Ashley’s Blog

This is long overdue.  I emailed my plan to April when it was due, but I never posted it.  So here it is a bit streamlined from the original draft. 

1. Write an area-of-focus statement.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how integration of the Smart Board impacts student participation.  I am interested in researching how the Smart Board changes who is participating and how often, if at all.   

2. Explain its connection to reform-based science education.

I am attempting to address student-involvement and ownership through my research.  Students need to be at the center of their learning or they will not be in a position to take ownership of their learning.  I want to provide students with more opportunities to participate through safe means in which they will be comfortable putting themselves out there for “evaluation” by their peers and me.  I believe that students will better understand the concepts being addressed if they are active participants in their learning.  The term active is intentional since students are interacting with the Smart Board by getting out their seats and manipulating it.  To sit all class and day dream while scribbling down notes or going through the motions of a cookie-cutter lab is going to lead to a very shallow understanding, if one at all.  Also, through student participation everyone in class wins because students either uncover misconceptions that others are also holding onto or are giving other students a chance to tackle the concept through another perspective – that of their peers. 

3. Define your variables.

a.       Nonverbal participation = unspoken participation from a student that might often be overlooked and not valued as a traditional form of participation.  I will know when I see it by observing students’ body language and facial expressions.b.      Participation = both voluntary and involuntary forms of communicating understanding to others.  I will know when I see it because students will be either volunteering to go up to the Smart Board or I will be calling on them to go up to the Smart Board.  I will also be looking for students’ input when other students are manipulating the Smart Board.  c.       Active participation = students getting out of their seats to manipulate the Smart Board.  I will know when I see it because students will be physically going up to the Smart Board.d.      Uncovering misconceptions = when students participate verbally, either actively or not, they may discover that their interpretation of a concept does not align with scientific evidence.  I will know when this occurs by observing how a student approaches a Smart Board manipulative and by comments other students make when helping the student at the Smart Board.e.       Interaction with Smart Board manipulatives = physically going up to the Smart Board to complete the interactive created through the Smart Board Notebook software.  I will know when I see this by observing students going up to the Smart Board. 

4. Develop research questions.

How does integration of the Smart Board impact student participation? 

5. Describe the intervention or innovations.

I will integrate various forms of participation through implementation of the Smart Board Notebook software.  This will occur at least twice during every class. 

6. Describe the membership of the action research group.

I will be working with my students by collecting data on their different forms of participation when integrating the Smart Board.  I will also be surveying and interviewing students to better understand the effect of participation through the Smart Board and their opinions of the Smart Board in the chemistry classroom. 

7. Describe negotiations that need to be undertaken.

I do not believe I will need any permission from students to collect data.  I will inform students that I will be collecting data to better inform my teaching. 

8. Develop a timeline.

Phase 1 (August – November). Identify area of focus, review related literature, develop research questions, and reconnaissance. 

Phase 2 (December) – Gather resources, practice data collection, and revise action research plan. 

Phase 3 (January 21^st – February 8^th) – Collect data. 

Phase 4 (February 8^th – February 27^th) – Analyze data and put together full draft of action research (12 page limit). 

Phase 5 (March 5^th) – Final paper completed (10 page limit).   

9. Develop a statement of resources.

Lankshear & Knoble (2006). Blogging as participation: The active sociality of a new literacy. Presented at the annual meeting of AERA,

1. Write an area-of-focus statement.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how integration of the Smart Board impacts student participation.  I am interested in researching how the Smart Board changes who is participating and how often, if at all.  I will then be looking into how this potentially increased participation impacts student interest and understanding. 

2. Explain its connection to reform-based science education.

I am attempting to address student-involvement and ownership through my research.  Students need to be at the center of their learning or they will not be in a position to take ownership of their learning.  I want to provide students with more opportunities to participate through safe means in which they will be comfortable putting themselves out there for “evaluation” by their peers and me.  I believe that students will better understand the concepts being addressed if they are active participants in their learning.  The term active is intentional since students are interacting with the Smart Board by getting out their seats and manipulating it.  To sit all class and day dream while scribbling down notes or going through the motions of a cookie-cutter lab is going to lead to a very shallow understanding, if one at all.  Also, through student participation everyone in class wins because students either uncover misconceptions that others are holding onto or are giving other students a chance to tackle the concept through another perspective – that of their peers. 

