EDLD 5363 Web Conferences

 

In an online program such as this, communication with instructors and classmates provides much needed guidance and answers. Web conferences were very valuable to answer questions or listen to others and offer suggestions.

November 18 - First web conference – I asked questions regarding finding the Week 1 overview. We also discussed tools to use for the digital story and groups were formed.  I generally try to look over my assignments and if I don’t understand, I try to attend and ask questions toclarify.

November 25  - Went to the link and no conference. I will try again later

November 26  - I attended the web conference to answer questions about week 2 assignment such as will our product be a podcast or vodcast. Dr. Abernathy gave suggestions about what we could do to complete the assignment and reminded us to download the extra plugin to be ale to save our Audacity recording.

Dec. 16 – I believe that our group has been on top of the video production.  I read through the Web conference to see if there was anything that I had missed and to verify that we were on the right track. My issue is that some questions that I had were asked but did not get answered.  Assignment 5.3 and 5.4 tells about what is looked for on those but does not ask for anything specific.  I will have to go to the web conference Friday to ask those questions.

After reviewing all the documents, I found my IA’s email concerning what should be turned in for Week 5.

Over the last 3 weeks, our group has been working on an introduction video for a core content area. We decided to do a humorous intro to Order of Operations with the play on doing things out of order. Thanks to my group members for their dedicated work to make this happen. Here it is:

I'm going to venture away from the research for a bit to reflect on the assignment for Multimedia and Video Technology 5363. This week, we watched several Photostories and were asked to create our own. I created my script at the beginning of the week and was excited about searching through pictures as I went home for Thanksgiving. I teach IT at school and have some students that create their own videos. So I asked them what would be the best way to create my photostory. As we sat and played with the programs, it became apparent that it would not be that difficult to do and I created a sample in about 3 minutes. So as I sat down to work tonight, I got more and more excited when it came together and only took me two takes to create my story. I cannot tell you how proud I am of the video and how much I learned doing this project. Here it is:

This week I am preparing to provide professional development to our faculty. It's a little late, but we are finally getting to do our BYOD training. This week we are providing the teachers with information on effective uses of technology in the classroom as well as tools to engage students and provide feedback. Some of those tools include Socrative, Wallwisher, and Poll Everywhere. We are also doing mini sessions on the webtool Symbaloo as well as teaching out teachers how to effectively use Schoology.

As we begin the school year, I find myself slightly frustrated with the implementation of BYOD. We have had a principal change, and are having to step back a little just to make sure everyone is on the same page and has the same expectations. I have also found that we have teachers with a great amount of knowledge and those with no knowledge of how to make this giant step. I am constantly working to answer questions and find new technologies for our teachers to reference. One of my attempts to help our teachers was to take the Google site assignment from EDLD 5366 and add a BYOD page to it. The other tool that I found to aid teachers was Symbaloo. Symbaloo is a site for a Webmix that has buttons to bookmark your favorite sites. I created a Webmix specifically for out district to help our teachers remember the different technologies that we have presented to them.

It also includes some great gadgets such as a calendar and a to do list and Google search. I have found this tool very helpful.

First of all, I want to modify my last post. The students I teach in my CONNECT program are not educationally-challenged. They all like education. It's just that it has so be something they really enjoy like many of us. I will rename them traditional-school challenged. They just don't learn as well in the traditional sit-behind-a-desk classroom. So now that I feel better about that, moving on. How is my research going? Well, Twitter is my best research friend. There are so many amazing people on Twitter. My PLN is the greatest resource for information, research, and opinions on Bring-Your-Own-Device. Here are some of those that I follow: @markbarnes19 @SimpleK12 @TCEA @Matt_Gomez @web20classroom @NMHS_Principal @rmbyrne @SchoolHR The last few weeks, I have been researching resources to share with our teachers to help them effectively integrate devices. For my Digital Graphics class, we are working on a Tech Integration website that I will be adding a BYOD tools page to.

