Permanent life-long Educational Centre “Siete Villas”

Permanent Life-long Educational Centre “Siete Villas” We have begin a new organisational estructure at our regional level. The 8 life-long educational centres have been grouped to function as a single Educational Centre with: 600 students 12 teachers 5 workshop monitors 8 locations (towns)

All academic management, administration, organisation and pedagogical coordination is centralised in our town, Ubrique. The use of new technologies represents our only real alternative to overcome the geographical distances and be able to act as a single school.

Main objective in the framework of the present Grundtvig 2 project: “A distance Learning Approach”: Create a cohesive team of teachers, develop a common working strategy and, in essence, overcoming the inertia created for 20 years working separatedly at each of the 8 centres and be able to function as a single “normal” school,.

Activities (1) Created (teacher) working groups, dividing tasks and holding numerous meetings throughout the academic year. This has allowed us to start thinking as a team and to work together as a normal group of teachers.

Activities (2) I have received the online course “ Virtual mentoring to do online training”. A 4-month course taught 100% online by the University of Sevilla.

Activities (3): Reading Stimulation Workshop Pilot project to act within a learning network: a Reading Stimulation Workshop 11 schools in our region, 15 teachers, 22 student groups, total of 450 learners. A common methodological planning. Used 2 books: La Casa de Bernarda Alba (The house of B. Alba), by Federico García Lorca El lugar más bonito del mundo (The Most Beautiful Place in the World) by Anne Cameron Organised a final event with two thematic displays, debates, multimedia presentations and poetry recitals in Ubrique (Feb. 21, 2007)

Accomplishments Learnt a lot from our errors, detected weaknesses, and the difficulty of working as a group at both the local and the virtual level. All these have taken us to a reflective process and self-evaluation which will no doubt be of great use for future. The final event was a complete organisational success. There was high participation of teachers and students, as well as general public.

Conclusions (1) The work using these networks requires: From teachers: high motivation and involvement An intermediate level in the use of new technologies A substantial change in their working methods. This means: >more work in teams > more and better teaching materials in digital format. > greater effort to pass on our learning experiences > overcome old bad working habbits working in isolation, little planning and evaluation

Conclusions (2) Free teaching staff from extensive lecture time, so that they can gain more training, create teaching materials, planning, coordination and evaluation. The teachers who have traditionally been working in isolation in villages and towns is now more motivated to feel part of a team and have the support of other teachers.