Brain Storming

Paulo Freire: dialogue, praxis and eduacation

Paulo Freire: dialogue, praxis and education

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Paulo Freire, dialogue, praxis and education. Perhaps the most influential thinker about education in the late twentieth century, Paulo Freire has been particularly popular with informal educators with his emphasis on dialogue and his concern for the oppressed.

Paulo Freire (1921 – 1997), the Brazilian educationalist, has left a significant mark on thinking about progressive practice. His Pedagogy of the Oppressed is currently one of the most quoted educational texts (especially in Latin America, Africa and Asia). Freire was able to draw upon, and weave together, a number of strands of thinking about educational practice and liberation. Sometimes some rather excessive claims are made for his work e.g. ‘the most significant educational thinker of the twentieth century’. He wasn’t – John Dewey would probably take that honour – but Freire certainly made a number of important theoretical innovations that have had a considerable impact on the development of educational practice – and on informal education and popular education in particular. In this piece we assess these – and briefly examine some of the critiques that can be made of his work.

Contribution

Five aspects of Paulo Freire’s work have a particular significance for our purposes here. First, his emphasis on dialogue has struck a very strong chord with those concerned with popular and informal education. Given that informal education is a dialogical (or conversational) rather than a curricula form this is hardly surprising. However, Paulo Freire was able to take the discussion on several steps with his insistence that dialogue involves respect. It should not involve one person acting on another, but rather people working with each other. Too much education, Paulo Freire argues, involves ‘banking’ – the educator making ‘deposits’ in the educatee.

Second, Paulo Freire was concerned with praxis – action that is informed (and linked to certain values). Dialogue wasn’t just about deepening understanding – but was part of making a difference in the world. Dialogue in itself is a co-operative activity involving respect. The process is important and can be seen as enhancing community and building social capital and to leading us to act in ways that make for justice and human flourishing. Informal and popular educators have had a long-standing orientation to action – so the emphasis on change in the world was welcome. But there was a sting in the tail. Paulo Freire argued for informed action and as such provided a useful counter-balance to those who want to diminish theory.

Third, Freire’s attention to naming the world has been of great significance to those educators who have traditionally worked with those who do not have a voice, and who are oppressed. The idea of building a ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ or a ‘pedagogy of hope’ and how this may be carried forward has formed a significant impetus to work. An important element of this was his concern with conscientization – developing consciousness, but consciousness that is understood to have the power to transform reality’ (Taylor 1993: 52).

Fourth, Paulo Freire’s insistence on situating educational activity in the lived experience of participants has opened up a series of possibilities for the way informal educators can approach practice. His concern to look for words that have the possibility of generating new ways of naming and acting in the world when working with people around literacies is a good example of this.

Fifth, a number of informal educators have connected with Paulo Freire’s use of metaphors drawn from Christian sources. An example of this is the way in which the divide between teachers and learners can be transcended. In part this is to occur as learners develop their consciousness, but mainly it comes through the ‘class suicide’ or ‘Easter experience’ of the teacher.

The educator for liberation has to die as the unilateral educator of the educatees, in order to be born again as the educator-educatee of the educatees-educators. An educator is a person who has to live in the deep significance of Easter. Quoted by Paul Taylor (1993: 53)

http://infed.org/mobi/paulo-freire-dialogue-praxis-and-education/

Aleaciones en química

Alloys

There are a few more words you might hear when people talk about mixtures. We can't cover all of them, but we'll give you a quick overview of the biggies. Alloys are basically a mixture of two or more metals. Don't forget that there are many elements on the periodic table. Elements like calcium (Ca) and potassium (K) are considered metals. Of course, there are also metals like silver (Ag) and gold (Au). You can also have alloys that include small amounts of non-metallic elements like carbon (C). Metals are the key thing to remember for alloys.

