In the current schools in which technology plays a fundamental role as a support on which many of the educational processes are based, it is necessary to create the profile of the ICT coordinator (information technologies) whose mission will be to transmit the illusion and knowledge of the Impact of technologies on learning. In Peques and Más we bring a interview with Jorge Moreno Sánchez, ICT Coordinator at SEK El Castillo and responsible for the Development and Implementation of the University Baccalaureate Project of the SEK Institution. Jorge is going to turn 38 and has a extensive experience in initiatives related to education, has worked as an employee in technological and educational companies, as an interim official linked to education and on their own in various ICT and training projects. Jorge explains that the Escuela 2.0 and Red.es project marked his professional career long ago, being a consultant for technological initiatives in educational centers and training of ICT trainers. Jorge is an Industrial Design Engineer by passion and most of the projects in which I have participated put the focus on the use of new technologies, education and entrepreneurship with young people.
What is an ICT coordinator?
Currently, being an ICT or New Technology Coordinator in an educational center could be compared to the orchestra men who some years ago traveled some streets of Madrid playing at the same time the guitar, the drum, the cymbals and giving smiles to the admired pedestrians. It is not a frivolity, but the large number of different tasks that can be addressed in just one day makes you feel this way sometimes.
And even more so in an educational center like SEK El Castillo, a pioneer in many of the technological initiatives at the time of its implementation in the classrooms. Take care of the good use of thousands of email accounts, offer training of interest to dozens of teachers, represent the center in events and educational forums inside and outside Spain or attract leading professionals and their projects in the form of initiatives led from our centers by and for our students.
Thus, some of the key characteristics that I find linked to this position are:
- Be up to date with new technologies and educational dynamics
- Be transversal and interdisciplinary in terms of content, subjects and educational levels
- Have initiative to “move” groups of teachers and students
- Lead interesting projects for the educational center
- Be connected with other professionals that add value to your initiatives
- Have empathy with teachers, students and families in their ICT training
How is the Baccalaureate experience with the use of Evernote and iPad
This year 2013 is and will be key when talking about Baccalaureate at the SEK Institution. In a cycle of historical resistance to change, with students involved in a first-rate educational-professional project and traveling to the university world, our Institution addresses the most ambitious modernization ever carried out: the University Baccalaureate.
In an environment full of challenges, totally changing and in which the training of new technologies is and will be vital for our young people, a project of deep renewal of the baccalaureate was born with the aim of bringing these educational courses to university proposals.
As a summary, the keys to the project are:
- Methodology: We change the way of doing things to improve learning and make protagonists of it to our students. That is why we have been working with the Flipped Classroom methodology for a year, which proposes the consumption of content outside the classroom to carry out the “learning by doing” within them.
- Tools: to apply this methodology we need new work tools. In a proposal based on 1 to 1, from the SEK Institution our students have been offered a digital case with educational apps or applications (for example, Evernote) selected by the teachers themselves and housed in a device such as the iPad. This solution allows our young people that connectivity from anywhere, that access to content in various ways and that immediacy we need in our project.
- Evaluation: finally we adapt the way to evaluate our students, making it as close as possible to what they will have in their university life. Therefore, our Baccalaureate programs for each of the subjects have been based on ECTS Credits, exactly like the university, with a calculation of hours associated not only with the work done in class but also with the work done outside it.
You are extending the experience of using the iPad to other courses and schools
The use of equipment such as the iPad in our centers is not unusual. For some years we have projects related to the children's stage in the creation and consumption of interactive content through this tool. And what about the incredible concerts that our students offer us every year from the music course?
It is true that the birth of the University Baccalaureate project is assuming the definitive impulse in the growth of new initiatives linked not only to iPad, but to technological equipment that facilitates mobile, ubiquitous and broad learning.
With experience as a value in front of others and the great progress that is being obtained from the educational project, action and implementation plans are already being generated for other stages of the two schools (SEK El Castillo and SEK Ciudalcampo) of the institution that We have started the project and evaluating its implementation in the rest.
