I tend to always want to focus on my students. My main audience is the kids, the goal is to implement new tools to support them in both engagement and achievement. At the same time I think it is important that we share this information with other in the education field. I love the fact that teaching is becoming more and more collaborative and I think it is essential that we continue to share both our successes and our failures with other educators so that we can build on each other and support each other. Being part of a new school structure at New Tech means that our model will be analyzed, discussed, and shared, both the good and the bad, and everything in between. This means that new things that I try will not be isolated in my classroom, they will be part of the team and potentially shared out with many others. At the heart of what I do, my audience is about the kids, at the same time what I do with my students will be shared with other educators.
It is my understanding that our capstone has a fairly structured format that we must follow. After reading Dervin, Baggio, and Clark it is very clear that I should make something as visual as possible. Knowing that my capstone will be something viewed by educators, I will need to consider what tools will make my research most accessible for them. I need to know what will gain their attention and how I can use my layout to make it as easy to read and navigate as possible.
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I started my teaching career in southern California. When I was there I went through an intense training process as the district adopted a new approach to math. I was constantly pushing my practice, reflecting, and analyzing student engagement and achievement. After eight years, I came to New Tech High, I felt as if I was back at square one. I even got to the point where I felt like I was ready to move on from teaching to whatever my next steps will be. Upon starting the Innovative Learning program I was very excited. I love learning new things and being exposed to new tools and ideas that push me to be a better teacher for my students. I found the first semester to have its benefits and frustrations. I enjoyed the collaboration amongst the "C-15 fam" and exposure to things such as screencasting. The research process, although had value and I learned from it, could have been done in a way that would have been less stressful and more meaningful and innovative.
Moving into the second semester, I am excited about continuing to grow as an innovator. Going into next year and being part of something innovative as far as the structure of school, I am inspired to be able to incorporate the things I learn into the new way we are doing things. I also know that embarking on this new structure, I will have a lot of questions; it is nice to know that I have a group of people that are there to get feedback and support from. In thinking about action research as I move forward, I think it has a lot of relevance. Within our team of teachers we will be constantly engaging in an inquiry cycle. We will be trying new things, reflecting, analyzing data, and adjusting. Because this will be new to everyone, this cycle will be so important for the success of the model and the students achievement. "From the Mind's Eye of the User: The Sense-Making Qualitative-Quantitative Methodology" by Brenda Dervin was a challenging article to make sense of. I found myself reading and rereading most sentences. It was almost impossible for me to read it on the computer, I printed it out and made sure to highlight and take notes. Even after these strategies, I still found it hard to understand what she was saying. It was very helpful to then watch the video. I found myself making connections to what I had read and then realized what was trying to be communicated in the article. I found that listening to the concepts simplified with a scenario along with visuals was very helpful.
My understanding of the article was demonstrated in the triangular visual of the situation (patron), the gap (bridge), and the information. Making sense of something is trying to get the used connected to the information and how the gap is closed. I think it made some important points about how tools and systems are in place to help the user connect to the information; however, those systems and tools are not always what works for the user. Dervin discussed methods that could be used to help close the gap between the user and the information. Conducting interviews was the main method. These interviews help understand the used and their experience. There are many different groups of people and within the groups there is a huge amount of diversity, how do we support the access of information given how different each person is? I think these are important things to address with our students, how do we all make sense of things and how do we support others in that process. If I were teaching this to students I would not start by giving them the article. I would start by showing the video and maybe having them come up with a situation that was modeled that same ideas as the librarian situation. I would have them draw pictures and have a conversation about what they got out of it. I may then have them read the article to draw connections to the information they already interacted with. To close I would have them do something to analyze what tools help them make sense and have them do some reflection about their sense making process. |