BP14_Thornton_Dedra_Action_Research_Month_10

Well, here we are in month 10! My AR is finally coming along as expected... even though we are at the end of the school year. Looking back at the data from Cycle 1 and Cycle 2 it seems that the data coincide and support one another in many ways, just as I expected. The initial data from the showing the proposal and idea for the project is based on service learning initiatives and how they impact student achievement. My information looked at this data specifically from the perspective of middle school children in an urban environment. My cycle 1 data looked at the specifics of my proposal- urban school, middle school, urban garden project amongst other service project ideas initiated from the students in the Peace Jam organization. Also included in this was the survey designed and taken by the students and members of the community to determine the need, and impact of the project (urban garden) on both the students academics and the community as a whole.

After several delays and adjustments, Cycle 2 got underway and the garden training and actual planning got underway and have been able to complete the process. The garden was planted and the students have created a maintainece schedule and data management system that records every piece of information using skills from different subject areas. At the last meeting we discussed the pros and cons of our project and how it impacted the community and their learning. Some of the student comments were; " we really used skills from science in learning about what it takes to plant and maintain a garden, social studies in determining the conditions of and correct location for garden, language arts in writing out the plans and reflections of the process, reading in reviewing all literature and directions related to the project."

I don't think there is anything truly innovative, except the process of actually experiencing this process for yourself and seeing the kids enjoy the process and learn new things.

This LMO class will be helpful in organizing all the data, links, create test and data instruments and a way to share what we've done with others in a easy to access and understandable way. I like the idea of being able to link related information/material and access it in one place. It makes life so easy! Also will make it easy for others to access including the students.

BP11_Thornton_Dedra_Farming in Farmville!

Hello folks,

I am excited to announce that after a long delay, my Peace Jammers were finally able to break ground last week and plant their first crops. WoHoo!

Seems like such irony that it would happen during my gaming class where as my introduction to gaming was via the game Farmville. I have become quite the farmer and learned a lot of skills for both the farm and for the classroom. Check out my Farmville review as a humorous introduction to farming before viewing my students doing the REAL hard work on our urban garden.

BP10_Thornton_Dedra_Disc_board_3_Action_Research_Blog_Game Strategies and Motivation_Post

This month's post is all about reflection: Looking back to move forward.

There are four specific components that we are supposed to address here regarding our AR work up to this point, which is considered Cycle 2. I am glad we have progressed to this point in the calendar year although it the unpredictable weather has made it quite challenging to grow an outdoor garden. We are well on our way no and sort of like a metaphor, the spring weather came and the brought new life and warmth, just like the timing in the school year whereas we have had a similar reaction to in that the state test is here and we have more time in the school day to work on our project. With all that said, we still have much to do. However, there is a saying that goes," You don't have to do it perfect, just get it started!". I think we are on the right path...

1. Measurement Tools: We used community questionnaires, surveys, brainstorming sessions, Peace Jam curriculum tools to come up learn about self, our community (taking a community walk to survey the area and see what 'needs' were evident), held a parent night so that they could come see what we were up to and voice their thoughts and ideas about student community involvement and areas of impact. The students, themselves, created a list of community projects based on feedback and own ideas and held a vote to narrow it down to one that seemed to cover multiple areas, like interest, profitability, connection to curriculum and Ga. Performance Standards for science, math, social studies (Ga. history), language arts, and civics (covered in the Peace Jam curriculum, which lines up with the state standards).

We developed an online survey to gain feedback about the chosen project (urban garden on school grounds) and to forecast it's impact on the student's learning and community health and nutritional education.

2.Data Synthesis from Cycle 1 and 2:

Being that we did not get a chance to actually start planting the garden, we redirected our focus to planning the garden, and devising a plan to partner with community organizations to learn how and create this urban garden and project the ways that our community would benefit from it. The literature search showed that service learning projects do have significant impact on student's academic, social and civic advancement over time. The students have continued to be dedicated to the project and willing to be fluid and flexible with the schedule changes due to school priorities and weather. They have taken on leadership roles and sought out areas of the curriculum that pertain to some part of the project. They have quickly taken over the responsibility of running the weekly meetings and studying the Peace Jam materials, as well as doing any research that needed to happen for the next steps while waiting to plant.

They have continued to show their resilience and leadership abilities from week to week.

Cycle 1 was more about setting up and determining the focus with the data and info recovered. Cycle 2 was focused on the implementation of the physical garden. Again, due to the weather and school calendar, the garden planting was postponed until the coming week. What did happen was the final connection with the Urban Farmer Assoc., a site visit from the farmer to teach the basics of an urban garden, purchase of seed for our chosen plants (peanuts, sweet potatoes and onions) and assignment of garden duties. These crops are easy to grow without alot of care, can continue to grow during the summer, will produce a quick return and are well liked in the community. We have gotten committed partnership with Hands On Atlanta, The Federation of Farming Co-op and the likes to provide us with gardening tools, seed, and information so that the students will be well versed in how to carry the plan from start to finish. This also sets us up to start next school year off with harvesting and repeat planting of crops for the Fall.

