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PADLET

MY PADLET

JOOMLA and Other Web Creation Matters

Joomla is free software for creating and maintaining your own CMS content management site/web page.  Of the many many tool extensions available, I would choose the subcategory of Style and Design, as this is applicable to any web you may consider creating. Although I haven't used the programme as of yet, it looks very interesting and useful.

Having looked at all of the educational institution web pages listed in the task, the one I like most is actually the first one of the Salesianos in Alicante, because of its simplicity and visuality.  The others appear to be less professional and complicated, offering too much information or options at the initial glance.  The Salesianos' page is also a very pleasant colour, whereas some of the pages have too much white. I also find too much content in blue to be boring.

When it comes to economics, my field area, my favorite blog is El Blog Salmon, because of its simple layout, easy to read and up to date articles about the economy and all that related to it. However, it is a blog written in Spanish and mainly about the economy in Spain. If I have to choose a blog on economics in English, it would have to be the blog site for the LSE, London School of Economics, for me the cathedral of all economics, LSE Blogs.  In all cases, colour, simplicity and content are of utmost importance.

Teaching Stategies

                                          Freepikpro

Traditional Teaching 

This involves a classroom aligned in the traditional manner with the teacher at the front, in front of a black or whiteboard or a slide projector screen.  The teacher is the only person speaking and explains the class matter content to the students, who are all facing him/her.  This has the disadvantage of being potentially boring, in which case the students will quickly lose interest and so concentration span, in the end not listening to the teacher or learning.

Participative Traditional Teaching

This is the previously mentioned traditional method, but involving the students to a far greater degree, requiring that they participate actively by means of answering questions previously prepared and formulated by the teacher. This method promotes learning by comprehension, creating the necessity to continue learning, and creates an environment of individual and cooperative work amongst the students and requires that the students take responsibility and protagonism in their learning.

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is a method which organises activities within the classroom and converts them into a social and academic learning process.  The students are divided into small groups, for which the classroom is set out in a series of groups of circles of usually 4 tables and the activities are carried out collectively by the group.

This method depends upon the exchange of information amongst the members of the group, so also promoting social skills. The members are motived by individual achievements and those of the group. The groups should be as heterogeneous as possible and develop a group identity by mutual help, valuing each individual and creating synergy.  This promotes positive interdependence and the results of the group will finally be the consecuences of the individual investigation of the members. Once completed, the task is presented publically to the rest of the class.

Advantages include motivation, initiative, and implication, understanding the what, how and why of the task, increase in volume and quality of work, command of concepts, development of critical thinking, discussion strategies and developing social skills. Examples of Cooperative Learning are:

1. Learning based on Problem solving

Problem Based Learning (PBL) is an active learning method centred around the student, in which a group of students are given a real or fictitious problem or problematic situation to solve. This acts as a guide to the investigation and knowledge acquisition and allows the students to develop hypotheses to explain and identify the learning needs which will permit him/her to understand the problem and achieve the learning objectives set forth.

The objectives of this method of learning are to help students develop cognitive skills, such as analysis, argumentation, and interpersonal social skills such as communication and cooperation.

It is necessary for the teacher to be a tutor/guide in promoting collaboration in the group. The objective is not to solve the problem set forth, this is simply the medium by which the student acquires the objectives of the PBL teaching method.

2. Teaching by Projects

Project Based Learning (PBL) is a learning method which requires the students, divided into small groups, to plan, create and evaluate a project based on the needs of a particular situation in real life beyond the classroom. It requires interdisciplinary activities and bases learning on the student in the long term and not on short isolated classes.

There is not just one method of teaching by projects and on the whole, the method is far more interesting for students, who find the projects to be challenging and motivating because they form an active role in the complete process of choosing, planning and execution.

Constructivism considers learning to be the result of mental constructions, that is, children learn by constructing new ideas or concepts based on their present and previous knowledge.