A country I would like to visit...The wonderful Republic of Ireland

One of the countries I would like to visit someday is Ireland, The Republic of Ireland, I am interested in visiting that country because through literature, films and music I have learned something of its culture and landscapes, which I find very fascinating and beautiful, so I would love to be able to be there. I would like to do many activities there, which let me know their art and cultural scene, its heritage and its wonderful landscapes. I would love to know specially Dublin, go to the theater, visit art galleries, enjoy concerts, visit places of historical significance such as castles and monuments, visit national parks to enjoy the beauty of Irish scenery and wonderful wildlife, I would also love to explore some Irish island, and of course eat a traditional Irish breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausage, fruit, cereals, potato cake, tomato, bread and tea, an extremely caloric dish, but I imagine it must be delicious. Finally, I would like to know more deeply the Celtic culture and the diverse cultures that have built the history of Ireland. Moreover, if I had the chance I would like to live some time in Dublin and perform some specialized course in community psychology. I hope I can do all this at some point in my life.

My first term...

Hello everyone! We are back now, talking about new things, but it is also interesting to remember what happened the previous term. What about university? During the first term of 2009 I had six subjects: educational psichology, legal psychology, laboral psychology, clinical psychology, community psychology and english. Without a doubt my favorite subject was community psychology, in which we treated themes as poverty, environmental problems and interculture. In my opinion the most boring subject was laboral psychology, because talking about businesses and recruitment is not very interesting for me.
Last semester, in my free time, wich in general is very limited, I started working voluntarily as coordinator of the educational plan of Un techo para Chile in a rural area of Maipú called La Farfana, where I continued working until now, this experience has been wonderful because it relates to my personal and professional interests.
I also participated in some outdoor activities organized by a women association, these activities includes biodance and meditation, we usually developed these recreative activities in Parque Forestal, a very beautiful place in the centre of Santiago and one of my favorite places of the city.
I think the biggest challenge was to organize my time to respond to my responsibilities, enjoy what I was doing and to spend time with my friends and family.
Sincerely I believe that first term was very positive for me, so I hope this term will be also good.
See you!

My blogging experience

Hello! Here I go again and for last time. Well, first I really enjoyed the activity, I have never done this before and in general it was a very funny experience, I found it interesting to have the opportunity to discuss issues wich interest me as my favorite subject, community psychology, my career and important authors as Michel Focault, among other themes. I think the development of this activity allowed me to improve my level of English, because I should reflect on the issues and be able to present arguments and ideas.
I consider that a very important advantage of this working method is that it provides the possibility of incorporating technology into learning, you can learn vocabulary and expressions while delves into topics of personal interest, it also allows you to interact with classmates through the comments, generating a feedback that enriches the process.
Although I make a positive assessment of the activity, I could point out as a disadvantage of blogging in the English class is the time required for its development, that is related to the need to work on the computer, which in my case, due to vision problems, it is sometimes more difficult. But really I have no negative criticism regarding structural aspects of this methodology of work.
Finally, I would like to say that, in a very special way, I will miss the blogging activity because it was fun to talk about topics that I like, thinking, generating criticism, new ideas and sharing this with others who may also be interested, also through the blogs of my classmates I learnt about them and their own interests which impacts not only on learning of academic content, but on the development of interpersonal relationships.
So, it is time to say good bye, this was nice experience, I hope we will meet in another opportunity without forget what we learnt.

Creativity and Education

Hi everyone!, today I’m going to talk to you about a video from Ken Robinson, considered an expert on creativity. On this video he manifests how interesting education is for him and also the way this topic is deep-rooted in people as a basis for their lives. The most important themes in his approach are the children capacity of innovation and the great talents that many children have. He points out the relevance of creativity and the need to consider it as important as education. Moreover he says children usually are not afraid of being wrong and make a mistake, this idea doesn’t mean creativity is the same as being wrong, what he really means is that if you don’t take the risk probably you will never create something really original. The main theme is that children start losing their capacity of innovation as they grow up, because educational system considers the mistake in a very negative way and punishes it. After that, he talks about a hierarchy of subjects which cross the countries, mathematic and languages, then humanities and in the bottom the arts, but also within the arts there is a hierarchy too, in general music and art have a higher status than drama and dance. Another theme treated by him is the public education wich seems to be focused on generating university professionals who are disembodied and live in their head. Finally, believes that our only hope is to assume a different conception of human ecology to re-establish the conception of the richness of human capacity and rethink the principle in wich the education of our children is based. I think this is a very interesting proposal, so I invite you to internalize in his tought.

My favorite subject =)

Hi everyone! Today I am going to talk to you about my favorite subject this term, this is community psychology. The subject is developed by a group of teachers formed by Germán Rozas, Rodolfo Sapiains and Rodrigo Quiroz. I really like this subject because I am very interested in issues of social conflicts, specially poverty and environmental problems, I also like the community perspective of social processes. This semester I have learnt about perspectives on the discipline, its goals and objectives, forms and general working definitions of community psychology in relation to historical, geographical and sociocultural contexts wich it was developed in. We also treated the concept of community and the evolution of this concept, the sense of community, the types of community, the notion of social practice, the modernity and the construction of social problems in community psychology. Other themes treated were the community mental health approach, the systemic perspective, the strengthening and social change approach, and finally the approach of social capital and citizenship. Some of the most interesting themes for me were poverty, social and urban segregation, social representations, collective memory and its relationship with the community, and the relationship between community psychology and public politics. I invite you to internalize in this interesting branch of psychology, greetings!

Dreaming about my future...

I consider it is funny to think about what I would like to be doing five years from now. Professionally, I would love to work as a communitarian psychologist in issues such as poverty and environmental problems, having direct contact with people everyday and working together to achieve a transformation of social reality. Furthermore, I would like to do some post-graduate course maybe about communitarian interventions, in Chile or abroad. On a personal level, I do not know if I could point out specific expectatives, but overall I would like to continue growing as a person and also working about my spiritual development. I would like to live in an old apartment in the Barrio Bellas Artes, near Parque Forestal, or continue living with my mom, which would be very nice. Finally I would like to continue participating as volunteer of Un techo para Chile, going out with friends, sharing with my family, meeting new people, places and traditions, and enjoying every moment. Dreaming is wonderful, but so is putting all our energies on making those dreams a reality. See you, greetings!

Michel Foucault

I think a very important person for psychology’s field is Michel Foucault, he is not a psychologist but he developed significant contributions considered and used by social psychology, especially in its most critical current and legal psychology. Michel Foucault was a french philosopher, historian, critic and sociologist. He held a chair at the Collège de France with the title “History of Systems of Thought", and also taught at the University of California, Berkeley. Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality. Foucault's work on power, and the relationships between power, knowledge, and discourse has been widely discussed. In the 1960s Foucault was often associated with the structuralist movement. Foucault later distanced himself from structuralism. While Foucault was always typically characterized by the post-structuralist and postmodernist labels, he personally rejected the postmodernist and post-structuralist labels, preferring to classify his thought as a critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant. Although Foucault is not defined as a psychologist I consider him the best in thinking about power relations in various fields, and whose principles have been widely used by social psychology in general. I like Foucault because he proposed a new way of understanding knowledge, subjectivity and social structure among others.
I hope you like learning more about him, greetings!