Gebas

Gebas, is a beautiful little village in the Sierra Espuna in Spain. It is tucked up in the mountains near Alhama de Murcia and is home to the most welcoming interesting people I have ever met. My family live here and have been luck enough to share their lives with these fantastic people. The people work together by sharing food that they grown themselves, you never hand back an empty plate!

This summer I was involved in the village's Fiesta, the Spanish love to have have fun and are very family orientated and welcome you with open arms. This is a side of Spain I never knew existed untill recently, very different to the tourist destinations!

Spectacular Steiner School!

‘The priority of the Steiner ethos is to provide an unhurried and creative learning environment where children can find the joy in learning and experience the richness of childhood rather than early specialisation or academic hot-housing.’

I had the fantastic opportunity of visiting a Steiner School in Dartington today. There was an amazing atmosphere at the school's xmas fair; a real sense of community as the parents were supporting the event whole-heartedly. I was really interested in finding out about the school's setting and I have to say, it was beautiful. The children have a huge amount of space to learn practical skills outside the classroom. These included creating their own plots of land to grow plants, vegetables, herbs and fruit, making coal, metal work and wood work. It is nice to see that the Steiner approach gives equal attention to all areas of learning and not just 'the core' subjects of Numeracy and Literacy.

‘Steiner schools have a reputation for producing well-rounded and balanced human beings who are able to cope with the demands of a fast-changing and uncertain world.’

The holistic and experiential approach really allows children to be children. Childen are encouraged to use the beauty of nature to learn about the world around them. It is so important to give children a secure and warm environment to learn in and I feel that the Steiner approach ensures this. I would like to thank some new-found-friends for inviting me to this fantastic school.

Wiffiti

Wiffiti is an online tool that publishes real time information onto a screen that can be shared across the world. Twitter feeds, Flickr (2010) pictures and text messages from mobiles swing into place, providing its viewers with an extensive quantity of information. Atwell (2009) describes it as ‘twittering in cinemascope’. When creating a test screen for our project on the Amazon rainforest, I typed in ‘rainforest’ and ‘deforestation’ as tags to see what would appear. You can view my screen at http://wiffiti.com/screens/20287.

I strongly believe that the social platform Wiffiti has the power to transform the way children can communicate and learn collaboratively, as the educational possibilities with the Wiffiti board are endless. The interactive digital displays are used all over the world to send and share messages. LocaModa who founded the technology, explains that Wiffiti screens can be created, customised and published easily, embedding social media feeds with a click of a button (LocaModa, 2009). It can be used to get children interacting with global media through several technologies. Atwell explains how the multi-modal tool can let children participate in the ‘lean back experience of viewing user-generated content in a class, as well as the lean forward experience online or via text messaging’ (Atwell, 2009). There have been many debates as to whether mobile phones should be used in school. Kolb, (2007) wants to encourage the use of mobile phones in her teaching and believes that the device can capture children’s interest and be used effectively in visual and stimulating thought-showering activities when using Wiffiti in the classroom. I personally believe that most children would enjoy using this technology as it conveys to them that as teachers we are open-minded to incorporate children personal digital devices that they use and are interested in.

Other ways Wiffiti can be used in the classroom. Ideas are:

·         Taking responses in a plenary

·         Children can ask questions autonomously

·         Giving children a voice in polls

·         Thought-showering

·         Feedback and evaluating

·         Educational research

·         Sentence completion       (Atwell, 2009)

Montgomery’s blog also supports that Wiffiti is a great tool in the classroom. She explains how she has a screen projected so the entire class can see everyone’s discoveries immediately (Montgomery, 2009). When using the application in school I would use it collaboratively within the whole school or with other schools that may be doing similar projects. Although I strongly believe this tool would have positive impacts on children as e-learners and e-thinkers there are limitations. You can monitor and filter your screen ensuring no offensive information will be collected, however, you are not guaranteed that all information will be relevant. This is where as teachers, it is important to discuss with children e-safety and the need to build up a resilience to innapropriate internet content.