EDLD 5301 Week 2

I am beginning to see that action research can be used in any area of schools, including staff development, student learning, behavior issues, and everything in between.  The method and the degree of formality of action research will be different for different types of concerns.  With each course activity, I am seeing the differences between action research and traditional research.  Most professionals in education naturally engage in reflection and observation.  Performing action research allows this to be done systematically so concerns and problems can be addressed most successfully or even prevented.  I am excited to perform my action research on how SMART Boards can be used in the classroom to increase student motivation and maximize student learning.  In the video this week, Dr. Lewis emphasized the importance of action research being practical and important to the researcher.  Because this topic meets both of those criteria for me, I am even more certain that this is the topic I want to research.