EDLD 5301 - Week 2 Reflection

This week's assignments gave me an opportunity to expand my perspective of action research. Watching the videos of the administrators explaining how and what they see as action research, I was able to put myself in the shoes of my own administrators. I got a clearer understanding of the goals and purposes of many school activities that I rather took for granted. For instance, attending the Campus Improvement Team meetings is now a more meaningful activity. I can say that before I attended, paid attention and was actively engaged; but I was far away from understanding the real purpose of discussing campus improvement at that level.

Purpose and Significance - Discussion

I am having a hard time thinking about another research idea than the one I posted last week. The more I read and talk about it, the more I am convinced of working on the idea of researching the effectiveness of the transfer -from paper based to digital- of student-created graphic organizers.

I got some time this past week to work on the software Kidspiration myself. I liked it for the most part, but there are still issues with it that I foresee as a problem for the students.

While reading Dana (2009) I find myself "wondering" about how kids would react to this new software once we introduce it. I have established as the purpose of my inquiry to look at the academic progress of students in our campus after the introduction of this particular program. I am struggling to decide whether to compare two classes (or sets of students), one still using paper based graphic organizers and the other exposed to the digital version. Would that be unethical? To restrict the use of the program by a certain number of students? Would other teachers in my campus agree to participate in such an "experiment"?  Would non-linguistic representations (Marzano, 2004) be more effective once presented on a format friendly to digital natives?

Dana (2009) writes that "Charting new territory can be exciting but also quite frightening when beginning a journey in which you are unfamiliar with both the terrain and your final destination. It becomes less daunting after you do some initial preparation and take your first steps, however. "

This couldn't be more truthful to the way I feel about this research!

Would students be more benefited by this? Or teachers?

The significance of this inquiry is still vague. I would like to have enough accurate results of the effectiveness of this program to be able to recommend to teachers its implementation  in their weekly lesson plans. Mostly to benefit student's performance across subject areas, but by default benefiting educators in their teaching and planning.

 

References:

Dana, N. (2009). Leading with passion and knowledge: the principal as action researcher. Corwin Press. Kindle Version. Loc 766-68

Marzano, R.J., Pickering, D., & , . (2004). Classroom instruction that works: research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Prentice Hall.

Educational Leaders & Blogs

Blogs are the journals of the present times. Principal-researchers are confronted with having to track, collect and reflect upon their own thinking and the thinking of the people involved in their research. Traditionally, digital-immigrants would tend to keep a journal, notebook of some sort, to express their ideas and chronologically or retrospectively reflect on their writings. Weblogs, or blogs for short, are the "nowadays" journal format. They are not only easy to create, but also easy to share. It could be authored by one or more people and commented upon in a clean, organized and accessible way.  Though formatted in reverse chronological order, it would allow any person with authorized access to browse it as if it were a hardcopy diary.

Educational Leaders benefit from this type of journaling tool where information can be enriched with text, images and links to videos and other blogs. Fully interactive and shareable  with other "educational bloggers", this format is a very powerful tool to track ideas overtime.

Action Research Reflection

I have to confess when I first read I would be taking research as my next course I was a little bit scared and worried. It sure sounded like all of the other research classes I have had in the past. After the first week of readings and videos I was proven wrong by a long shot.

In the past two months I have learned to not have any preconceptions ahead of starting a new course in the Master's in Educational Technology. There is nothing that I know that can really relate to what I am learning now. And it is not that I know nothing, but the fact that with the evolution of new technologies, nothing is seen through the same glass we used in the past decade.

Action Research is more than just researching. It is total involvement in the process of inquiry. A process where the researched and the researcher are one and only. Reading and learning about research in this manner has changed my perspective and value for reflection. Where before I used to yawn at the sound of both words -research and reflection -, now I see the connection and the true value of self-analysis.

I particularly like the term "practitioner inquiry" (Dana, 2009) to describe the process of action research. It encloses all we can say about action research in two words that are hard to misunderstand.

ShiftHappens Educational 2010