im going to focus on substantive conversations.  in the pre-assessment, that was my lowest… 2/3ish.  so thoughout the course of… well, this course… i worked to provide more opportunities to deepen the understanding through substantive conversations.  by adding some wiki components and increased discussion time, my ‘students’ were able to gain a deeper understanding of the content and application to their classroom.

its always encouraging to see/hear the transformation from Schleppy McNaysayer whos paramount concern is ‘are we getting paid for this?’ to Skippy Smiles Van Techmeister pronouncing ‘this is GREAT… i can wait to use this in my class!!’!!  and with the increased SC came increased understand, relevance, and motivation.

thanks eMBEDDED Learning *free-willy-style*

well… it went something like that

–ripple effect with the sharing of action research.  without sharing, the dominos cant fall… change wont occur (well, maybe it will, but certainly not as swiftly!)

–showcase your findings, document along the way.  this will help others to understand your action research and findings.  it can also serve as reference to others needs/ideas/AR… and catalyze change.

for the future, need to figure out how to balance enough instruction with enough time to absorb and create.

from the start, i assess prior knowledge and misconceptions.  during, i do meaningful activities that allow me to assess and support student understanding and synthesis, and adjust my instruction to ensure that each student gets what they need to acquire skills necessary to grasp the content.  after, students demonstrate understanding with [relevant] authentic (mostly) tasks.  additionally, along the way engaging students in their own self-assessment of learning.

are there times when i can only give one a meaningful *fingers crossed i chose the best one!* activity and a MC test?  unfortunately due to the lack of understanding of “rigor” (not just MORE, MORE DEPTH!!… come on now!!) sometimes i only have 2 periods to teach something that could take 2 weeks/or 2 months.  but when possible, extend the learning time, and the learning tasks, and the learning effort… for sure!!

it wasnt too hard coming up with non-traditional forms of  data collection.  to ensure that i wasnt leaving anything out, i asked wayne for some help–> i set the stage, showed what i had, asked if im leavining anything out.  when coming up wtih my AR tools, i made sure to keep the question in mind, not waivering from the initial intent, asking myself “what di i need to support/answer this?”

the plan is to use teacher interviews, teacher surveys, fild journal notes, research on existing research, and helping teachers to create a class survey of activity precerences.

surveys can be done on schoolWires, and moodle can be used for journals and notes, wiki to create student survey, and forum to collect data

i think it may be a neat idea to start having the participants create their own podcast tutorials to place on the moodle forums that break down the activities into steps for their colleagues.

i chose moodle as the content to be taught.  as i analyzed, i wrote down topics and target questions that are asked to participants throughout the lesson.  as an onlinecourse management system, it (as i see it) inherently used an enhanced level of higher order use of technology to enable the skills that were addressed.

additionally, i feel like i need to work on ;elaborated written communication… as the reflection portions of the training are sometimes brushed over in trying to squeeze out a little more time to work with the higher order technology.

specific adaptations that incorporate technology:
  *use tech to create and interactive presentation document with embedded visuals to post/podcast/videocast for continued demo topic support
   *add references to challenging/alternative methods found in the research of ‘how-to’

Areas for improvement:  providing more time for students to collaborate, discuss, and revise thinking

Insight:  i need to ‘schedule’ time for student talk!!!

Reply

i think that in order to make my trainings more authentic, i need to have more discussions/reflections with participants as to what problems they are looking to solve with this particular technology.

conversations and connects must be made!!! ah-ha!!

**hmmm… redo journal entries to ask ‘by learning this technology, what [daily] problem(s) will you solve?”**

111308  As a result of my look-fors self-assessment, ive found that I fall on average under APPLYING (3) [3 outta 4...75%??... lol ]  I know that I would like to fall under INNOVATING all of the time, but….   my summary:

HOTS           3/4
DOK             3
SC                2/3  (I feel like this is my weakest area)
PC                3/4
CE-SS          3/4
21stC            3/4

As a result of this self-assessment, I have begun to think about how i can increase the level of (primarily) Substantive Conversation in my classes… add wiki to excel for collaborative analysis, add forums for sharing ideas and support, make sure to give time to journal at end of trainings.  

I love this learning crap!!!