Educators and the Use of Blogs

Educators can use blogs to collaborate ideas, solution to problems that have already been experienced. Blogs can be used to share best practices and its a place just to share the successes and yes, even failures. Sometime, its helpful to be able to share the failures because sometimes people on the outside can give you a different perspective on the issue. Educators can help each other set-up theoretical situation just to practice the action research method. Not everyone is gifted at posing questions and finding solutions, so its helpful to hash out problematic situations and pose a question for that area, and start looking for ways of improvements.

Action Research "What did I learn"!

Action Research....What does it mean? What is its purpose? And why do I need to know this information? These are the questions that pop into my mind when I saw my first assignment for the week. I will be honest I wasn't so excited about this assignment. But, as I read the information, I was shocked to see that maybe the grass is not so green on the other side. You know the dark side (Administrator) side of the educational realm. As teachers, we are all consumed by the daily needs of our students, parents, and administrators that we forget that, they too are going through the same issues.

 Action Research is sort of a prescription, it diagnoses the issues at hand, and then analyzes the data that backs up those issues and then devise a way to correct those issues or at least make some improvements to the diagnosed problem. The key word is "action" a hands-on approach to get the problem solved. There are (3) ways to practice action research within the educational setting and that is through university coursework, many times these leadership courses embed action research within the course material. Another area to practice action research is within the superintendent/district meetings. This is a grand opportunity to put all the principals’ thinking caps together to come up and formulate questions to a present day problem or upcoming problem and start coming up with action plan to rectify the situation. The last avenue to practice those action research skills is through the leadership teams that are housed within your own school. These individuals will assist you in decision-making process, sharing problems and possible solutions that are occurring throughout the school and even sharing responsibilities.

 I also learned there is a definite difference between action research and traditional research. And that traditional reseach is not benficial for the educational setting. I know that during my internship, I will be using action research method to assist me on solving issues or at least make some improvements within my school and not just as administrator in training but, as a teacher as well. I know I will need a action research plan for the implementation of a project-based curriculum for the iPad pilot program.





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