Reflection on Action Research

Action Research Project Title: The Effectiveness of Wireless Internet and Bring-Your-Own-Device on Freshmen STAAR Scores

AR Project Summary:

            As we continue into the 21^st century, technology is our future, so it was inevitable that our education system continued to move toward more technology learning in the classroom. My action-based research was designed to maximize the efforts of the Bring Your Own Device program that our campus integrated during the 2012 school year. The target population for the research study is all freshmen at Robinson High School. These freshmen will be taking four End-of-Course exams in May of their 9^th grade year.

            To begin the research, in July 2012, I sat down with my other campus integration specialist and we reviewed the tools that we already knew about and how they could be used in the classroom. Then before the new school year started, I started looking into blogs and research on the internet about what other schools were doing with their BYOD and more tools and applications to use. I have continued to do this throughout the research process. At the beginning of school we shared some tools briefly at faculty meetings, but due to having new administration and not enough time to meet to discuss time during the beginning of school in-service, we did not get to present these the way we wanted. So in early October, we planned 2 hours of in-service specifically related to using tools in the classroom. Due to a change in scheduling, my PLC period had to be removed and I have not been able to visit with the subject areas to assist them in using technology specifically suited to their subject area. I have consulted with different students and teachers about the technology that is being used in class for the last 4 months and found that it is not being used as often as I would like.  My next step is to administer a survey to the freshmen students in the next few weeks. The survey will find out how many are consistently bringing devices to class, which classes they are using those devices in and how often they are using them. I also plan to go into some classes that are using the technology and observe how the teachers are individually using it as we get closer to testing. My next data collection will come when we get the EOC test results back for the freshmen, which will most likely be in late May 2013. My final survey for the year will be surveying the teachers during the last week of school. I would like to focus that survey on finding out how often the teachers used the technology and how they feel the program can be improved for the next year.