My+case.+Learning+Space+Design+&+DEvelopment

In this page we are going to explain a invented case where is necesary to use some strategies to help students with special needs. In this case, needs are related with multiple cultural background, poverty and discrimination.

= Scenario =

Mike is a teacher who likes his job. Althought he not always wanted be teacher, he knows the importance to do well his daily work, because the educators have in their hands the posibily to change the future of many students. But sometimes, diferents things hinder the way.

He works in Spain, in a secundary school with students who are fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen years old. They are from diferents backgrounds (Gipsies, Ecuadoreans, Moroccans, and Spanish). The school is located in the outskirts of a big city, specifically in a suburb where there is high unemployment and crime rates. Social Services is overwhelmed because many families turn on it to ask help.

= Challenge =

In Mike´s classroom the students are demotivated. Some of them do not attend regularly to class and have low performance. But the problem that Mike is more concerned about is the little relationship between students from different cultural backgrounds. It is not strange to hear in classroom racist comments or xenophobic insults. Mike have another challengue as a result of this situation. The most part of the families of his students have few economic resources, and many of them does not have computer in their homes. This increases the risk of appear another way to discrimination or illiteracy: digital divide. However, some are fans of games on-line and have e-mail which is used to communicate with their friends.

= Objectives = = = Given this challenge Mike has the following objectives:  = Solutions =
 * 1) To promote attitudes of respect between students from different cultural backgrounds to enable a positive and enriching interactions.
 * 2) Increase the level of motivation of students regarding school activities.
 * 3) To incorporate the use of new technologies in school activities as a indispensable form of literacy.

The first activity that I thing that we must to do is a previous evaluation about the attitudes and thoughts of the students related with racism. For this we can create a survey with Surveymonkey []. It would be interesting if we use the same survey at the end of the activities to see changes. I have made a survey that can help to this purpose: [|Attitude evaluation] Analyze historical moments where have happened in the discrimination and racial conflict. For this kind of exercise we can use videos and written texts than can be discussed later. Youtube have several videos that can be interesting. A examples can be the Martin Luther King´s speech "I have a dream", that it is subtittle in diferents languages: []

The text is also available in next link:

[|I have a dream (Text and video)]

Some speeches of President Obama can be used to analize the important of a afroamerican man in the Government of USA. Furthermore he speaks about the cultural diversity. A examples is his inauguration speech: []

[|Inauguration speech (Text and video)]
 * Seconly we can watch some movies about racism. Some of these can be "American History X", "Crash" or "Life is beautiful" (Trailers available in youtube). Thus, it is important to comment the movie and to ask some question to the students that foster a discussion. For this task we can create a Blog when the students answer the question and explain their arguments. The website [|www.blogger.com] gives the opportunity of create free blogs.

Other activity can do is to use "creative writing" programs like Glypho or Fanfiction.net. With this tool the students can create storys and share them with their peers. Write a alternative end for the movie can be interesting to promove the engagement and the expresion of students. [] []

One of the most important contribuition that new technologies do to education is the posibility of multiple ways of representation. It is important offer to students varied metodologies because in this way we increase the posibilities to find the best form of attend their needs. Also if we use different tools it will be easier to break the monotony and foster their motivation. However we can not forget the importance of books. A recent book of Amartya Sen: //Identity and Violence. The Illusion of Destiny// can offer us some interesting ideas to organize discuss. This book raises the idea of a multiple identity or multiple dimensions of identity, and the problems, conflicts, and massacres that have happened because many people have wanted promove the homogeneity in a diverse world. For to do this activity you can get the book or access to a news where it is commented:

[|Comments on Amartya Sen´s book]

Althought the worrying poverty of many families in this suburb is a important obstacle for students developed their skills related with hight technologies, the school can help to ease this situation. The school can provide its students classroom where they can use this technologies but in case that it was not possible, the teacher could seek another alternative ways. The neighborhood have a library that local people do not use too much. This library offers access to Internet and several computers that anybody can use it. Many students have never been in this places so they do not have idea about the posibility to access Internet for free. An appropriate activity can be to visit the local library with our students and show them the way to get the library card and access to Internet.

In the description of case, we were talking about family problems that many students have. Therefore the teacher can not forget the importance of home-school relation and it would be advisable that he or she maintained contacts with their parents. In some cases where anothers social agents were intervening with the student or his/her family, can be important to maintein contact with their in order to coordinate actions with the familiy.

Finally, the teacher might propose that students did a final work where they analized one historical o current situation of racial discrimination. For this task it would be interesting to make it by teams, if is possible, composed of diferent background student. The final work will be made in a "wiki" like this, where the students will create the following pages:


 * Description of the situation.
 * Historical backgrounds.
 * Personal opinion on the event.
 * Lessons that can be get it.
 * Proposals for alternative solutions.
 * Opinions of the peers.

The final works will be presented in the classroom and every student will evaluate them in the reserved spaces for this. In order to promove multiple ways of expresion, the teacher has to explain to the student the importance of collect diverse sources like pictures, movies, sounds, texts, etc.