As I began this course, the word research kept resonating in my head. I am a science and math person and the mere sight of the word took me to a horrible place of note cards, texts, literature, bibliographies and my early graduation class where I have to painfully help educationally-challenged seniors through the research process. In the last 5 weeks, my view of research and the challenges of it have changed. I have learned that my thoughts and ideas are worthy of inquiry and why our principal has us participate in the various types of professional development. It all kind of makes sense now. I would also like to reference one of my cohort's blogs. Jake Prince posted a great TED video on his blog No Boxes Allowed. I really enjoyed the video and it gave me a refreshed perspective on leadership.

As I continue improving my action research plan, several problems arise. Two of the issues that I foresee are time to complete all the steps thoroughly and getting honest teacher feedback. I have some ideas about how to alleviate this and have received constructive feedback on these issues. The time thing is going to be all about my planning. Some ideas for getting teacher feedback are to meet with teachers to find out how they would best like to respond to surveys, interviews, and questions. The other idea is to meet with department PLCs as a group where there is sometimes more of a secure feeling to express opinions and issues and hear that others have the same concerns. Another issue that has been brought up continually by my cohorts is student usage of technology in class for non-educational use. Before wireless access for all students, our school allowed teachers to use student technology as they deemed necessary. Many students have Smartphones and so I used this technology often in class; therefore, students had their phones out often. Abuse of devices was not a problem due to the fact that I tried to keep my students busy from bell to bell and when in small instances we did have leftover time in class, I allowed my students to use their devices for their own use as long as it was not impeding any one else learning. They seem to work well with this give and take and I had very few negative issues.

My Action Research Plan

SCHOOL VISION: Robinson ISD will develop leaders and productive citizens by cultivating a passion for learning and desire for excellence. GOAL: Improve teacher use of applications and wireless devices in the classroom to promote deeper learning and problem-solving in the biology and English classroom in order to improve student learning.

Originally posted: June 17, 2012
This week, I have chosen my topic for my action research to be conducted over the next year. Our school installed wifi into all campuses and will be incorporating a Bring Your Own Device program for the kids.  Each high school student and district teacher will be able to connect one device to the wifi and use their devices in the school.  As I begin my action research project, some information from another school district that has implemented Bring Your Own Device sparks interest and the drive for the success of BYOD.  In school district X, out of 68% of the students that had devices, only 41% got a school account because "Teachers do not allow or expect us to use the technology...Teachers just want us to have pens and paper and read the chapter and answer questions or problems in the book".  My goal in the implementation of BYOD at our school is to give teachers resources to change the instructional model in order to have effective use of the technology.

Originally Posted: June 08, 2012
Action research is the 21st century research tool. In action research, the researcher poses a question or "wonderings" that he/she has.  In education, these questions could have to do with their leadership role, programs in the school, staff development, or a problem with students or student performance. As an action researcher, the researcher becomes the head learner as she engages in learning more about her problem and collecting and analyzing data. She then makes changes and adjustments and shares her findings with others, all in order to improve education (Dana, 2009). Action research allows the researcher to improve education on her own campus as well as problem solve and collaborate with colleagues.

Throughout history, effective teachers have always reviewed how they taught, what they taught, and made changes in order to make learning in their classrooms more dynamic so that it could evolve as needed.  Action research adds data collection, interpretation, and reflection to make instructional review even more effective. As an action researcher, I know that the research that I conduct is about me and my teaching strategies in my classroom. It directly impacts instruction in my school and ultimately makes my school better.

As a classroom teacher and technology integration specialist, I am constantly implementing new technologies and experimenting with how they impact learning.  Learning about how to do action research effectively will help me make those technologies even more effective. As our school integrates school-wide wi-fi and Bring-Your-Own-Device, I plan to research how teachers are using devices to put technology integration in the hands of the students. I plan to follow the attitudes about learning, test scores in the classroom and standardized test scores as we try to improve our freshmen end-of-course tests scores.

Blogging about action research aids in research in two ways.  First it gives an outlet for self reflection. Self-reflection is important because it allow the researcher to write down the feelings and thoughts about what they are doing at that moment.  Researchers can then read and reflect back on feelings and ideas to hopefully make research even better.  It also gets your research out and allows others to agree with, add to, or constructively criticize your work.

Dana, N.F. (2009). Leading with passion and knowledge: The principal as action Researcher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.