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After a lively conversation with Roxanne, I have chosen to focus in on one particular project for my service learning Action Research Project.

I am working with my Peace Jam students to develop an urban garden where the students will be able to learn and apply their classroom knowledge and learning towards planning and maintaining a garden on school grounds. This will allow them to utilize cross curricular skills such as math and social studies to manage the selling of shares in the garden, and taking some of the produce to market. Also, they will learn what foods are seasonal, and grow best in specific environments. The other aspect is that the garden will help to serve a larger purpose of the students- to provide the neighborhood with nutritious foods for reasonable prices, learn and teach nutrition, and provide healthy fare for homeless shelters and those less fortunate.

The post survey that I have worked on in my current class, Training and Motivational Development, has been very helpful by having me begin with the (ideal) end in mind. This is helping me fine tune, develop and revise our plan so that is it meets our goals and is manageable.

The students and I will meet this Wed. to discuss some of the plans along with a representative from the Urban Farming Initiative and our principal to make sure we are on the same page and have the green light to get started with the physical part of this project.

I am excited! More to come...

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Action Research Activity Blog

My ACTION RESEARCH:

Can Students see or envision themselves as real scientists and make real world connections to science and their everyday life (for relevance)? Service-Learning: Can students learn better/become more proficient learners and /or find more relevance and be able to apply more of what they learn to real world situations through service-learning initiatives?

Description
This month in your blog posting, you will need to include:

What is your official problem statement?

My official problem statement is: Students do not see themselves as scientist or make regular and meaningful connections between science and their everyday life.

How did your research end up shaping this? Being a scientist and science teacher, I have had the opportunity to experience first hand real world connections with science in addition to teaching and learning science and community service project participation. I have witnessed student interest and apathy with projects that were meant to have direct connection that worked for some and not others. Why was that? I asked the question to some of my critical friends as well as reviewed research papers and found that some of it has to do with student interest, previous preparation, approach to activity and delivery. There is so much value in service-learning initiatives for all involved that I wanted to explore how to make this more of a mainstay instead of a every now and then activity.

What outcomes are you expecting? The research shows that used properly, service learning tools can enhance science education, particularly in environment studies courses. I am expecting that the following occur with my students:

-Active and experimental learning occur

-Theory -practice connections be promoted

-Student satisfaction increases for learning as will increase

-Students will develop workplace skills

-Will promote Civic engagement

-Build learning communities for students, teachers and others connected

-Help with recruitment and retention of minorities in school and workforce

-Encourage interdisciplinary work

How are your critical friends helping this process? By sharing with me their opinions from various perspectives of student demographics, age, background, teacher and community member knowledge of how these expectations can or cannot show up in the various environment in addition to how to make it better. Many minds exploring the same topic always shed light on great ideas. That is what I am excited about.

How is this month’s course helping shape your ARP? The most exciting part of this month’s course as it relates to my AR is the wealth of useful but manageable tools and the iGoogle website! I absolutely LOVE the ability to manage all of this wonderful information from one place. Being a visual learner, this helps me keep down the mental clutter and focus my energy on the content and specifics of my lessons. With daily practice and interaction, I can really see how each new Web 2.0 tool and application is most useful and complement each other.

Until next time....

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The Next Steps...

As a reminder, Action Research is a way of doing research and acting to change situations at the same time.

1. What topics/areas are shaping your literature review? Please explain fully and make use of in-text APA formatting and an APA reference list. Do not concern yourself with double-spacing or anything like that. In-text APA formatting and a proper APA reference list simply increases the professionalism of your literature review.

Peace and community building information sites, organizations, that are youth oriented and how it they impact youth and learning. As I look back over my original idea and previous posts, I see that the Challenge based learning: O’Neill Public Schools: http://oneillcbl.ning.com/ still has much to explore. Also how to keep a research diary, as this is something I want to get right so my students can be continous in their efforts to write consistently and well. I like the whole concept of learning while doing for kids. Seems like the best way for learning to take place without boredom setting in. http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arr/arow/rdiary.html

2. Did you find anything different than you expected during your literature review that addressed your topic? Please explain. No. More interesting things in that there are more service based learning projects and organizations connected to schools than I thought. More on the topics I stated before in question 1.

3. How are your critical friends helping this process? Please explain fully. Are these critical friends FS students, your colleagues, or other professionals related to your topic. Explain. My C.F. are great for having discussions about how this is happening in their schools or not, how this could be implemented in their schools and helping me craft my ideas better. Since a few of my fellow teachers work with me on the Peace Jam youth group, and are in critical friends groups at the school as well, we often talk about the goals and next steps of Peace Jam from the perspective of a critical friends group. Tossing around ideas with them and my FSU critical friends network is helpful as you get two perspectives that often overlap and offer good outside suggestions or support in this arena. It has been slower at FSU since the class work prevails.