The main idea with alloys is that the combinations work better together than any of the metals do alone. Metallurgists (people who work with metals) sometimes add chromium (Cr) and/or nickel (Ni) to steel. While steel is already an alloy that is a very strong metal, the addition of small amounts of the other metals help steel resist rusting. Depending on what element is added, you could create Stainless Steel or Galvanized Steel. It's always about improving specific qualities of the original. Another good example of an alloy happens when metallurgists add carbon to steel. A tiny amount of carbon (a non-metallic element) makes steel stronger. These special carbon-steel alloys are used in armor plating and weapons.

Amalgams

Amalgams are a special type of alloy. We like them because we think mercury (Hg) is a cool element. You might know mercury as "quicksilver" or the metal that is liquid at room temperature. Anyway, amalgams are alloys that combine mercury and other metals in the periodic table. The most obvious place you may have seen amalgams is in old dental work. The fillings in the mouths of your grandparents may have been amalgams. We already talked about mercury being a liquid at room temperature. That physical trait was an advantage when they made fillings. Let's say you have an amalgam of mercury and silver (Ag). When it is created, it is very soft. As time passes, the mercury leaves the amalgam and the silver remains. The silver left over is very hard. Voila! You have a filling!

NOTE: Never, ever, play with mercury! It is very poisonous. You shouldn't even touch it, because it will seep into your skin. Dentists don't usually use amalgams with mercury anymore, because some scientists think the mercury can get people sick. When there was extra mercury left in the fillings, it could seep into the blood stream. Most of you will never even have silver fillings. Many dentists use resin fillings, which are made up of plastic and very fine particles of glass.

Emulsions

Let's finish up with a little information on emulsions. These special colloids (another type of mixture) have a mixture of oils and waters. Think about a bottle of salad dressing. Before you mix it, there are two separate layers of liquids. When you shake the bottle, you create an emulsion. As time passes, the oil and water will separate, because emulsions are mixtures


http://www.chem4kids.com/files/matter_mixture2.html

Resumen

Algunas aleaciones

Coltan, el nuevo oro.

Coltan: a new blood mineral

The controversy surrounding blood diamonds from the Democratic Republic of the Congo has made headlines over the past decade, but a relatively obscure mineral is also prompting international concern.

Human rights observers charge that coltan, used in electronic devices such as cellphones, DVD players, video game systems and computers, has been directly linked to financing civil wars in Africa, especially in the DRC.
Men, women and children are said to be forced at gunpoint to mine coltan that is then shipped out of the country at huge profits.
"Coltan is extracted under terrible working conditions in mines in eastern Congo," DanChurchAid, a Danish humanitarian nongovernmental organization, reported in 2006. "The United Nations reports child labour in Africa has significantly increased in coltan mines. In some regions of the Congo, about 30 per cent of schoolchildren are now forced to work in the mines."
On Friday, the Global e-Sustainability Initiative and the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition announced the launch of a Conflict-Free Smelter (CFS) program to combat the problem.
"The CFS program aims to identify smelters that can demonstrate through an independent third-party assessment that the raw materials they procured did not originate from sources that contribute to conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo," stated the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition, a Washington-based industry group whose members include Apple, Celestica, IBM and Cisco.
Canadian New Democrat MP Paul Dewar introduced a bill in the House of Commons recently to fight the mining of conflict minerals in Central Africa, specifically in the Democratic Republic of Congo. If successful, Dewar's bill and similar initiatives around the world could prompt stricter guidelines and control on where the mineral is sourced by the major electronics producers.

What is Coltan?

Coltan, also known as columbite-tantalite, is a dull black metallic mineral containing the elements niobium and tantalum. Tantalum, a heat-resistant material that can hold a strong electrical charge, is used to make capacitors used in a wide variety of electronic devices, from cellphones to nuclear reactors. It is also used in high-heat-resistant steel alloys for applications such as aircraft engines.

Where is it found?

