MOTIVATIONAL LEARNING METHOD: Tweet.

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THE PHOTOVOICE PROJECT

The 'Photovoice Project' is an analysis method which combines photography and the grassroots of social action and it is commonly used in the fields of community development, public health and of course, in education too. The members who participate in this project are asked to represent their communities or they can also express their points of view by prhotographing scenes which highlight some topics of research. The pictures used are collaboratively interpreted and narratives can be developed that explain how these pictures highlight a particular research topic. 

Which is the main use of these narratives? Their main objective is to understand better the society and to help through social programmes that provide the community needs. 'Photovoice' is often used by marginalized groups to provide insight into how they conceptualize their circumstances and their hopes for the future. They attempt to bring the perspective of those who have lifes which are totally different from what we call a 'traditional life' or to be 'normal'. For example how obesity afects society, or bullying... 

In the example below you can experiment what is a 'Photovoice', this one is made especially for this blog in order to let you know what this project is. 

 The last data base research says that the 9'3% of spanish students suffer bullying in Spain. The spanish city with more cases of bullying is the region of Murcia. 

The percentage of girls who suffer bullying is 2'6% higher than in boys. Even in bullying we can see sexual discrimination. 

The 19'5% of the aggressors admit not to have a reason to make bullying and a 14'5% say that it is jus a joke. Issue that we have to take into account because it is really worrying.

Teachers' work is really important to stop bullying. They are the first ones who can realize about this scholar routines. 

Some people try to hide the reality, but it is a social reality people have to know and to be aware of it because in Spain has been an increasement of suicides of minors. 

It is necessary to make a hard struggle against bullying. Every student has the right to receive his/her education without fear. 

UNFAIR (Pennycook)

Referring to what Pennycook says about the English language I must say that I believe more or less in the same way. During the last years there is a spread and common thought that without the english language you are not able to do or achieve anything and you don't have anything (if we refers to the professional world). This has guided us to a society to a massive fever for the necessity of learning english in detritement of other language. Nowadays, in everything you want to work or study, english language is required, so people started to learn english just to achieve their professional or educative goals, not for learning the language or for knowing more or having more culture, they just learn english to pass their language exams. So, what is the problem here? That those people are able to do english exercises correctely because they know how to apply the grammatic skills, but when they go outside the classrooms or the lesson materials and they have to deal with the real world, they are not able to communicate in english. Knowing that we can talk about the imperialism of linguistics based on the omniprescence of the US. The fault is not about the language itself, it's all about politics, because aour beliefs are based on the society beliefs.

IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME!!!

It seems like it never arrives, but now it's here... welcome to us Winter!

Merry Christmas for all of you!

Activities about 'AULAS FELICES'

'AULAS FELICES' is an educative programme based on postive psicology and leat to primary and asecondary students. It is for free and it provides resources to work on every field. 

"AULAS FELICES” es un programa educativo basado en la Psicología Positiva y dirigido a alumnos de Educación Infantil, Primaria y Secundaria. Es gratis y de libre difusión. Pretende aportar recursos para trabajar en las áreas y también en tutoría, potenciando las Competencias Básicas más transversales, así como la Acción Tutorial y la Educación en Valores. Su estructura puede resumirse así:

Below you can see the three activities I like the most from Aulas Felices. These three activities would be chosen if I had to put in practice some activities like those in class. I think they are really interesting and work perfectly with the creativitiy and capacity of the students. 

BREATHING AT THE BEGINING OF THE CLASS: 

When I was a child and I went to primary school, my teacher used to use this technique. Relaxing students is very postive because the focus on their breathing and it makes them to concentrate themselves and then, they work more concentrated. If we can use this technique in secondary school, we can mix it with the zen technique. Then, we can tell a story while they are breathing in and out as a way to clean their minds and just think in what the teacher is talking about. 

CORNERS OF CREATIVITY:

What is this, exactly? We try to motivate our students but they already have their own motivations, so we must let them to show their own motivations. So for me, creating corners in the class let students to be more creative, because their imagination can be widespread and interesting for us to know which are their skills and hobbies. 

TASTING THE HAPPINESS OF LIFE: 

I find this activity very cuddly. Because we should reinforce the human aspects of the education and implement activities with this kind of objectives. Even as teachers we make mistakes a lot of times, and most times we are more worried about the content than the form. We just focus on the academic skills and we forget about the human skills, which are even more important than the academic aspects. 

MOTIVATIONAL GRAPH

When we are teaching, the students do not have the same level of motivation and attention during the whole class, and through the graphic we have below, we can differentiate 3 levels. 

The first one is at the beggining of the class, here the learning curve starts to peak because the motivation process starts to be achieved. So this is the moment when we can catch the attention of our students. 

The second level is in the middle of the lesson, here they are like: "Teach us more please! We want to learn everything now!"

And finally, the third level is the end of the class, when the students are focused on when the class is going to finish are their learning here is inefficient and even harmful for them. Motivation now is gone. 

MOTIVATIONAL STRATEGIES

There is a common belief to think that teacher do everything perfect, we are the authority so we have how to teach without any need of innovation or change. But we as a teachers are aware that we have to be always learning, I mean, if we do not want to fail, we have to improve our techniques daily. We are not going to teach in the same way our teacher taught us when we went to the high school, because the time pass by and we have to motivate our students and motivate ourselves. 

It's really hard for a teacher who is 30 years working in a high school to make their students become motivated, because it's a long time and s/he has to innovate a lot in order to make their students think about their education. 

For me, the motivation is extremely important, but not just for students, for loving what they are studying, it is also important for teachers, because if a teacher is not motivated in what s/he is doing, s/he cannot transmit the motivation to their students, so h/se will be (instead of motivating) so boring. It is like a loop in which everything is linked by. 

Here you have a link to test your strategies to motivate your students:

http://www.zoltandornyei.co.uk/uploads/motivational-strategies-english.pdf