My Action Research Plan

My goal is to observe, collect data and transform as a research participant via effective and consistent use of a technology resource that has been made available to my campus that is designed to engage students interactively and enhance their learning experience. The expected outcomes are as follows: That I would trust my students to navigate through and experience explore learning. That my team and even vertically aligned colleagues would be encouraged to implement and/or increase usage of this tool based upon collaboration and best practice shares. That my students would be challenged and would experience growth in a deeper comprehension of content. • Activities designed to achieve the objectives 1. Model use of Gizmos for students in a lab setting where every student is able to explore the site (facilitated by teacher) and hold a discussion about their findings; likes and dislikes; what they have learned. 2. Take field notes to record the initial discussion data. 3. Implement a set of procedures for how & when students will be able to access this website and the necessary handouts; how to submit their assignments and take responsibility for their completion of assignments. 4. Collect documents/student work from the assignments that are provided and submitted over a course of time to measure the growth of learning taking place via the explorer learning. 5. Pre/Post assess students on a concept before and subsequently after completing various Gizmos on a given content matter. 6. Have students journal (weblog) on our class wiki site about their experiences with Gizmos. 7. Gather students opinions on Gizmos and its effectiveness via surveys. • Resources and research tools needed for data gathering Surveys (online via website) Weblogs (for teacher journaling) Ipod for Field notes Wiki for journaling (students) Gizmo assignments and assessments Benchmarks Literature/research on Explore Learning website • Draft timeline for completion or implementation of activities The year will begin with pre-assessments from Explore Learning to assess where the students’ levels of comprehension are after a subject content has been studied (or I may use a previous year’s information), so this will/should cover about 2 months worth of time beginning in August. During this time span, there will be modeling of how to use Gizmos, collecting field notes and data & implementation of procedures as well. Before the 4 month (possibly the end of fall semester), there should be a sufficient gathering of documents/student work and I will have issues some/few post assessments to chart/measure any growth or comprehension depth. In the spring semester (about 6 months into the research) I will have expected to introduce wikis and weblogs to my students in other areas pertaining to the classroom and will prepare them to begin journaling their experiences with Gizmos. At the 8th month mark, I will expect to have created surveys that allow students to express opinions and evaluate both our journey (and participating teachers/classes) as opposed to other classes/subject matters or their previous year w/o Gizmos. • Persons responsible for implementation of the action research plan Because I firmly agree with the Dana text when it mentions how teachers should lead by example and that the only person a teacher can control is him/herself. I believe, in conjunction, that my influence on those teachers around me (even those who I will solicit to partner with me) will stem from my own commitment to my research behaviors. I will be the “head learner”. In addition, my mentor will oversee and serve as a guide for my process. She will help me develop a since of ownership and leadership as I facilitate along side her in developments that focus on the resource technology tool being researched. Also there will be a team of three teachers who will work along side me and hope to serve as a set of data that will motivate other teachers in lower grade levels to be involved and/or use the resource to impact their students. • Process for monitoring the achievement of goals and objectives My hopes are that the pre and post assessments will serve as a monitoring system for the data portion of my goals. But as far as monitoring the expected outcomes, I hope to measure them via my field notes and reflections. I desire to see what the other teachers whom are participating, what their reflections are based on their observations in their classrooms. • Assessment instrument(s) to evaluate the effectiveness of the action research study Pre & Post assessments (non-formative) will come directly from the website. Benchmarks submitted via the district will serve to measure effectiveness as I see how those students respond to higher level questioning. The actual assignments from the Gizmo will help serve as a formative assessment as I will probably not grade them but use them as student work to see how effectively and thoroughly they are responding to the interactive, challenging questioning.

Wondering from Week 2 Research 5301

Leading with Passion and Knowledge by Nancy F. Dana opened up an area of curiosity for me in chapter 2 when it discussed the 9 passions that drive our journey as educators. Passion #3 (Individual Teachers) provided an exercise that would stir dicussion amongst a group of both new teachers as well as veteran teachers, seperately The idea of the discussion is to guage the eagerness for support from both groups. I began to wonder myself, whether newer teachers were more eager to grow than veteran teachers. Newer teachers might be more abreast to the urgencies that changes in education and curriculum require, while veteran teachers feel their methods are concrete. However, veteran teachers might be aware of a "sense the urgency as they realize their careers are half over" to compete with newer teachers for their jobs. Just curious.

How Educational Leaders might use blogs...

Blogging opens up a world of literature for Educational Leaders and their students. I envision educators using blogs to encourage their students to dissect and inspect, even adding their own opinions to either a lecture or a text of study. I see students having the avenue to confer with and comment on their peers' opinions and educators using this tool to conclude their lesson as such. *I'm updating this post because I attended a PD today involving blogs and wikis and found more ways that blogs could be used for educational purposes.

• They are ways I (as a teacher) can post project suggestions and allow my students to comment on them.
• It provides an oppotunity for students to learn and practice good skills in paragraphing, citing sources, explaining order of events, discussing cause and effect, etc.
• It gives a voice to students who may be too shy to speak out in class.

Action Research-My Findings

Based on my readings, I conclude that action research is a focused inward questioning of a practitioner’s work that should spiral into action that cultivates change. It entails detective practice, intentional questioning of oneself and practices, gathering and scrutinizing data in efforts to change then sharing those changes with others. It has promises centralizing around teachers being “learners” both in how their current behaviors reflect in their villages and to revolutionize the format of professional development. I believe I have already begun the fundamental basis of action research in that I am a very reflective teacher and have been in my 7 years of education. I am never satisfied with where I am as an educator because my motto is "the best leader is one who is able to follow". As an educator, I believe that motto is paramountt in how we live as practitioners because it defines that we should model a willingness to learn if we are to expect our students to do the same. I expect to futher this concept of action research both in my apprentice-ship of becoming a technology leader as well as my passion to mentor teachers in the concept of math. Within this program, I must consider my current practices as below par and not suitable for what my students need to achieve success if I am to learn and grow as a technology leader. I must seek active ways to integrate technology into my curriculum on a level that helps my students applyy technology and be creative. Additionally, as I seek to become a Math TAKS specialist on my campus, I must look at the current curriculum, manipulative practices, content tools and online resources and evaluate how effective they have been in the classroom so I can serve as a coach to my peers and empower them to move from good teachers to great teachers. I must not only model this in their classrooms, but think about what I would have done differently in my own classroom to meet the needs of my students, so that I consistently use an inquiry based model of action.