Training Courses

Which training courses would you like to have access to as a teacher? Why? Which is, in your opinion, the best way to share good practice amongst.

In my opinion training courses are something necessary in all the professions, and especially if you are a teacher.

That´s a good point, but which course could be good? Obviously it depends on the interest of each teacher. Personally I´m interested in vocational training and new methodology, so I would like to have access to courses where I could learn about New technologies in education, methodology, dual vocational training, English, etc…

Firstly I would like something about new technologies because we have new informatics tools with a lot of possibilities and we don´t know all the chances. I´m thinking for instance about digital blackboard, moodle o special educative centre platforms.

Secondly I´m very interested in courses about new methodology in vocational training degrees, It is a well- known fact that we can´t teach vocational training students as a high school students, and one specific way could be dual vocational training. In fact my master thesis was about this topic and conclusions were relevant.

Other interesting idea is English, in last years the number of students who are going to realise one practical period in other countries is increasing, and a lot of people is discovering the figure of Erasmus + studentship.

My last pillar is learning something about dispute resolution. The main reason is because everyone knows the vocational training students profile, especially in  medium vocational training degrees, and in my opinion is extremely important having tools to act if you have problems because if you haven´t you lose the control and the rest of the actions haven´t sense.

It seem to me that the best way to learn about this topics is listening experiences about teacher who are doing something different and have good results. In the school where I realised my practical period it something that a lot of teacher are doing continuously, and all of them agree that is a good way, and you can learn about profits and disadvantages.

Not limited by the demands of the national curriculum

If you were not limited by the demands of the national curriculum, what would you say is the most important thing you would teach your students about your subject? How would you assess their learning?

If I haven´t national o local restrictions, surely I will do the things in a different way.

In order to teach economy my main idea is develop curiosity, motivation in my students, autonomy and the skill to work in group.

In this point you can imagine, that is an ambitious goal, and at the same time, difficult to achieve. I haven´t got the perfect solution, but I propose few ideas.

In first place I introduce group activities, probably in all the themes, the students will have little task to improve their knowledge about a topic. The groups are changing once every three months. During these three month each group develops the same tasks, but not at the same time. At the end of these three month the present one round task to the class.

The methodology during the rest of the course is the same. Doing that, I would like to achieve my students get ready to work in different circumstances, because is so comfortable work with an ideal group, but it isn´t a real situation in life.

If each group is preparing different task, we achieve reduce the copies. Although they can copy, it´s easier to discover that trick.

Some ideas for little tasks, could be, movies related with one theme, company visits to learn in a real situation how to do something, prepare a company plan, professional talks, with one expert on the subject, statistical studies using data bases… And they are going to dedicate two week per task. We are supposing two hours class per week.

To assess that, we are going to consider two points, first one are logically the tasks. Supposing they are going to do 4 tasks per period, we are going to assess each one with the 20% of the mark using a rubric. We are going to do that to value daily work. The last presentation has the same value, 20%, and again, we are going to use a rubric. One rubric to the partner and one rubric to the teacher. The mark of that last task will be the average between both.