05-05-04

Today we have visited Bolonia school again:

Today we have continued with the visits to Bolonia school in order to carry out the field work on the MOTFAL project, after a break time dedicated to prepare the first partial report on the implementation of the project.

It was not possible for us to do the field trip today because of bad weather conditions, therefore we took the opportunity to prepare the next field trip, which will consist of the study of “the quarries”.

In order to prepare for the fieldtrip, as it was done in previous times, the students have a first theoretical approach to the study object. The teacher hands out photocopies about the quarries surrounding the school and gathered form a tourist guidebook on Baelo Claudia, published by the Regional Government of Andalusia.

The work with the text consists of an individual reading, later on the students read the text aloud in the group, indicate the new terms to be added in the glossary and get familiar to the different concepts and data to be the basis of the next field works in the surrounding area where the quarries are situated. The session is finished with the writing of the document summary, which will be useful for the preparation of the file-cards.
The new terms to be studied (chosen by all the students) are the following:

- limestone
- southern
- northern
- capitals
- jambs
- props
- columns (typology)
- lintel

The attitude of the students is characterized by motivation and will to learn about the surrounding area in which they are situated. Actually, today they look upset due to the cancellation of the field trip.

Despise of the fact that nowadays the new technologies are intended to reach men as well as women with an equal opportunities basis, and this was a field exclusively reserved for men in the past, today something curious has taken place in the classroom.

The teacher has requested that some students get in charge of making a safety copy of all the files and programmes installed in some of the computers, given that the CPUs will be changed. It was curious for me to see that boys were the only ones who volunteered, while girls did not say anything. I left the classroom for a while and when returned, I watched all the boys working with the computers, as the girls were putting the classroom in order and finishing some activities of other different subjects.

This scene attracted my attention, specially when the equal opportunities between men and women have been always taken care of in this classroom, regarding the access and use of the technologies either fixed or mobile as the ones mainly used in the project.

I could not restrain myself to analyse the reasons for this scene, denoting that there still exist certain social stereotypes and prejudges up to a certain extend. I directly asked the girls what was the reason for not volunteering for the work. I am told that the boys are usually quicker than them when responding this kind of requests, and they did not have the same opportunities as boys. However, they state to use the computer in the same way as boys, and even if they were interested in undertaking this task, they are aware of the possibility to carry it out, given that as much as the teacher as the students will be open and ready to organize the groups so that everyone has the opportunity to undertake different tasks and learn about the computers from different perspectives, not only for the personal use, but also for the maintenance and improvement of the computer.

In the same way, we have had the opportunity to be present at one of the evaluation sessions, regarding the glossary as well as the file-cards prepared by the students every week. The group gathers around the teacher at the computer, they together review the work undertaken. The rest of partners keep carrying out their tasks or preparing the materials for the next field trip. In these evaluation sessions, it is highlighted the importance of the language in all the work undertaken in the classroom, this is the essential basis, so they take much care of the expression and orthography used.

The students staying beside the teacher, seem to be very relaxed, in an atmosphere characterized by the dialogue and the fluent and spontaneous conversation. Both parts discuss about the aspects to be improved and the progress made regarding previous works. The students seem to be confident and free to be themselves the ones to note down the comments and aspects to be improved in the teacher’s evaluation notebook. There is openness and spontaneity in this evaluation task.

It is interesting the fact that when any member of the group being evaluated at that moment, feels he or she did not work enough, he or she sits at the back of the group trying to avoid, if possible, the teacher’s look, go unnoticed and avoid any possible comment from their teacher or classmates

Therefore, next week the field work on “the quarries” will be started. We will be describing this process throughout the next days.