Plan, Act, Develop, Reflect

This was a very well-written article about Action Researchers. The steps discussed in the book are to plan, act, develop and reflect this is definitely a method that all educator leaders and teachers show follow. As an educator, I have observed that these steps are often missing or the steps are not followed in sequence.  My observation is that school administrators do not plan or reflect for an action until there is a problem that occurs, at this point the issue becomes chaotic and this affects the ongoing process for improvement.   This has been a continuous concern for a lot of teachers.

Brian Dixon

Dixon’s presentation about survey questions from www.polleverywhere.com. Enlighten my views about using survey questions.  Survey questions are used a lot in my professional development workshops and through my CMU classes.  Now that I have learned the effective ways surveys can be used I plan to implement them in my classroom.  One idea is to use them a beginning of a lesson to determine the level of knowledge about the lesson topic.  My second idea is to use them as an informal assessment to determine if students are grasping the concepts of the lesson topic.  This is a great tool to determine if I need to reteach a lesson.

Julia Fallon

Crowd Accelerated Innovation

Chris Anderson provides valuable information about the use of viral videos. These videos are a great way to encourage the next composer to supersede the previous composer. This technique is way for all composers to put their best foot forward.  In addition, Anderson persuades viewers how videos are a way to increase the competition between other dancers. Videos should be a way to use in all fields to encourage competition.

I have introduced my lesson topics through the use of YouTube videos and my students have really enjoyed this lesson introduction.  After the video, I have the students collaborate into small groups and provide their views or opinions about the video.  This allowed the students’ to brainstorm about their project ideas and make mental notes using a Project Outline form I created.  I found this very useful to help the school remain on task and to focus on creating the best group project. 

Made to Stick

The stories mentioned in the book by Chip and Dan Heath  are very intriguing and interesting a great way to grab the attention of the reader from the beginning of the book to the end.  These stories help define what readers view as rememberable or important information. Stories that I was told throughout my early education I still remember to do today.  It could be a spelling or a math rule I learned from the past; today as an adult I still apply the same concepts.  This book concentrates on how students should be able to apply the same approach to help them make the information stick.  A formula created by the Heaths focuses the way to reach S.U.C.C.E.S.S. which stands for simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories.  These five principles are a great way to help students grasp the information and make it stick.  As a teacher, I noticed this as a  problem with some students, they only memorized the information given.  Through my personal observation and reflection I began to apply these principles in my classroom for students to retain the knowledge learned.  The evaluation of students test scores and task approach in the class provided positive results that demonstrated that students were able to make the information stick based on my approach of telling stories, examples, and providing acronyms.

 The presentation conducted by Fallon, provided thorough and interesting details about Twitter.  Even though, I am familiar with Twitter and how it is used; I never thought about the professional use of Twitter.  Twitter along with other social network sites are always depicted in a negative way.  However, after the presentation I have began to become more open-minded about its use. Many reputable companies are now starting to use Twitter as a way for prospective employees to learn about their company job openings or profiles.  As far as using Twitter in my middle school classes, I would set up a class account under my email account so that I could monitor student’s tweets.  This presentation definitely changed my perspective about Twitter.    Furthermore, Dixon’s discussion on ways to interpret the results is a very important factor to ensure surveys are effective.