One thing led to another

Ok so I'm particular about things being structured and organized and well thought out, right?

So last year I was like "I'm gonna help these missionaries & make sure they are prepared for their trip next year". And I'm not so sure I realized what I was getting myself into. I set out to design a curriculum for them to deliver when they traveled and ended up also planning a curriculum for training them. Then got muscled into facilitating the training.

Well I did my research on VBS curriculum and tried to use my teaching skills to take the "invented wheel" and tweek it for contextualized purposes and to say the least...THAT is a task in and of itself.

Well todayy was my first day executing the first of three trainings and well "I'm not one to toot my own fladooginhoogin" but it was quite fun and engaging if I do say so myself!

I had the trainees open up with a memory verse game, then followed that with a game called "Minefield" where they had to lead each other through a minefield while their partner wore a blindfold. That was hilarious. Our debriefing of that activity served its purpose to help them connect their actions with that of missions.

Next they did a bible search matching activity and unfolded God's heart for missions and finally we ended with a crafty session making Gospel bracelets. I must say, I can't wait to facilitate my 2nd session next month.

In the mean time, designing a VBS curriculum is a bit more tedious and I'm only 1/5 of the way done. But the thought of what's left to plan, keeps me excited & who knows...maybe my gifts and desires to be a teacher who teaches other teaches best practices is well on its way.

Analysis of 3 Video Editing Software

Considering the three video editing softwares: Adobe Premier Pro, Roxio Videowave Pro & WinDVD Creator. I identified, Adobe Premier seems to be an extremely productive and advanced program.. I have only had interaction with Roxio and WinDVD and therefore based upon my research, would like to witness how much more effective Adobe is. I’ve used WinDVD and Roxio for different personal projects such as creating personal still-picture videos compiled of personal pictures; creating stil-image videos for religious events as well as short video-clip videos; developing videos that advertise events and organizations using both still pictures and video clips. All of these projects were built using two of the three applications above. On both I was not really able to manipulate the color nor audio control much. The programs did offer the basic special effects, transitionally, and offer the possibility of exporting to a DVD or CD. Due to these basic editing abilities, I classified both of these editing programs as having great weaknesses. I’d like to explore Adobe as I seek to expose my students to the abilities to create digitial portfolios and storyboards to present their learnings and research. Having GT students gives me the ability to extend their products for formative assessments to digitial products.

Pages in a Book *Multimedia Digital Story*

Reflections on Action Research

Things I reflect on from this course are the reality of how timid people are with technology; the freedom in action research and how examining improvement can be done without losing what is already working. First, as I read blogs of my classmates, I realized that as inquisitive, passionate and excited as they are, there is a lot of timidity in their inquiry almost causing an underlying lack of confidence. I can’t empathize with these classmates of mine because I have a pretty positive mindset about technology. Personally, it has enhanced my own inquiries and academically, I’ve seen how the release of control benefits my students and moves me into more of a facilitator’s role. I am excited to see how my peer’s action plans will boost them and their campuses into a more technology savvy state of mind and free them to move with the educational current. I also witnessed some colleagues of mine express their doubt towards how “inappropriate” blogs and wikis were in an educational setting. This motivated me to begin my blogging early! As I ran into my colleagues at pre-school year professional developments, I added them to my blog and demonstrated how to get on and even posted interesting, educational blogs to get them thinking about the school year and had them add comments. Second, I used to think research was boring and mundane and absolutely hated the thought of having to conduct it. As I read about Action Research and its components (data collection, cyclic nature, action plans in place), my mind about research changed. I began to embrace the idea of composing a plan based upon my inquiries. I realized that research is actually freedom, not constraint. It’s a series of inquiries that lead to another set of inquiries, all tested in efforts to continue change. Finally, when I read in the Harris text about the C.A.R.E model, “Too often educators focus so exclusively on what needs to change that they lose perspective on what does not need to change in the process”, I found new ways to implement change on my own campus via my inquiry plan (p.97). I realized that affirmation could help maintain a healthy and strong community of colleagues and their work ethics while seeking to address the changing needs of our students to improve their achievement. Morale is what drives educators, alongside their passion. In addition, when they see data improvements, they buy into those methods upon which aided in the growth; not until they have played an active part in that growth does the improvement seem real. These reflections are all reasons upon which I found a cause to revise my Action Plan draft. A combination of my readings, blogs and discussion with both my peers and site supervisors/mentor all aided in these revisions and this reflection.

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.