3. Learner-Researcher Response: As stated before, the learner (student) has truly taken this on as their own and the community, both inside the school and the neighborhood have given positive feedback and support. The students came up with the idea of selling stock in the garden where for a nominal fee, faculty can receive a return in the form of produce grown on their particular plots (determined by shares). This not only will teach them math, commerce and public speaking, but will boost their confidence as they will be running their own enterprise/business. The hope is that they will learn the true value of money and will adjust their personal abilities to handle situations and increase their confidence in those skills. The only community responses thus far are from the partners showing their support and some people wondering how they can give support and when will they expect to see the first products from the garden.

Me and my students are excited about things to come from this garden as it has been a long time in the making. I never would have figured it would take this long to get going but at least we have shown persistance and have made progress as well as set in place the foundation for the fall. I can only predict that the kids will have a wonderful garden full of produce to share over the summer! Looking forward to it!

BP9_Thornton_Dedra_Disc_board_3_Action_Research_Report_post 3.19.2010,

1. 1. What changed in your set up from cycle 1 to cycle 2?

Got a new perspective on the task at hand. Decided to go a different route with this instead of fighting the system and continually waiting on the same person to help us out, we found another farmer to help us with our garden. Thank goodness the weather is great!


2. What’s happening that you didn’t expect?


Again, the schedules at the school have changed and the farmer got too busy with other things to help us man the garden. I had to take matters back into my own hands. We have been focusing on making the process the main part of the Action Research and us building the website.

3. How are you tracking data differently? We have incorporated having the data taken on a computer and the students decided they wanted to put it on a graph somehow. We have also been digitally recording it on video camera.

4. How has FPR contributed to your Action Research? Learning about camera angles, lines, shapes and spatial relationships and how they (along with composition, act and story) help to convey emotion and ideas to the viewer without words. I have also learned a lot about camera angle and how to transition best, as well as how to put together a ‘short’ movie that can be used to summarize our project as well as promote it.

BP9_Thornton_Dedra_Action_Research_Report_post 2.14.2010

1. How is your AR cycle 1 unfolding for you?

Well, turns out that my background research was fine, fun and interesting as it helped me to get even more excited about the project with my students. We were going to build and urban garden on our school site! How cool is that? As life, school buracracy and seasons would have it, the physical implementation got delayed. After several postponements, (and suggestions from Roxanne) we decided to proceed with the planning of our project as cycle 1 since we had reached the month of December, which is not a good month for planting gardens in Georgia. The kids too right to the task of discussing the necessary components: why are we doing this project? How will it benefit the neighborhood? How would /could the neighborhood play a part in this project? What is our time line? What type of produce should be grown? What is our ‘tending schedule” and student responsibilities surrounding this project? Where on school grounds would be best to set up this garden? How can this garden contribute to our aim of community health/wellness and be a financially beneficial investment for our youth program? How will this project impact other projects and activities for our PeaceJam group? How does this fit into the educational standards and curriculum of Georgia in the various disciplines and the PeaceJam curriculum?

The students took to this task over several meetings and came up with several great ideas and responses. Winter break took out two weeks of work time, 1 week during Thanksgiving, 1 week during King Weekend , and another due to a freeze warning at the beginning of Jan! All in all we are learning how to adjust our program as the need arises and to make a better judgement of what type of projects to choose in the future that would have less variables that are beyond our control (weather, holidays, school calendars). NOW: We have the basic frame of a website up but are considering remaking it. I let the students take the lead on this to see what ideas they had in mind and how I can assist instead of lead.

2. What has been a surprise with your results?

How much thought it takes into choosing a location on school property, scheduling a meeting that is suitable with the urban farmers assoc. to meet with a representative to assist and guide us. The interruptions from other school related programs (tutorials, other group meetings, ect) that affect our meeting attendance and participation. The good is the way the students have taken this on and stuck with it regardless. We even have two that are working on developing a website for us! Also the multiple connections to the science curriculum and the PeaceJam curriculum. The double edge sword of a very active school is schedule conflict!

3. What tweaks are you making for your next cycle of research?

Deciding to really hone in on his project and make the most of it weather it is outside or making a digital model of what it would and will look like. We WILL get it done! Spring is on the way, which lends hope to our task. I just enlisted a neighbor who manages a garden in her previous neighborhood. She is excited to help.

4. What is the overall participants response?

The students are still engaged and excited about the possibilities of the garden coming to fruition. The school just got notice that it will be audited on a state level for something dealing with tests so I will find out this week how this impacts our time. Hopefully this will pass soon. Any suggestions and comments are welcome.

BP8_Thornton_Dedra_Week_2_Action_EMDT_Action_Research_Challenge_Based_Learning_Site_post 1.17.2010_Entry

Hello again and Happy New Year! Although we have come a long way with a great idea, workable plan and the enthusiasm to carry it through, things don't always go as planned. I will tell you what I mean in my response to our prompt questions below:

* How is your AR project unfolding for you?

