Week 2 Reflection

This week was a busy week for myself.  I was fortunate enough to go on vacation with all of my family to Costa Rica for the week.  We got back late on Friday and now I am cramming all of my work into these two days to get done on time!

I did narrow down my topic much more this week from my broad start that I had last week.  I am going to focus my action research on the use of the iPads in the Algebra I classes and determine if a greater use of the iPads during class results in better student achievement in Algebra I.

After reading the 9 areas and completing the assignment, I realized that my topic is going to meet several of these areas.

Next week is going to get much more specific with all of the details involved with our action research projects.  I am ready to start working on all the specific details and get this project rolling.

Blogging in Education

I can see many benefits of blogging in education.  It is a great way of getting ideas from other teachers. It lets you communicate with other teachers from everywhere, not just in your building.

One way that I can see it being used in my district is to read the blogs of other teachers who are using the iPads in their classrooms like we are wanting to do in our district.  That are not that many districts that have the iPads for all of their students at this point and it is hard to find people to talk to about new ideas.  With a blog, you can easily accomplish this.

I have met several people lately that have blogs about their experiences with flipping the classroom and how to utilize the iPads more effectively.  I have learned quite a bit of information from reading their blogs and learning from their experiences.

With my role in technology now in my district, I am hoping to start a blog so that others can follow what we are doing and learn from our mistakes and from our accomplishments.

What is Action Research? (week 1)

To be honest, when I first started reading the assignments for this class, the words action research was not something I was familiar with.  It sounded like a lot of work to me and didn’t sound like fun to me at all.  But after I have read through the books and realized what exactly action research is, I am not nearly as concerned about it.  I am realizing that action research is happening quite often in the school I was at and just never called it that.

Action research is basically just taking situations that are happening at your campus/district and looking into those things (research) much more.  An important part of this process is the reflection piece so that you can determine if what you are doing is actually working or not and making the proper adjustments in order to make your research the most beneficial for your campus/district.    Action research is done within your school and not from the outside looking in.  This makes it much more meaningful to all the people involved since you are not having an outsider looking at what you are doing and telling you how to fix it.

My district has really utilized this method of research this past year with us implementing the iPads in our high schools.  Every high school student now has an iPad.  At the beginning, I would say that my district did do their research but didn’t really follow the action research model to the extent it needed to in how to implement this enormous initiative.  During the year the district realized this mistake and started actively using the action research model in making better decisions about the use of the iPads.  We now follow this process in almost everything we do with the iPads moving forward now. 

Since my position in the district is now in the technology department and not in the classroom directly, I am going to be following the action research model in much of my work.  There are going to be many new projects and programs that we will be starting up this year and I am going to have to make sure to follow the action research model in order for me to be an effective leader in technology. 

I am glad I have learned what I have so far about action research.  I can see how important it is and why we need to do it constantly in our schools.  I am not as afraid of those words “action research” like I was before starting this class.