The mineral is found in a number of countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada and China, in addition to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Potential mines are also being explored in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greenland, Mozambique, the United States, Finland, Afghanistan, Venezuela and Colombia.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/coltan-a-new-blood-mineral-1.894027

Crucigrama Coltan

Luego de realizar la lectura del artículo, completa el siguiente CRUCIGRAMA

Coltan

COLTAN, MINERAL DE GUERRA

Cambios de estado de agregación

Changing States of Matter

All matter can move from one state to another. It may require extreme temperatures or extreme pressures, but it can be done. Sometimes a substance doesn't want to change states. You have to use all of your tricks when that happens. To create a solid, you might have to decrease the temperature by a huge amount and then add pressure. Some of you know about liquid nitrogen (N₂). It is nitrogen from the atmosphere in a liquid form and it has to be super cold to stay a liquid. What if you wanted to turn it into a solid but couldn't make it cold enough? You could increase the pressure to push those molecules together. The opposite works too. If you have a liquid at room temperature and you wanted a gas you could use a combination of high temperatures and low pressures to solve your problem.

Phase changes happen when certain points are reached. Sometimes a liquid wants to become a solid. Scientists use something called a freezing point to measure the temperature at which a liquid turns into a solid. There are physical effects that can change the freezing point. Pressure is one of those effects. When the pressure surrounding a substance goes up, the freezing point and other special points also go up. That means it's easier to keep things solid at higher pressures. Just remember that there are some exceptions. Water (H₂O) is special on many levels. It has more space between its molecules when it is frozen. There's a whole expanding effect when the molecules organize into a solid state. Generally, when temperatures get colder, solids shrink in size. They become more dense.

CHEMISTRY TERM	PHASE CHANGE
Fusion (melting) Freezing Vaporization (boiling) Condensation Sublimation Deposition	Solid to Liquid Liquid to Solid Liquid to Gas Gas to Liquid Solid to Gas Gas to Solid

Esquema cambios de estado de la materia

Algunos cambios de estado

¿Se deben evitar los nitratos y nitritos en los alimentos?

AVOID NITRATES AND 

NITRITES IN FOOD

April 1, 2013

Nitrates and nitrites are chemical compounds that cause a lot of consumer confusion.

Nitrates are a normal part of the diet, but excessive levels can cause problems, especially for kids who pound for pound take in more than adults do. They have been linked to diseases like leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and ovarian, colon, rectal, bladder, stomach, esophageal, pancreatic, and thyroid cancer.

They’re found in our diets in several ways: as synthetic food preservatives and naturally occurring in fruits and vegetables like spinach and celery. Sodium nitrate and potassium nitrite are added to cured meat to preserve its color, prevent fats from going rancid, and stop bacteria from growing. They’re also found in drinking water thanks to nitrogen-based fertilizers as well as livestock waste.

Here’s where things get tricky: If nitrites are exposed to high heat during cooking, they can convert to nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic. And when nitrates are used as a food additive or consumed, they can convert into nitrites.

Scientists believe that these conversions may be responsible for the link they’ve discovered between nitrates and nitrites and the diseases listed above. Nitrate or nitrite exposure has also been known to cause pregnancy complications and infant health problems.

Before you give up celery for good, keep in mind that there’s a difference between eating nitrates added to foods as preservatives and consuming them via produce. Nitrates that occur naturally are found alongside compounds like vitamin C that inhibit their conversion into nitrosamines in the body. When we eat nitrates and nitrites in foods artificially treated with them, we may not be getting these complementary nutrients and their preventative effects.

Here’s how to keep nitrates and nitrites off your plate:

1. Minimize consumption of processed foods and cured meat products like hot dogs, sausage, and cold cuts. Check labels carefully though—these compounds are also found in other products that contain processed meat and even some meat-free products.

2. Don’t be fooled by “uncured” or nitrate-free brands. These products typically contain high amounts of nitrates obtained from ingredients like celery juice, which means they could contain as much as if not more than their traditional counterparts.

3. Eat organic foods. They’re not grown with synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, which can boost a crop’s nitrate content significantly.

