Back to GMU :)

These days we returned to our fellow duties,  a bit tired but very eager to see and learn new things from our fellows and the teachers at the high schools.

On Monday we spent the whole day at the University... In the morning we, the Tea fellows, shared our experiences and we observed during our fieldwork at highschools. Though everybody agreed in that here the highschools are very well equipped and the teachers usually do a good use of those resources, it's very interesting to notice that we've had quite different impressions about the US classrooms... Indeed, some fellows consider that the students here have too much freedom and that technology, at the same time, makes them lazy, for everything is given and the students put very little from themselves. On the contrary, others argue that it's important for the students to have freedom in order for them not to quit from highschool; the idea is that knowledge is easier to occur when the student feels he is in a comfortable environment.
Onother issue that prompted a rich discussion among us was related to the role of teachers beyond their role of "teachers" and the importance of building reltionships between the students and the teachers. Concerning this aspect, personally I consider that the teachers here are more "distant" to the students than in Uruguay. It's not common to see a teacher asking a student about his/her life or if they have any personal problems. It also called my attention how the teachers avoid and actually don't like the students to call them by their first name (sts refer to teachers as "Mr Fuentes" or "Mrs Robbinson"), however, at the same time, many teachers have pictures of their families and houses on the classrooms' walls or on the desk (remember that here every teacher has his/her classroom and it's the students who move from classroom to classroom).... This really puzzles me !!

Later on, in the afternoon we had the technology class with Dawn and Priscila (teachers seem to not have problems if students call them by their first names at the University :).
We finished listening to our classmates' Podcasts and then we took a look at some games.... reflecting upon which ones would be more appropriate to work with in a classroom.
Certainly there are many games that can be linked to the content of certain subjects, but it requires a lot of research from the teachers in order to find the ideal ones.
The best ones seem to be those that require from the students to look for things in order to accomplish tasks, for they require that the students listen to the characters carefully.. Dr Hathaway also recommended games such as "Civilizations" and "Sim City"....these are strategy games that put the students in situations similar to the ones a ruler has to face.... making them have a different view on how things worked in the past (Civilizations), or what are the decisions a city mayor has to make as part of his duties...