How might educational leaders use blogs?

Educational leaders could use Blogs as a reflection tool but also as a collaboration tool. By being able to communicate online and read other’s experiences it opens up a myriad of ideas and possibilities to problem solving that draws on the successes of other leaders in other campuses. It may also direct an idea that may not have been as effective on another campus and allow for additional planning and revising prior to implementation.

What I learned about Action Research

I see action research as a tool to use in the classroom but also in my professional endeavors, in general. I have always tried to maintain that I am researched based, data driven, and results oriented but I have not had a strong organizational tool to help me reach these aspirations for my classroom. Action research puts a theory and method in place to help me understand how to affect this type of teaching and leadership.

In discussions with colleagues sometimes I hear that this is too demanding and the constant changing of lesson planning and monitoring is not productive. I actually feel that by doing so now and finding what works for my students to help them learn best and retain information for testing will only make teaching later much easier. Especially as we are moving towards the End of Course Exams and students are expected to have a deeper understanding of the material as opposed to remembering for the test.

I am already looking at my lesson planning for the next couple of weeks to see how I can place a formal strategy in place to plan, take action, observe, and reflect. I will also incorporate my student data (scores) and their surveyed responses into my observations and reflections. This does take a long time to initiate but after a while I think it will become a procedure for our class discussions – I think Harry Wong would like that.