Erasmus+ Program

A rewarding crazy adventure

In November 2020 my retired colleague and friend, Carmina Aguado, signed the agreement

of an Erasmus project with other 3 schools. Then Covid19 visited us and stayed for quite

long, so my colleague retired and I inherited the responsibility of the program at her request.

For two years, I wrote quite a few emails to the coordinator school and the other participant

schools, an Italian and a Bulgarian one. The response by the coordinating person was scarce;

he just ignored my proposals to start the project online and wait for the possibility of a real

mobility. No way¡

In November 2022, after a couple of emails with the Bulgarian school representative, who

told me she was closing the program by returning their budget, and knowing that the Italian

school had retired because the person in charge had also retired, I wrote to the Spanish

agency to quit the program. Surprisingly, in December, I received an email from the

coordinator school's new teacher in charge of the program, establishing the mobility dates and

the opening ceremony just a month later.  

As you can imagine, I was amazed, but, at the same time I wanted to do it. The next month,

especially, and the rest of the course was really crazy for me. In first week of January

- Christmas holidays -, we organised a WhatsApp group, held three online meetings, received

the documents and started to learn what we were supposed to do and, to make things more

complicated, the Bulgarian school had to quit. However, the most discouraging moment came

when the Italian school left too, after participating in the opening ceremony  we had held

online January 17, because they found it difficult to fit all the mobilities. Therefore, we had

double work and one third of the time.

After a conversation with our school head teacher, I was allowed to decide whether to do it or

not. The coordinator also asked me if I would do it and my answer was clear: “I have been

fighting to start this for two years, now it has become a dream come true”. I knew I had the

right kind of students to carry out the task and they proved me right.

Then came the meetings with parents, the selection of students, the effort to take more than

the 21 in the agreement… For me, the most tiring thing was bureaucracy: reading the

agreement, the annexes, watching the videos on how to do the project and the final report….,

and trying to get to the authorities to obtain their authorisation under the new conditions.

At the same time, in the classrooms, I had the compensation. This is a project for the students,

and all my students, even those who could not participate in the mobilities, read and watched

videos about the topics: Gender equality and Digital creation and Media literacy and Critical

Thinking. I thought they were very suitable and up-to-date topics and, working with them

helped me understand what the project was about. And it worked well. Second of bacharelato

and 3rd of ESO students made some great presentations and compositions and 4th of ESO and

1st of bacharelato, the ones who were participating in the program, started to study the topics

more profoundly and prepare possible creations on them.

In the meantime, we selected the participants, asked for the parental permits and passports,

booked the flights and tried to get accommodation in London; a really hard job as everything

is shockingly expensive. The cheapest thing the travel agents found was a hostel with bunk

beds for 90€ a night. Eventually, with the help of the British colleague, 28€ with breakfast,

in 9 – bunk bed rooms and next to the British Museum. Great¡¡ It was an obstacle race,

especially trying to avoid important tests. There is much more, but I would need a novel and

time which I do not have, because I have to finish the final report and start a new course with

quite a lot of bureaucracy.

 Nevertheless, I will not finish without stating a couple of things:

1-Our English department has been working, at least partially, creating projects and different

kinds of practical works, which have improved the students’ level of English, as we could test

during the mobilities. None of the 21 participants had any problem to communicate

with the British students and teachers. I must say that the bilingual sections, in separate groups,

played a key role in this achievement.

2-This methodology was the tool which allowed us to fulfil the Erasmus project efficiently, as

the students did not have to do anything very different from what they had already been doing

for years. Here I have to say that the ITC teachers are also doing a great job, because the

students’ command of the tools to create the outputs is their merit.

**I will include a link to a Google sites web where you can see some of the things I have just

talked about and, hopefully, increasingly better productions my students have created during

the last few years, which should reflect the improvement in their ability to express their

ideas by using ITC, as technology offers them new possibilities to show their views of

different topics.

Links to previous years' projects.

1-The Victorian Era and Industrial revolution, as a background work to read Oliver Twist.

3rd of ESO students of Valores Éticos bilingual section

2-4th of ESO 2021-22 the person behind the name of a street in Pontevedra

3-Our city's hidden women, proposed by Tatiana Lores. 3rd bilingual section 2021.

4-3rd ESO bilingual section on health. Proposed by Arantxa Caramés

5-Presentations biology 3rd ESO 2017

6-Science stories by bilingual section 2017

What I mean with these examples is the change of methodology and especially outputs, as the ITC tools develop. The idea is basically the same: establish a topic and possible outputs, help students find suitable websites, supervise their written and oral texts so they are adapted to their level, by sharing a word file from a cloud store and see and listen to the final creations.

A special year

  Last summer I received quite disappointing news: after 7 years of great experiences with the bilingual sections, proper bilingual groups in which you could speak English from the very first moment and nearly all the time, you could forget about the textbook most of the time and devote your time to develop projects about science, technology, literature, history or any cross-curricular topics - for example by reading a book and creating a project with its historical and social background and, finally watching the film whenever it existed-.

The question was that, due to restrictions in the number of teachers, the bilingual sections still exist, but they are mixed with the rest of the students. As a result, you have 25-29 students in a class, 15 of which are mostly brilliant and 6-7 have serious problems to follow a normal lesson.