3. Define your variables.

a.       Nonverbal participation = unspoken participation from a student that might often be overlooked and not valued as a traditional form of participation.  I will know when I see it by observing students’ body language and facial expressions.

b.      Participation = both voluntary and involuntary forms of communicating understanding to others.  I will know when I see it because students will be either volunteering to go up to the Smart Board or I will be calling on them to go up to the Smart Board.  I will also be looking for students’ input when other students are manipulating the Smart Board. 

c.       Active participation = students getting out of their seats to manipulate the Smart Board.  I will know when I see it because students will be physically going up to the Smart Board.

d.      Uncovering misconceptions = when students participate verbally, either actively or not, they may discover that their interpretation of a concept does not align with scientific evidence.  I will know when this occurs by observing how a student approaches a Smart Board manipulative and by comments other students make when helping the student at the Smart Board.

e.       Interaction with Smart Board manipulatives = physically going up to the Smart Board to complete the interactive created through the Smart Board Notebook software.  I will know when I see this by watching students go up to the Smart Board.

f.        Student understanding = how well a student grasps a concept.  I will know when I see this by observing how students complete Smart Board manipulatives, listening to how students help out other students at the Smart Board, and by students work (quizzes, tests, opener, closers, etc.). 

4. Develop research questions.

1.      How does the integration of Smart Board manipulatives impact student participation?

2.      Does the implementation of Smart Board manipulatives lead to a more universal form of participation in which more students are interested in participating?

3.      How does participation through the Smart Board impact student understanding of chemistry? 

5. Describe the intervention or innovations.

I will integrate various forms of participation through implementation of the Smart Board Notebook software. 

6. Describe the membership of the action research group.

I will be working with my students by collecting data on their different forms of participation when integrating the Smart Board.  I will be surveying and interviewing them in order to better understand the effect of participation through the Smart Board on their opinions of the Smart Board and their understanding of chemistry. 

7. Describe negotiations that need to be undertaken.

I do not believe I will need any permission from students to collect data.  I will probably need them to sign off that I will not use any information that could be used to identify them.   

8. Develop a timeline.

Phase 1 (August – November). Identify area of focus, review related literature, develop research questions, and reconnaissance. 

Phase 2 (December) – Gather resources, practice data collection, and revise action research plan. 

Phase 3 (January) – Collect data. 

Phase 4 (1^st half of February) – Analyze data. 

Phase 5 (2^nd half of February) – Compile action research into a paper. 

9. Develop a statement of resources.

Lankshear & Knoble (2006). Blogging as participation: The active sociality of a new literacy. Presented at the annual meeting of AERA, San Francisco, CA. 

    10.      Develop data collection ideas. 

• Student interviews – maybe start with small group interview then branch off to individual interviews
• Grade comparison on tests and quizzes to see if understanding has improved
• Tally during class recording who is participating and how – both with and without the SMART Board
• Survey that has them rank different aspects of integrating the SMART Board and their comfort level with walking up to it and manipulating it
• Field notebook/journal in which I will be recording observations made
• Audio recording of portions of class
• Tally that looks into nonverbal forms of participation (overall behavior, posture, puzzled looks, etc.)

11. Describe your intentions or hopes for publication.

I am trying to be realistic with prepping for a long-term sub around the same time that I will be compiling my action research so my goal is to assemble my action research into a well-written paper.  If it looks like prepping the paper for publication would not be a ton more work, then that might be a possibility.

I have been using the SMART Board little bits here and there trying to get some ideas of how I might carry out my action research.  My action research question is going to be something like this:  “What are the new or different forms of participation afforded by integration of the SMART Board and how do these forms impact student interest and/or understanding?”  As I observed my different classes participate in the short SMART Board activities that I have created, I think I will be including WHO is participating.  I will probably have a chart for each class that lists all of my students and then have have a space next to each student’s name in which I can record their participation probably as some sort of tally but also include any notes about their overall “behavior” in class. 

This one idea of collecting data came to me in one of my classes as I watched a student in the back who is not a regular contributor to class and oftentimes distracts other students raise his hand so fast and so high when I asked if anyone would be willing to model the equation represented in the PowerPoint.  In another class, a student who is not one to share her thoughts to the rest of the class even though she is a bright girl said, “Oh, what the heck, it will probably be wrong and you may need to help me but I’ll go try it out.”  These comments are ones I hope to be able to record.  We can use an audio recorder, right?

