative; facilitates the pedagogical practice of teachers, who can design and manipulate content in different ways; it is a versatile multimedia resource that adapts to the needs of the classes, according to their profile and level of learning; extends student motivation and interest; enables real-time teaching as it is a resource that can be used at any time; allows the teacher to make written notes or operate software, present and edit images, display videos, surf the Internet, and other activities; facilitates collaborative learning by encouraging learning and group work. That is, dialogue and cooperation between teachers and students increases; it enhances learning, bringing differentiated resources to bring students closer to the knowledge to be acquired in the classroom.

As a future teacher, I’ll use formative assessment because I think that it’s a good way to teachers give and receive feedback from students in a variety of ways: verbally, non-verbal, body language, through behavior, conversations, and ongoing work. Some examples of formative assessment should include a set of questions that encourage multiple responses from students, leading to a discussion to arrive at a final answer. This shows the development of student reasoning for both teachers and themselves and helps the teacher to identify and eliminate gaps or misconceptions. Use probing questions that lead students to justify and explain what they have done it is another example of formative assessment. 

In addition to what I have already mentioned, I can use “Kahoot!” as a tool to receive a response from students in relation to their formative assessment. I already worked with this tool and it consist in a “game-based learning and trivia platform that allows you to create very engaging quizzes for your classroom” and and children usually like to use it. Furthermore, we can create our own kahoots.

To finish, it is in this line of thought that I intend to guide my professional practice.

I already knew the Pinterest and sometimes when I am looking for different ideas to introduce a theme in the classroom, namely related to mathematics I will look at Pinterest. It has very touring and playful ideas, completely advisable! In addition, there is the possibility to store the items that we like best and organize them by categories.

Some of the advantages that I highlight in Pinterest are: each person can have his personal profile and add the categories that interest him most; easy to use; attractive visual appearance; possibility of organizing our items in groups; constantly updated because people can always be publishing novelties and new ideas; ease of access to the items that interest us.