Week 4 - AR Project - Publishing

Today I begin to put on the finishing touches to my article that I plan on submitting to a peer-reviewed journal. What began as a chore and an ultimate fear of rejection has turned into an excitement about the possibility of someone actually publishing my work. While I am not holding my breathe and know that the possibility of rejection is more than likely, there is still a slight chance that someone will be crazy enough to publish my article. I am hoping that the group who will be sitting in on my wimba session and Joe, our course director, will be able to offer some insight on what modifications I can make to improve my article. Some of the questions I have developed so far are;

1. What can I do to improve my results/conclusions? 
1. I feel like there needs to be more. There is a lack of body to what will happen or change. I feel like I am saying here you go, I am done and nothing more will happen after the article is submitted.
2. What images should I attempt to use?
1. During my cycles I did not take any images of my workshops. I did capture some images of the students working on their projects but even then, I don't have many that show the teacher interaction. Many people have attempted to use charts and graphs, but my data collection (survey) was very weak and the graphs look worse included with the text than the text left on its own.
3. How can I formulate a good abstract?
1. The journals I have looked at publishing to all require and abstract and most are limited to 150 words. I am hoping someone will be able to provide me some positive direction on how to write the most affective abstract in the short amount of words.

Week 3 - AR Project

This week we were asked to create a summary page for our AR project. The point of this is to take the time and truly think about where we have come over the past 11 months. It was sort of surreal to be putting the final thoughts on the work and this program. In writing up the summary, it brought out frustration and joy reminding me that all though I am done, it did not turn out the way I thought. My expectations are so much higher for myself and my work, yet on this, I feel as though I compromised. I lowered my standards and gave into the pressures of time. If I could continue on in this program, beginning my project now after all the course work, I believe things would have been very different. I think I would have had a better foundation for researching literature as well as an idea of what meaningful project could be tested.

We work so hard during our monthly courses that I found myself loosing sight of the AR project. However, there are many of my classmates who have done extraordinary work and should be considered model examples. Lina Varley did a phenominal job with her project on home schooling and the role of technology. Therese Josephson did a great job of demonstrating how technology can help one of the biggest issues in education, communication. Another favorite of mine, Alicia Kalb took a very realistic problem, finding a job as an educator, and presented a unbelievably useful solution with her portfolio site. There are so many others that I don't want to overlook, but I think you get the point. These people have something they should be very proud about. I, in attempting to do more attitude, actually over thought this so much that in the end I created junk.

The worse part about all this is that I could have simply done research on all the things I do everyday in my classes. In my upper level classes I promote project based learning. In my lower end classes I do the same thing but I on a much more managed scale. All classes keep a digital portfolio, use blogs, screencasts, podcasts, videos, etc to present their information. Student collaborate virtually and provide feedback and guidance on assignments and yet I decided to over look all of this and do something different. So my advice to anyone attempting to do AR would be the same I tell my students, keep it simple stupid (KISS)! Lesson learned.

Week 2 - AR Project

This week marks the end of one of the most challenging experiences I have ever faced. For the past nine months I have battled this horrible desease known as my action research project. While I am not completely satisfied with the end product of my project, I am ecstatic that it is finally completed.

From the start I struggled with this project. I changed my essential question/problem three times and ended up re-writing my literature twice. Thanks to the guidance of Roxanne, I ended up arriving at my essential goal of training teachers how to implement technology into their lesson plans. However, as I later learned from my literature review, I went about implementing in the wrong way. I did everything that you shouldn't do when trying to use professional development to help teachers integrate technology into their lesson plans. One of the reasons for this error was that I changed my literature after I was into my cycles. Having this information ahead of time, I would have reshaped the way my cycles were implemented.

Even though my cycles were done incorrectly, it still validated what my literature suggested and taught me a lot about professional development. However, one of the greatest outcomes of this experience was the fact that I have no moved into a different role at my school. Actually, it is a role I hold now, Director of Technology, but I am finally going to be given the opportunity to focus 100% of my time on the position. Currently I teach, oversee the school network and hold the tech position. Next year, while I will still have one class before school, I will finally have someone under me maintaining the network and I can focus on technology integration at the school.

In the end, even though my research project was a flop, I owe my current success at school to the process of undergoing the mind numbing pain I experienced over the past nine months. My administration saw a real need for my position to be full time and have the confidence in my to be a real change.