I was bouncing some ideas off of April in our last class about data collection.  Since I have the class averages of every test and big quiz we took so far this year, I am going to use them to compare to class averages of tests and big quizzes in which I much more heavily integrated the SMART Board to use as one measure of understanding.  I am also going to interview students as well.  Coming up with good interview questions will be something I really have to spend some time on if I want to use interviews as data that goes back to my focus question.  I haven’t read the chapters on data collection quite yet, so I am hoping to get a better idea of data collection once I get into them.  Any suggestions are HUGELY welcome:)

I have now read the first two chapters in the Action Research Book, but I cannot say I have a completely clearer vision of how to attack my action research.  The chapters definitely helped me recognize that I really need to spend a lot of time planning my action research before I actually begin it.  I think I need to just get down on paper some initial thoughts for my plan (like the steps we will need to be submitting by Nov. 30th) and then revisit it often in order to really have a plan that I am ready to attack.  With that being said, I imagine we need to submit a fairly final action plan by Nov. 30th, but are we going to be able to go back and change it after we submit it?

The second point of the chapters that I think helped me was to emphasize the importance of tackling a manageable area of focus.  I know mine currently seems very big and overwhelming.  And if we are only carrying out our action plan during January and February, I need to narrow my topic down some more.  How much time should we plan on analyzing our data?  I feel like the whole spiral aspect of action research is not going to happen due to the little time in which we are carrying out this action research.  Or maybe it will happen more often than I am thinking it will. 

There seemed to be a lot on conducting research before one begins to write an action research plan.  I was confused at first thinking that I should be doing a lot of research, but then I started thinking that maybe all of that aspect is coming from what we have learned from being in the classroom and from our Warner School education.  I am hoping.  But it got me wondering about how much background research we will be including in our write-up of our action research (whatever that may look like).  Will we be including a decent chunk on why, based on previous research, we chose to carry out our action research on the topic we did?

 Maybe the chapters were more helpful that I first realized.  I think they at least got me to a stage where I now have more questions, which is probably a good thing.  At least I know what questions to ask, right?  Here’s another.  Do we need to have made a decision on how we want to “publish” our plan before we submit our plan on Nov. 30th?  Is that part of the planning piece?

Phew!  I get to keep the SMART Board in my room!  I am so relieved.  After my students got a chance to mess around with it and fall in love, I was worried they’d stop showing up for class if it was removed.  I went to a 2-hour training on how to use it this week.  The first hour was stuff I already knew how to do, but the second hour gave me some ideas on how to make it more interactive.  The only drawback was that since there were 8 teachers in the training who were elementary teachers and only 2 of us high school teachers, it was geared towards elementary age kids.  But the main ideas I still got will be helpful.  And I finally loaded the software on my home computer so I can create parts of lessons for the SMART Board at home and bring in. 

I am also relieved the board is staying because I am definitely going to make it a part of my action research (I told the leader at the training and he seemed very interested in the fact I was going to use it for action research.  I think he was thinking…”ooooo, if that turns out well, we might snag it to get more funding for SMART Boards”…).  I am interested in really jumping into using the board for more than what I mostly have been - as a replacement for the white boards that are now gone, to show PowerPoints and being able to write right in the slides, and for showing animations and other Internet pictures.  This upcoming unit on stoichiometry should be a good one to try to create some interactives (as our training man was calling them) since there is a lot of math in this unit.  This is a unit where so many students struggle that I’ll be really curious to see if what I end up creating will help them to grasp moles better. 

 The training man was referring to interactives as parts of lessons in which students go up to the SMART Board and manipulate it.  Maybe they are dragging items on the right side to match up with items on the left, maybe its drawing on a map to learn about distances, or fitting scrambled map pieces together to envision a map of the world for geography.   There were also math problems he showed being able to complete in a variety of interactive ways.  I also learned that there are a lot of interactive activities or games, if you will online that people have created and posted.  I have only found a few that I could see myself using so far. 

Getting students up to the SMART Board to use it in a variety of ways to make class more student-led in the hopes of increasing student engagement is the focus for my action research.  Although I feel like I have a semi-decent focus, I also feel that it is not specific enough.  I am settling in to read the first two chapters of the Action Research book so I hope to get a better idea of how to narrow it down.  I also am feeling clueless about how I intend to collect data.  That part of action research is what I find daunting, maybe because I have no idea where to begin or even how to be thinking about the data I will be collecting.