* What's happening in your research that you didn't expect? Explain.

We have made strides in electing officers, assigning roles, contacting the Urban Farmer Association to assist with the project, develop a timeline and list potential produce to plant and harvest as well as make a list of uses for the harvested crops in the community. All that is great and the kids are excited about it. The down side is we were set to start before the Christmas holiday break, however school plans and extreme unexpected cold weather delayed our intent. Scheduling conflicts with the Farm Association (with the newly revised dates) have caused us to be pushed back even further with the planting. So it looks like I am going to have to adjust the timeline and redirect the focus of the project to the design and development of our urban garden instead of the implementation and harvest due to the season and school schedule conflicts.

The upside is that during this time of delay we have been able to meet consistently, work on the principles of Peace Jam and how they coordinate with this project, use information from my reference search to learn the ins and outs of service learning projects, successful implementation and use templates to flesh out our project while making connections to their science, math, social studies and language arts curriculum. The students were also able to take and give feedback on the survey I developed for the AR project and come up with very thoughtful ideas and ways for the community to benefit from this project. This week we will meet with the urban farmer to formalize our plan of action and choose the best location on campus for the site.

I have visited several urban gardens to do research on crops and layouts. The cold streak has subsided and we hope it stays that way for a moment. The kids are really ready to get this started.

* How are you tracking your data?

We have record keepers and researchers who make sure to record data from the meetings, including action items, task lists and psa's to share over the school news system. We have also developed a website team lead by an 8th grader who has designed a website for the group! The two of us will be working together to make sure that the site functions to support our interest and further our mission.

* How has this month’s course (so far) helping in shaping your ARP?

This month's course has helped me understand and gain the know how to build a website from scratch. This is exciting in that I can teach the students how to do this as a handy tool (I am excited about what they can show me in this arena since they are born techno savvy) to use for school projects and learn a useful lesson (digital storytelling) in the process.

Overall as long as things are going, it is fine. It is the nature of a teacher and scientist to know how to regroup and try a new direction when your first mode or hypothesis does not work out for you. I look forward to sharing more as the project and this class unfolds.

BP7_Thornton_Dedra_Week_2_Action_Research_Blog_Entry

This month’s class is interesting and helpful in that even though there is a lot of work to be done, there are not a lot of tasks to do that are not directly related to our Action Research Project. This class allows us the time to work on our AR from many aspects like reviewing example websites, working on our videography, setting up time lines, implementing our projects and building and utilizing our critical friends. Finally getting a chance to learn about a time line has been really helpful to me as I am one that works best when I can lay out the details of a plan and schedule according to that. Now I have something better to use in having my students plan out the garden project.

* What are you doing to setup your cycle? I have looked over Dr. Bedard's site to see how the timeline should be set up and I am doing ok. My cycle one seems to be starting on target as the problem has been identified and a possible solution has been chosen (the urban garden). I am having biweekly meetings with my students (there are action items every week) to check in and insure that things stay on track. Even though we have had to reschedule a few meetings with community helpers and such due to school meetings,etc., the enthusiasm of the students is still high. We just assigned roles and duties to individuals and will begin surveying the land around the school for the best spot (with the help of an urban farmer representative) next week.

I will have gotten some of my critical friends to review and critique my survey and have already implemented some of the suggestions. The plan is to break ground with in the next two weeks and be in the early maintenance stage throughout December. The great thing is that the kids live close enough to the school ( so do I ) that it will be easy to maintain the garden over the winter break as well.

I have also started work on setting up the AR Website. That is something fun to work on as it takes so thought and creativity to capture the essence of my project in the layout. This is where I get stuck in my head sometimes so it will take a minute. Thanks to all that have posted responses thus far to my blog. I will look forward to your suggestions and feedback in the future as well.

The learners being the students are responding with much excitement and resilience (since this is taking a minute to get set up) and I get inspired every time we meet and they talk about what they think the outcome will be.They have a list of ideas of what to do with the produce, amongst other things, donating food to the hungry, selling shares in the garden to faculty and staff as a fundraiser, using the funds to support a neighborhood healthy habits committee. This will help to increase awareness of nutritional value of food and how to prepare and purchase the best food on a budget. The kids were excited because it shows how our project will be able to serve a few needs in the community- their community.

* How this month’s course is helping shape your ARP: This course is helping by giving me room to design and implement the project with lots of help from instructors and my critical friends. I have developed a plan and have been making adjustments to my survey as suggested and fine tuning my video and interviewing skills. It is very helpful to have more time to think things out and work on them 'in class' so to speak. Right now, my goal is to stick as closely to the plan as possible. Will start recording our work sessions as some evidence of our planning and implementation. The website will be manned by me and two of the students ( I am going to manage it, set up times when they can do the updating and designing). Oh yeah, this class gives me an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with Second Life. I spent several hours in there last night with my group getting familiar with movements, redesigning my look and checking out several of the suggested sites that would could use for our video. We had some funny moments!

So much for now. Will keep you informed as the journey continues...