Week 1: A Description of Action Research

                Action research is not what I expected it to be.  As a psychology major in college, the only research I learned about and participated in had experimental and control groups and involved complex statistics.  Action research, however, is based on inquiry and reflection.  Rather than an outsider attempting to perform experiments that apply to all school districts, action research is personal and applies to a specific situation.  It is a method of problem-solving and a form of professional development for educators and administrators.  It should be a continuous process for every educator and is necessary for growth and improvement.  To perform action research, one must pose questions or concerns about a particular aspect of their school, read the literature to see what is already known about this topic, formulate a strategy for improving or solving the problem, implement the strategies, and perform assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies.  Action research is beneficial because it allows educators to become proactive problem-solvers.

                After learning what action research actually is, I realize that I was already engaging in action research to some degree.  However, I feel that if I begin to intentionally and systematically perform action research in my classroom, I will greater experience its’ benefits.  I feel that I should be reflecting on and analyzing every lesson, assignment, and assessment in my classroom.  This will result in improvement of my future lessons, assignments, and assessments and will also give me feedback on how to approach the same material the next year.  As an educational technology student and a teacher that uses technology daily, I can also use action research to evaluate the use of technology in my classroom and to maximize my students’ learning through technology.

                Educational leaders can use blogs as a journal for reflections.  Reflective blogs can be incorporated into action research and used as a source of data collection.  Also, when one posts their reflections on a blog, their reflections can be shared with other educational leaders who can learn from those reflections.  Others can also comment on your reflections, allowing insights that the blogger might not have thought of before.

Course Reflections

For this course, I had envisioned gaining an overview of how to integrate technology into the classroom and an overview of the internship plan.  Through this course, I read advice and strategies on integrating technology written in journal articles and I reviewed the Texas STAR charts, the E-rate plan, and the technology TEKS for students in kindergarten through 8^th grade.  I used many web tools for the first time such as blogs, wikis, and wordle.  I believe the only way to learn how to use these tools is to start using them and learn as you go.  Also, once I used these tools, I began to see all the possibilities they create for education.  I created an internship plan that I am excited to begin working on.  I don’t believe I would have been able to create all of the activities for the plan if I had not received the basics of technology integration in the first four weeks of the course.

I already find the information and skills I received from this course relevant to my job and I’m sure I will find more and more uses for them in the upcoming year.  First, I can use much of what I learned in my own classroom.  I gained many ideas and strategies for integrating technology to teach my students 21^st century skills and also to maximize their learning of the subject area.  Also, I feel that I can use the information and skills I received from this course to help my fellow teachers.  I can inform them of information or ideas that I have seen or read about that I find will suit their teaching style and subject area.  Examples of areas I feel I can assist my fellow teachers are creating classroom blogs and wikis, finding online resources to enhance their lessons, and strategies on classroom management and safety when using technology.

I believe that I achieved all the outcomes I had envisioned for this course.  I did not expect to learn about topics in depth, I expected to learn a little about each topic and then cover these topics in depth in future courses.  I believe I was successful in carrying out the course assignments.  In the beginning, I had to relearn how to use APA style for referencing and learned the importance of including references in assignments.

From this course, I learned that I would like to work as a technology facilitator in a school.  I love to use technology in the classroom and see great benefits from it.  I believe this program will allow me to improve upon my own integration of technology and will allow me to share this information with other teachers.  While I do not like to be a leader in the sense that I am in charge of adults like a principal, I do believe that I possess the leadership skills to be responsible for technology integration in my school.  I also learned that while my attitudes about technology are much different than many of my colleagues, I agreed with a lot of the experts in the field from the articles we read.  Finally, I learned that I do not know near as much about technology as I thought I did.  When I started the program, I knew a lot about the technologies that we have access to in my school, but I know very little about technologies that we do not currently have access to.  If I want to be a technology leader, I must learn how to use these technologies and tools so that I can bring them into my district and show others how to use them.