EDLD 5352 Reflection

This course was one of the easier going courses we have had thus far. I think what added to my enjoyment of this class was all of the different web tools that we researched and employed. I greatly enjoyed working collaboratively with my peers in this course. Our team worked very well together, and reading the research from the members on my team was very insightful. I thought that this class would go a bit further to increase our knowledge and skills of technology in the classroom. I think the parts of this course that contributed most to new and useful knowledge and skills were the topics covered in the weekly discussions. I enjoyed learning about the flipped classroom and livebinders. Those were both tools that I had heard of from a few teachers, but had not done a great amount of research on. I felt as though the video links and articles that were linked to the discussion board were just the pieces I needed to strike my curiosity further. I will definitely employ some of the new tools that I learned in this course for my Biology classroom this year, as well as in my future years as an administrator. I had a strong prior knowledge of the majority of the activities and lessons that we completed in this course. We had been asked to study our use of technology in the classroom in many ways in many of our earlier courses. Because those courses prepared us so well, I felt as though the activities in this course could’ve gone even a step further in exploring and using technology. 

I did not attend any of the web conferences in this course. I felt as though the explanations given for each assignment through the word documents and rubrics were pretty clear and concise. With this course taking place during summer vacation, I didn't have much of a regular schedule with time set aside to attend these web conferences. My IA did a great job of keeping information updated on the announcements page as well as correspondence and further explanations via email. 

Reflections of graduate course work

Write brief Reflections and Status Report of your technology skills and knowledge gained in this course, your progress with your Campus-Supervised Internship Activities, and your progress with your Action Research Project.

In reflection of this course, I felt as though the discussion board topics and videos were the things I gained the most new knowledge from. I had a strong prior knowledge of the majority of the activities and lessons that we completed in this course. We had been asked to study our use of technology in the classroom in many ways in many of our earlier courses. Because those courses prepared us so well, I felt as though the activities in this course could’ve gone even a step further in exploring and using technology. I enjoyed the team collaboration in this course, and found my experience to be very successful.

I have almost completed all of my campus-supervised internship activities. I have 5 remaining activities to complete, and should be able to finish those within the first six weeks of school. The internship activities have been so helpful, and I feel like I have gained so much more knowledge and insight into the world of administration. I think these experiences have definitely helped me feel more confident in my skills to become an administrator. The remaining activities and my written reflections of each activity are the only things remaining in order to complete my campus-supervised internship.

My action research project is almost complete. At the end of the school year last year, the results and final data were collected in order to assess the success of the action research. Our campus implemented the use of CoreWorks software, and had each team accomplish the four critical actions assigned by the diagnostic software. In response to these critical actions, we were looking to see if there were direct effects on raising the level of state assessment improvement for our campus. In conclusion to this action research, there was an improvement in state assessment scores for our campus, and directly for the team that I examined for action research. I have not been informed if our campus will continue to employ the CoreWorks diagnostic software again this upcoming school year.

I haven't visited my blog in quite some time...

I haven't visited my blog in quite some time. Honestly, I have been so busy with everything going on, that I haven't even thought about blogging at all. That doesn't mean I haven't been working on my action research. With teaching and all of those responsibilities, a new course every 6 weeks, and all of the work that goes into each course, and incorporating internship activities, as well as, conducting action research, I have completely lost track of writing in my blog. I am sure you all understand, because you are in the same positions!

I have had to recreate my original draft plan, because after creating this plan, I accepted a teaching position at a new district. My action research is focusing on CoreWork Diagnostics being used by our Biology team. We meet often to track our progress toward completing our outlined goals as identified by the diagnostic analysis.