Someone will say, "that is what attention to diversity is about ''. Yes, please, could you come and show me how to do it? Everybody knows the theory, created by pedagogues who seem to have never taught a normal group. You will either make the good ones bored by going slowly and making sure most people understand texts, grammar and vocabulary exercises or follow the rhythm of the majority and leave behind those with a lower level. "You should give them revision exercises''. I do, and the only ones who do them are those who could have spared them, because they have a good command of the level. Students who need revision hardly ever do anything by themselves, because they have arrived here, to the level they are in now by being passed by their teachers, not by the knowledge they have acquired. We are all being very cynical in education, or should I say, we are all forced to be very cynical.

However, I find it difficult to adapt to unfair situations, so what is the most plausible solution? In my opinion, and it is written in our department programs since years ago, presentations and projects are the most powerful tool of attention to diversity, because students can do the works at their own level,  There is no limit to make a powerful job and students with more difficulties and less motivation can do something very simple: grade 5.

That is what I did. It is not the same, and it is unfair especially for good students, but they had the opportunity to reach their best and most of them have done it. I am really satisfied and want to share their creations.

Link to Google sites- in construction

Media literacy and critical thinking

How to avoid being stolen our time for the media to make money and manipulate us.

“The social dilemma”

 

Social networks were created as a product to help people solve problems and make many daily jobs more quickly and efficiently: to communicate better, to perform scientific research and calculations much faster and access lots of information immediately. Nevertheless, the development of social networks and their widespread use, which include nearly everybody worldwide, has changed their goals and this is causing lots of serious issues.

 

The reason is that the objective of social media has switched to making money and, for this purpose, they need vast amounts of users to be connected for the longest time possible every day.

 

As a consequence of this new objective, a lot of undesired social problems are arising: addiction, mental health conditions, child depression, dysmorphia due to the use of filters and photos shopping which has created a completely unreal body stereotype; news manipulation which risks peaceful social coexistence, namely, democracy; and many others.

 

As I said before, Silicon Valley started selling products, but now they sell people, types of people to engage as targets of their products. We have got used to finding anything on the Internet for free, but when something is free, you are the product, you are the price.

 

The media compete for your attention, for getting as much as your time as possible, and the result is changing your habits, your thoughts, who you are.

 

They offer the companies the certainty that their product will be seen, and, for that purpose, they need great amounts of data about people, about users. Therefore, they trade in human future and they have plenty of money to achieve that.

 

How do they accomplish their plan? They monitor everything you do, say, see, how long you spend on the Internet, you personality, mood – if you are happy or depressed -, your health…. As a result, the systems knows a lot about us and makes better predictions. They create models which predict our actions, and the one with the best model wins. 

 

Nowadays, media are no longer a tool, they have goals. We can’t avoid using the phone; we have to use the phone to communicate with our friends, because they communicate with it; and when we use the phone, we find notifications and we click on them, and they lead us to other appealing headlines on which we click and we see adverts and we close pop-up adverts, which will follow us, because when we click on the “x” to close it, we give the net information that will allow them to follow us.

 

The result: we were going to send a message to our friend and ended up spending half an hour doing things we had not thought of doing. Furthermore, as he spend more time in the nets we forget about previous interests, our previous normal life, like having a driving license, or going on dates, meeting friends face-to-face, reading, doing sport … we have become addicted to the nets.

When we used tv there used to be rules to protect children when watching it, even cartoons; today technology takes advantage of human weaknesses and we suffer manipulation and polarization.

 

Computers learn quickly what they should offer to us, so we spend more time in front of the screen, and has turned us into a product. Algorithms learn how to improve adaptation to our desires. On the other hand, we do not control algorithms, they learn by themselves.

 

Google offers you the results you want, based on the knowledge of your thoughts and needs.  Facebook offers different people different news, adapted to your interests and likings. They create your information, the information of your group – that means, the people who share similar thoughts to you -. And then you look at others and think: “why don’t see the same?” And they do not see the same because they are offered the news which best suit their personal profile – the one the algorithm made by following you and learning from you -. This way they make into groups, tribes, and they generate polarization, confrontation between groups of people who perceive reality differently because they are being given different views of reality, not true reality. In addition, conspiracy theories grab people’s attention much more than reality and truth.

 

For profitability, the system biases towards false information because it makes companies earn more money. Truth is boring, whereas sensationalism attracts people. Fake news on COVID, conspiracy theories, rumours of virus spread by China, the influence of 5G, or the idea of the vaccine implanting a microchip in our body to control us – by the director of a Spanish university -, became the most followed and shared news and the most influential.

 

Youtubers, most of whom do not have an education or experience of life, brainwash our minds by telling us they want to inform, protect and save us, when their basic goal is getting more likes and followers to monetize their sites. Promoting racism, anti-immigration and hatred is really profitable; as profitable as dangerous for democratic coexistence.

 

For Facebook it is very easy to find 1000 people who share the kind of thoughts someone needs to promote a certain idea or political bias and reaction, and spread it quickly. Russians used Facebook to manipulate people before the USA elections.

If we do not agree what is true and false, we cannot solve the problem. They use us as part of a system with a goal.

 

THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE NEW GENERATIONS, WHO HAVE ONLY LIVED IN THIS SYSTEM WON’T BE ABLE TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM, because they have not known a different world, they cannot compare.

 

It is normal that a company makes money, but there must be regulations, because self-regulation doesn’t work, since the only goal is money, as much money as they can make. They do not care about social or environmental disasters.

 

A healthy society needs to change things.

 Some rules to prevent manipulation and addiction:

-Disable notifications and recommended videos: choose.

-No devices in the bedroom. There is life outside the net: life is outside the net.

-No social networks until 16, when children are able to decide.

-Time budget: how much time we will devote to social media

Arturo Neira