DesconFEDELE

As we have already announced to our readers, FEDELE has begun a series of educational events for our teachers. These meetings have been given an “un-conference” format with the aim of sharing practical experiences and all sorts of ideas for planning and managing Spanish classes.

The “un-conference” format has many names both in Spanish (no-congresoconferencia de espacios abiertos) and in English (unconference,  open space conferencebarcamp). All these names refer to the same concept: a meeting of professionals from a particular sector who come together to share and experiment. It provides a quick and efficient way of practising collective intelligence and netlearning.

We have adapted this concept at FEDELE to meet our own teaching needs, using teaching objectives and working procedures proposed by the participants. From the beginning it is the group who decides which problems they are going to try to solve and how. Problem-based learning (PBL) is a fundamental part of this approach.

The #DesconFEDELEs have a coordinator/moderator who proposes strategies, guides discussions and ensures that the guidelines created by the group are kept to. Each session begins with a discussion about aims and procedures. Workgroups are then created (these are flexible) which raise questions and their possible solutions. All this flow of work is collected in an internal collaborative document (on Google Drive) and also shared on networks. Outside proposals can also be incorporated with the hashtag #DesconFEDELE, principally on Twitter.

The first #DesconFEDELE which took place in Seville on 2nd November had Antonio Orta, Head of the Spanish Department at CLIC International House Sevilla, PhD in Modern Languages from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, as the coordinator. The participants were very enthusiastic about their objectives and learning and very pleased with both the process and the results of this #DesconFEDELE.

To learn more about this first #DesconFEDELE, have a look at the results on Twitter.