Reflection Week 13

I don't even know what to say about this week. Working on the paper is so exhausting. I feel like I might never be done.

Twitter was very helpful in helping me to determine what my paper should look like. Before Twitter I was wondering if what I was doing was right. Twitter helped me to feel more confident and to make some necessary changes.

Critical friends has also been super helpful. It was helpful to me to read others research so I could have a clearer idea of what mine should look like. I know we read a couple of papers a few weeks ago but at that point I hadn't even started writing mine. I was still going through the data. This time when I read them I got new ideas of what I should try to do with mine.

It has also been helpful to get other peoples perspective on my paper. I did the research so sometimes it is easy to forget to include things. Sarah has provided me with some great feedback. Many things I knew I needed to change but just did not have the time to. One thing I definitely wanted to change was the data section. I had the tables but did not write about them. I was saving that for the end to see what tables I really wanted to post there. Then I forgot to go back and finish it.

Now it is time to go back and continue to edit away. I just have so many thoughts it is hard to get them all on paper.

Blog #13

Essential Question: What has your research shown?

Please Click here to access my paper. I did not want to fill up my blog with this long paper. It is a google doc. I did include lots of tables at the back. You don't have to read them unless you want to.

Week 12 Reflection

This week I was very good for me. I didn't really consider the fact that I would need to make my research engaging. I learned some tricks to help make my research more engaging.

Cherie pointed out that a story is a good way to engage readers. This made me think of our weekly elder talks at school. When the elder tells a story students are so engaged, but when the elder tells them how to act students frequently find other ways to keep themselves occupied.

Everyone pretty much noted that creating catchy titles is another way to attract attention. If you can hook a reader with a few short words you might entice them to continue reading. I didn't really write about this in my post, but I did notice it. Once I started reading other posts this really started to sink in, and I realized how important this could be to my report.

I also found that if you make your research relatable it is far more engaging. This involves describing your settings with just enough detail that others might be able to see themselves in your shoes.

Data update Week 12

As far as analysis goes I have not done much. I have been a little busy at school working with the senior class this year. So my data analysis has been put on the back-burner. I plan to do a lot this week. Having the holiday will help give me some time to focus.

I did get a chance to look at the post surveys. I noticed that on an initial inspection it looks like student perception did not change a whole lot. This is not what I would've thought, as it seemed like the students were becoming less interested in Twitter. I will need to look more closely at the data to determine if this is in fact the case.

Week #12

Essential Question: What are the characteristics of an engaging Action Research Report?

I picked the 2 articles that were about science because I am a science teacher. The first thing I did after that was look at the page lengths. I planned to just skim them, but ended up reading more than expected. From this I gained a few insights as to what might spark someone's interest. The first being that it is very important to have an engaging introduction. This is what readers get to first. You can either make it something that really hooks the reader into wanting to read more or it could be a total dud causing the reader to disregard your work. Tracy (2002) described his situation so well that I thought he must have been in my classroom. “As I struggled to explain mitosis to a group of very low English level English Language Learners I realized that they had no idea what I was saying. Desperately I floundered to try a different approach.” I feel like I am doing this constantly with my middle school students. He couldn’t have described it any more perfectly. Once I read that I wanted to keep going and know more. He also brings in the humor that sometimes comes into teaching by sharing a personal story. This personal story was easy to relate to as I think every teacher has probably had a similar experience of doing something and it comes out totally wrong.

The second article I read by Herman (2002) took a little longer to hook me. It didn’t really seem to relate to me but I read on anyway. It didn’t take long to get to something intriguing, on the second page she talked about challenges. One really stuck out to me, and I could relate. “Students would get up and walk around when they felt like it, even if the teacher or another student was speaking to the class. Or a student would sharpen a pencil during another student’s presentation.” I frequently have this problem and have to stop the class to talk with students.

With both articles I was engaged when I could relate. I think this seems to be a huge part of the engagement. Describing something with enough detail, but not too much, so that someone else could feel like they are in your shoes.

I also think it is very important at the end to discuss implications. According to Action Research Projects (2002), “The implications for your findings might consider a set of next steps you want to take, additional research that needs to be done, and/or how your findings relate to your school or teaching context.” I think this really engages a reader to think more critically and stirs their imagination. At least for me, I start to think about what I could do differently.

References

"Action Research Projects." Action Research Projects: Exemplar Projects - LMTIP. 2002. Web. 20 Nov. 2015. <https://gse.gmu.edu/research/lmtip/arp/ex>.

Hermann, K. (2002, June 1). Teaching Science to High School Students Who Have Limited Formal Schooling.

Tracy, C. (2002, June 1). Assessment: A New Science Teacher’s Attempt to Use Assessment as a Form of Conversation.

Week #11 Reflection

Sarah’s post reminded me that we wrote an introduction and literature review that were separate. Because of this, I think I will have 6 sections in my final write up: introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion. I would not want to combine any of the last 3 sections to shorten my report. For me it is nice to see the raw data, and because the discussion can get long it is nice to have a shortened conclusion.

From Peter’s blog I also gained the idea of having an appendix. This would be great so that you could really shorten your results section by including only what you feel is necessary. Then if others wanted to see more you could have an appendix that shows all of the data you collected.

This week really made me think about who would read my research. I have told a couple of colleagues and they want to hear my results. But other than colleagues and this class I don’t know that I would share it unless someone asked. I don’t think Twitter was all that effective in my high school class. I think part of the problem is the lack of internet access at home. Also, we do not have data for cell phones either and I think that might make a major difference. As I am typing this we are getting hooked up to 3G, so I would be interested to try this again in the future to see if there is a difference.

Week 11 Data Collection

All of my data from Twitter seemed to be about the same this week. The newness has worn off and less and less students are participating. I think a huge problem is the lack of internet at home and that there is no cellular data. So really the only place to use Twitter is at school.

Observations keep getting harder. This week I totally forgot. But I have at least one day of data for each student I wanted to observe. So I think this will still work.

I am ready to sit down and try to sort through the pile of data I have collected. I am really excited to look at the post survey that I just collected on Friday. I am interested to see if student interest declined because from my perspective it did. I think a large factor is that I needed to spend a lot of time looking up new ideas on ways to include Twitter in the classroom. I just thought that using too many different activities might complicate my research. I think I would like to try some other methods in the future to see if I get different results, but it will be nice to have a baseline.