4. If you live in an agricultural region, consider treating your water with a home water distiller, a reverse osmosis filter, or an ion exchange filter to remove any fertilizer nitrates that have accumulated in the groundwater.

5. Eat a diet high in antioxidants. Certain vitamins, like vitamin C, can reduce the conversion of nitrates.

http://healthychild.org/easy-steps/avoid-nitrates-and-nitrites-in-food/

Organizador gráfico sobre nitratos y nitritos en los alimentos

KNOW	WANT TO KNOW	LEARNED
- El consumo de nitratos y nitritos en la dieta debe ser el menor posible ya que son cancerígenos. - Estos compuestos se encuentran en los conservantes y colorantes utilizados en la elaboración de fiambres, panchos, chorizos, etc.	- ¿Qué cantidad de nitratos y nitritos es recomendable consumir para que no tengan efectos adversos en la salud?  - ¿Qué otros efectos puede tener para el organismo? - ¿En qué otros alimentos, además de carnes procesadas, se encuentran estos compuestos? - ¿Existen alimentos que “neutralicen” su efecto? -  Si son cancerígenos, ¿por qué se permite su uso en este tipo de alimentos que muchas personas consumen a diario?	- Los nitratos son una parte normal de la dieta, peo niveles excesivos pueden causar problemas. - Su consumo se ha relacionado con enfermedades como leucemia, linfoma no- Hodking, de ovario, colon, recto, vejiga, estómago esófago, páncreas y cáncer de tiroides. También se sabe que causan complicaciones en el embarazo y problemas de salud infantil. - Además de hallarse como conservante se encuentran en algunas frutas y verduras, y en el agua potable como consecuencia de los fertilizantes a base de nitrógeno y los residuos ganaderos. - Su consumo en frutas y verduras no es riesgoso pues se encuentran junto a la vitamina C que inhiben su conversión en nitrosminas en el cuerpo. Para minimizar los efectos negativo de estos compuestos se aconseja: minimizar el consumo de alimentos procesados y productos cárnicos curados, consumir alimentos orgánicos, considerar el tratamiento de agua con un destilador en el hogar, y tener una dieta rica en antioxidantes.

Alimentos que contienen nitratos y nitritos

Planta nuclear de Fukushima: pérdida de agua radiactiva

20 August 2013 Last updated at 10:57 GMT

Fukushima nuclear plant: Radioactive water leak found

The tsunami knocked out cooling systems to the reactors at Fukushima

Radioactive water has leaked from a storage tank into the ground at Japan's Fukushima plant, its operator says.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said the leak of at least 300 tonnes of the highly radioactive water was discovered on Monday.

The plant, crippled by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011, has seen a series of water leaks and power failures.

The tsunami knocked out cooling systems to the reactors, three of which melted down.

An employee discovered the leak on Monday morning, Tepco said in a statement.

Officials described the leak as a level-one incident - the lowest level - on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (Ines), which measures nuclear events.

This is the first time that Japan has declared such an event since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, however.

Under the Ines, events have seven categories starting with Level 0 ("without safety significance") and Levels 1-3 denoting "incidents" while Levels 4-7 denote "accidents".

A puddle of the contaminated water was emitting 100 millisieverts an hour of radiation, Kyodo news agency said.

Masayuki Ono, general manager of Tepco, told Reuters news agency: "One hundred millisieverts per hour is equivalent to the limit for accumulated exposure over five years for nuclear workers; so it can be said that we found a radiation level strong enough to give someone a five-year dose of radiation within one hour."

More monitoring

A Tepco official told a press conference on Tuesday that the water probably leaked from a tank after escaping a concrete barrier.

Workers were pumping out the puddle and the remaining water in the tank and would be transferring it to other containers, Kyodo added.

Water is being pumped into the reactors after cooling systems were knocked out by the tsunami.

Hundreds of tanks were built to store the contaminated water. Some of them had experienced similar leaks since 2012, but not on this scale, a Tepco official said.