4.How has this month’s course helped in shaping your ARP? Whether or not my course did help or did not help please explain fully. This course gave me useful tools and portals to create useful devices for developing and collecting data and sites to explore other options. Also, I was able to get ideas from other groups and classmates while sharing ideas about our websites and their focus. I have learned alot about how to use the social network sites for more than just socializing. This is important to me because I want to see how to use technology to enhance my life and my community-especially the kids and not congest it with more useless information that will not be helpful in taking us to the next level or education in the 21st Century. I found out that Facebook can be used to make tests and quizzes, more reason for me to utilize it as I continue to work and grow the youth organization at my school. I want the kids to be empowered by technology while they are not yet jaded about the world, have wonderful ideas, still use their imagination, have the energy and will power to make things happen and the belief that everything is possible! It is disheartening to see that at the end of the day the students either don’t get enough time to develop personal skills through education or that they are limited in technical skills due to lack of practice and exposure. If anything, I have more than enough information to sort through and use (including the ideas for the websites) for the building of my student’s website for PeaceJam Woodland MS.

References from the video:

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Action Research 9.12.09

The questions posed for us to respond to are ones to get us thinking about the process, hence the topic that we are choosing for our Action Research Project and how we see it unfolding. Those questions include:

* What you think you will get out of the project

* What you think it will look like

* Do you think it will make a difference? Why?

* How are your critical friends helping the process?

• How this month’s course is helping shape your ARP?

As a reminder, Action Research is a way of doing research and acting to change situations at the same time. With that in mind, here’s what I have to say. I will gain many things from this project, some being learning new skills and techniques from blogging, webpage design, sharing information in a concise but informative manner, a greater understanding of Action Research and the particular topic I have chosen. Other things will be working effectively and successfully with critical friends, group work on line and becoming more versed in APA method of writing. I will add greatly to my arsenal of research data and sources to help determine the best medium to deliver my project. And finally a deeper respect for the process that I hope to implement in my classroom and beyond.

The structure of the project is still forming so it is hard for me to answer that question at this time. I know that is is a great idea, that every time I think about it causes my heart to leap because it is something that is connected to my passions, community service, education and kids.

Yes, it will make a difference! That is the driving force behind me wanting to do it. Anything that makes a positive difference in the lives of young people and the way they see and participate in the world is important and a meaningful difference. Kids are so creative, trusting, and resilient and believe that anything is possible until we tell them differently. I already have seen a glimpse of what is possible with the service learning project I head up at my school and know that it can only get better.

The critical friends group will help me flesh out my idea, serve as a sounding board, guide, time checker and support system through the process. Also as a valuable resource for new ideas or improvement on the ones I already have.

I am awaiting feedback on my ideas so that I can get started.

Until next time...

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http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arr/arow/rdiary.html

Monday, August 31, 2009

1.What is action research?

As defined by Mr. Hughes in his Research Electronic Reader, “Action research is not a research method, as many methods of data collection may be used in action research projects. It is, rather, a way of doing research and acting to change situations at the same time.” He goes on to list three types, of which Type 1: the scientific-technical view of problem solving (The researcher identifies the problem and a specific intervention, then the practitioner is involved in implementing the intervention or treatment. (Holter and Schwartz-Barcott 1993:301). ). This would be the one that would most easily work in my science classroom.

2. How can it help you in your profession?

How to keep a Research Diary in the Electronic Reader

http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arr/arow/rdiary.html

This is an interesting article to me and one I will reference in the future as it ties in action research to the world of science and research. Being that I am a research scientist by training, I am inclined to respond to certain buzzwords that are familiar to my world. Action and Research would both fit that category as science is both action and research with the exploration of the how and why aspect of life. In a lab, a scientist is required to keep a lab journal or log containing the details of each and every experiment. As I would tell my students, it is to maintain detailed records so that you can see how you got somewhere and ideas on how to make adjustments if necessary to see different results. It seems like a research diary serves the same purpose for Action Research. I noticed that the steps and language are similar as well. In this electronic reader article, Mr. Hughes lists the key components of the diary and why it should be kept. Some of those include, To provide material for reflections, to record the development of your research skills, to formulate plans of action based on their reflections and knowledge, keep records which accumulate knowledge about the effects of their action, provide a mirror in which to find yourself reflected, get practice and gain confidence in recording research and writing.

I am both a middle school teacher and wellness instructor. This idea of action research can be used in my classroom easiest because my students are required to act like a scientist and keep records of all experiments that they conduct. It would be easy to actually mirror some of the principles in the research diary with those of a lab journal and make extension activities, such as expression projects from it.

Additional thoughts

I like the idea of Challenge learning. This is some information I discovered in the article, Challenge based learning :O’Neill Public Schools: http://oneillcbl.ning.com/

Challenge based learning allows (interconnected way of learning while doing) the opportunity to apply what is known about the upcoming learning styles with the new technologies to provide authentic learning opportunities. These can challenge students using a multidisciplinary approach that is engaging and compel students to apply the newfound knowledge to solving real world problems. Sort of like a community approach to learning and working on projects. This way everyone comes away with a sense of shared experiences and larger group discussions about important issues.

I am curious to see as the year goes on, what others think about this idea and how they plan to utilize it in other teaching arenas.

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Hello All!

This is the 'restart' of my Action Research blog. I have an idea of what I am doing or at least what I want to do for my project, the how is yet to unfold! It seems that is supposed to be the fun part and with your help, I will get there one blog (and much feedback) at a time.

I hope you enjoy my blog as much as I do.

Peace,

Dedra