WEEK 1 AND 2 : "BEING CONSCIOUS OF DIGITAL COMPETENCES AND TECHNOLOGY"

This week we were more conscious about the relevance of having a good digital competence. During all the teacher training degree we have been told about how new technologies can offer us a lot of options to work in a more dynamic and illustrative ways the contents in the school. But, to use and implement new technologies properly, as teachers, we have to control skills in the following dimensions: Information, Communication, Content creation, Safety and Problem solving. In class, skimming the chart which describes the different levels in each dimensions (Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced), all of us said that we were at the intermediate level of all the dimension. Would this be true? To elaborate in group a presentation describing specifically the information dimension and its levels using the official texts uploaded was a big revelation. We had to clarify each levels presenting examples, and we used these ones to design a survey form to evaluate our classmates’ level.

The result of the survey were really shocking, most of the class were in a searching information’s foundation level.

To elaborate this presentation and the others presentations made me realise that we have a lot of dimension to improve, and if we don’t, our work as future teacher will be conditioned in a bad way. How will be able to design good materials which fit my students’ needs if I don’t know how to search for specific information or evaluate this one properly? How will I be able to implement the use of technologies in class if I don’t know how to solve a basic technical problem? A lot of questions come up inside my mind, being for every second more aware of what having a good digital competence suppose. I really think this class was the most useful of all the subject.  

 I would also like to highlight that I realize the importance of designing a good presentation. We were told to use images and animations, and I can confirm that their use is very illustrative for example, using animations to put in order the appearance of the items or concepts, showing in a clearer way how these ones are organized or where the come from: Añadir presentacion Respect to other lessons and the introduction of new terms, I have to comment that I only already knew what a Virtual Learning Environment was, due to the simple fact I use the platform “Miaulario” every day. I also were aware of the needs of developing new methodologies, literacies or pedagogies in order to implement new technologies in class. Some of this new terms assigned a name to all the general knowledge I had (technologies improve learning, there are common frameworks to describe skills… But what I must say is I had no simple idea about what was the meaning of PLE or PLN.

As well, I found very useful the video that explains the differences between Personal Learning Environment and Virtual Learning Environment. VLE allows us to share contents, communicate and have access to certain tools (we can’t personalize VLE system adding other tools we enjoy using). On the other, we have PLE. A PLE involves all the apps, tools, places and materials we choose in our social context or through technologies (our PLE is personalized by ourselves). I think to it is very relevant to know what each concept involves to be conscious of the influence of technologies in our daily life.

But… how can we organize or get a fast access to the technological tools that compose our PLE? We were taught the best answer was Symbaloo, an online desktop were we can add all the bookmarks we want. I would dare to say that Symbaloo has change my life. Now I don’t waste so much time looking for information or working with my laptop. This webpage makes possible to organize all we use online in a very easy way, that’s why I would use it in class to share materials with the pupils or just to teach them how to organize their projects (in Symbalo there is a widget for google drive).



Taking into account all mentioned before, it’s a fact that new technologies are a part of us, they improve our life. Maybe at first view this statement can seem an exaggeration, but reading the text “Digital residents: Practices and perceptions of non-native speakers” we realized that everybody has a profile or online identity in the net, that 10 hours of the day we are connected to whatsapp or facebook (sending/receiving messages), normally the 80% of the students have a laptop (even mobile internet taxes), we play a lot of games online…

 As future teachers we must implement new technologies (children are surrounded by them), but we have to take into account that new technologies or devices have to be encouraged to be used for learning in and outside the class. We must teach the pupils that technologies are not only to chat, play games or take photos… that we can use it to learn (improve autonomy by developing strategies to use devices). Obviously this isn’t an easy task, we have to develop good pedagogic criteria to choose what webpages or tool we are going introduce the children or what aspects of these ones we want to exploit in order to improve their learning. Thanks to the webpages’ analysis we were proposed to do, we are really concerned about in internet there’s also no very good educative webpages or pages that have several aspect to change to be suitable to be used in class.