Tepco had been instructed to retrieve contaminated soil and to strengthen monitoring of the surrounding environment, a regulatory official told Agence-France Presse news agency.

No major changes in radiation levels outside the plant had been observed so far, the official added.

The incident comes days after Tepco admitted that as much as 300 tonnes of contaminated water a day was leaking from the damaged reactor buildings to the sea.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23764382

Organizador gráfico sobre agua radiactiva en Fukushima

KNOW	WANT TO KNOW	LEARNED
- En 2011 un terremoto, y posterior tsunami, provocó la ruptura de los reactores causando la segunda pero catástrofe radiactiva después de Chernobyl. - Se encontró agua radiactiva afuera de la planta de Fukushima. Se está investigando el origen.	- ¿Qué tiene el agua radiactiva? - ¿Cuál es la situación actual de la planta? - ¿Qué perjuicios puede tener para las personas que estuvieron en contacto con el agua radiactiva?	- Fueron descubiertas pérdidas de 300 toneladas de agua radiactiva. - La pérdida fue catalogada como “incidente”. El nivel más bajo en la escala de eventos nucleares y radiactivos. - Un charco de agua contaminada emitió 100 milisieverts de radiación en una hora. 100 milisieverts por hora equivale al límite de exposición acumulada por 5 años de un trabajador nuclear. - Un funcionario de Tepco dijo en una conferencia que el agua provenía probablemente del escape de una barrera de hormigón. - Cientos de tanques fueron construidos para contener el agua contaminada. Algunos han tenido pérdidas desde 2012 pero no a esta escala. - El incidente ocurrió días después que Tepco admitió que 300 toneladas de agua contaminada al día son vertidos al océano desde los reactores dañados. - Tepco dice que esta es la pero fuga en volumen y en términos radiactivos. Supera 80 millones de veces el límite permitido de bequereles por litro en agua potable. - La preocupación es que esta agua sea vertida dentro del mar que está a 100 metros de distancia.

Agua radiactiva en la costa de Fukushima

Texto 1 Conectivismo

                                        http://www.connectivism.ca/about.html

Connectivism is a learning theory for the digital age. Learning has changed over the last several decades. The theories of behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism provide an effect view of learning in many environments. They fall short, however, when learning moves into informal, networked, technology-enabled arena. Some principles of connectivism:

§  The integration of cognition and emotions in meaning-making is important. Thinking and emotions influence each other. A theory of learning that only considers one dimension excludes a large part of how learning happens.

§  Learning has an end goal - namely the increased ability to "do something". This increased competence might be in a practical sense (i.e. developing the ability to use a new software tool or learning how to skate) or in the ability to function more effectively in a knowledge era (self-awareness, personal information management, etc.). The "whole of learning" is not only gaining skill and understanding - actuation is a needed element. Principles of motivation and rapid decision making often determine whether or not a learner will actuate known principles.

§  Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources. A learner can exponentially improve their own learning by plugging into an existing network.

§  Learning may reside in non-human appliances. Learning (in the sense that something is known, but not necessarily actuated) can rest in a community, a network, or a database.

§  The capacity to know more is more critical that what is currently known. Knowing where to find information is more important than knowing information.

§  Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate learning. Connection making provides far greater returns on effort than simply seeking to understand a single concept.

Learning and knowledge rest in diversity of opinions.

Learning happens in many different ways. Courses, email, communities, conversations, web search, email lists, reading blogs, etc. Courses are not the primary conduit for learning.

Different approaches and personal skills are needed to learn effectively in today's society. For example, the ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.

Organizational and personal learning are integrated tasks. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network and continue to provide learning for the individual. Connectivism attempts to provide an understanding of how both learners and organizations learn.

Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning.

Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate impacting the decision.

Learning is a knowledge creation process...not only knowledge consumption. Learning tools and design methodologies should seek to capitalize on this trait of learning.