How teachers integrate the use of technology in learning
Each teacher tries to use in favor of learning each and every one of the tools that we put at your disposal the ICT coordinators of each center. For us, technology is an excellent vehicle for improving learning based on “learning by doing”. Applications or tools everywhere increase the curiosity of our students, enable them to approach initiatives with them more fully and provide aesthetic and emotional quality to the content we work on. Edmodo as a student learning and management network, gFlash as a memorization tool based on digital cards, Evernote as a generator of shared notebooks with content elaborated among all, or Nearpod as presentation of content with monitoring of learning at the moment.
Everything goes with a good strategy, an elaborate plan and clear objectives.
What is the response of teachers regarding the use of technology and take advantage of the classes
Well, if we are sincere, we have the feeling of having to put more willingness to learn and be willing to change than most of our students. What happens is that, and now speaking of my team of teachers, they are professionals with a positive attitude, a spirit of sacrifice with a job well done and empathy between them and with the young people who fill our classrooms.
In addition, annual plans for continuous training within the educational center are included every year and are generated by making a good mix of the needs that teachers transfer and the vision that as ICT coordinators we have responsible for this area.
What is the state of the art of the use of technology in education in the world
Very recently, an excellent teacher of the tuiteros environments shared an image on the net in which, already at the beginning of the last century, they tried to envision what life would be like in the classrooms of the 21st century. In the image you could see children sitting at their desks with a helmet on their heads and connected to a large "knowledge tolba", contents in which an applied teacher was systematically dumping books and more books. A unidirectional vision of knowledge learning not quite right.
This 21st century is being "revolutionary" when it comes to applying new technologies and everything they assume in terms of knowledge paradigms.
The answer could be very extensive, but as a summary we have:
- The student as the center of the whole model, creator and participant of their own learning
- The school is no longer the only place to find knowledge
- Mobile and ubiquitous learning, and its ability to reach more people than in person
- The role of the teacher changes to become a learning guide
- You learn more and better thanks to the mix of “real” and virtual content
- The knowledge is extended and is within each and every one of us
- Share, share and share. That's the key
These and other issues were addressed in the recent visit we made to London to BETT 2013, the most important event worldwide if we talk about technology and education.
What is the evolution of education?
Education travels towards open, ubiquitous and changing training models. Concepts such as Liquid Education or MOOC arise every day as changes to the current educational paradigm. What model do we travel to? Well, we still do not know 100 x 100, but it does seem that training extrapolates the 4 walls of educational institutions and is present anytime, anywhere. Blended learning or blended learning is seen as an ideal option in which you make the content users themselves protagonists and in which space and time cease to be the most important variables.
Why the British have included programming in the technological baccalaureate
Programming is one of the skills that has been boosted for a long time at the educational level. In the age of knowledge, learning how machines work becomes vital for the very, very near future. Robots offering information to travelers at airport terminals, machines and sensors taking care of our safety, articulated arms improving the mobility of people who need it and other activities and actions that we cannot even know now.
That is why we have been developing projects and initiatives in the educational robotics and programming environment from our educational centers. An example is the participation we have had in the First Lego League, organized within our facilities at SEK El Castillo and the Camilo José Cela University, in which proposals from various schools in the Community of Madrid have participated for a place in the final national. With these initiatives we are training our students in the programming, use and operation of the machines.
These and other reasons have caused the British to incorporate as a skill the programming of machines within the baccalaureate. And we, surely, will do so much of the same.
What techniques are you applying in the training of students
The students of our day demand varied and different techniques when it comes to advancing their learning.
The use of the game in education or gamification brings students the necessary knowledge through a fun and fun activity. Skills such as spatial skills, multitasking or evolution in instant reasoning are some of the skills worked.
Social networks and blogs are other tools we use to facilitate the training of our students. The immediacy of the news, the debate generated around themes, the interaction between equals or the activities in values allow us to address group work dynamics.
What professions will be able to absorb this knowledge of the students
Talking about the professions of our students in the future is an adventure. The truth is that we do not know for sure the activities and skills they will need in their professional development. Fields such as nanotechnology and open fields around new materials such as graphene, the internet of things or objects connected to the network or new telemedicine or remote assistance services are coming.
The important thing for us is the mainstreaming of the contents, enhancing the different skills that each of us have and promoting what has been called "open minds" among our students.
And so far the interview with Jorge Moreno, ICT coordinator at the SEK El Castillo school. I think Jorge has explained to us very well how students in and out of the classroom can take advantage of technological resources and receive a complete training that takes advantage of teachers' knowledge and experience.