Texto 2 Conectivismo

26

Theories for the digital age: Connectivism

Learning in the industrialised world can now be contextualised within a largely technological landscape, where the use of digital media is assuming increasing importance.  Much of this learning is informal, (Commentators such as Cofer (2000), Cross (2006) and Dobbs (2000) place the proportion of informal learning at around 70%) and is also generally location independent.

The present technology rich learning environment is characterised by a sustained use of digital media, their integration into formal contexts, and a shift toward personalisation of learning. These facets of modern life in combination have led educators to question the validity of pre-digital age learning theories. In recent years a range of new explanatory theories has been generated that can be applied as lenses to critically view, analyse and problematise new and emerging forms of learning. 

One highly visible theory is Connectivism (Siemens, 2004). Connectivism has been lauded as a ‘learning theory for the digital age’, and as such seeks to describe how students who use personalised, online and collaborative tools learn in different ways to previous generations of students. The essence of Siemens’ argument is that today, learning is lifelong, largely informal, and that previous human-led pedagogical roles and processes can be off-loaded onto technology. Siemens also criticises the three dominant learning theories, namely behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism, suggesting that they all locate learning inside the learner. His counterargument is that through the use of networked technologies, learning can now be distributed outside the learner, within personal learning communities and across social networks.

Perhaps the most significant contribution of Connectivist theory is the premise that declarative knowledge is now supplemented or even supplanted by knowing where knowledge can be found. In a nutshell, connectivism argues that digital media have caused knowledge to be more distributed than ever, and it is now more important for students to know where to find knowledge they require, than it is for them to internalise it. This places the onus firmly upon each student to develop their own personalised learning tools, environments, learning networks and communities within which they can ‘store their knowledge’ (Siemens, 2004). In McLuhan’s view, as we embrace technology, ‘our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us’ (McLuhan, 1964, p. 4). Clearly our social and cultural worlds are influenced by new technology, but are there also biological implications?

References

Cross, J. (2006) Informal Learning: Rediscovering the natural pathways that inspire innovation and performance.London: John Wiley and Sons. 

Cofer, D. (2000) Informal Workplace Learning. Practice Application Brief No. 10, U.S. Department of Education: Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education.

Dobbs, K. (2000) Simple Moments of Learning. Training, 35 (1), 52-58.

McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media. London: McGraw Hill.
Siemens, G. (2004) Connectivism: A LearningTheory for the Digital Age. eLearnspace. 

 

 

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2012/10/theories-for-digital-age-connectivism.html

Cuadro comparativo

 

Cuadro comparativo entre el texto trabajado en clase

y el encontrado en la web

 

Texto 1	Texto 2
El conectivismo es una teoría de aprendizaje para la era digital.	El conectivismo es una teoría de aprendizaje para la era digital y describe cómo los estudiantes utilizan las herramientas en línea para aprender de diferente manera que las generaciones anteriores.
Las demás teorías de aprendizaje (conductivismo, cognitivismo y constructivismo) dejan de lado la era tecnológica o digital y el cómo se aprende en ella.	Las demás teorías de aprendizaje (conductivismo, cognitivismo y constructivismo) sostienen que el aprendizaje se localiza en el interior del alumno. Sin embargo, el conectivismo afirma que con el uso de las tecnologías de red el aprendizaje puede ser distribuido fuera del alumno.
-          Para el conectivismo los pensamientos y emociones de cada uno influyen en la elaboración de significados. -          El aprendizaje tiene como objetivo incrementar la habilidad para hacer algo. -          El aprendizaje es un proceso de conexión de nodos especializados con fuentes de información. -          El aprendizaje ocurre en artefactos no humanos. -          La capacidad de saber más es más importante que el conocimiento actual. -          Nutrición y mantenimiento de conexiones es necesario para facilitar el aprendizaje.	-          El conectivismo se basa en la idea de que los medio digitales han distribuido el conocimiento más que nunca. -          Que los estudiantes sepan dónde encontrar el conocimiento que buscan es más importante que  internalizarlo.