What is action research and how might I use it?

What is action research and how might I use it?

Most graduate programs include a fair amount of research, and specific methods that are used by different professions to research.  In psychology you might learn to grow specific rats because you want to test behavior. You need these rats to operate your tests, and you cannot count on just buying more subjects all the time. Fortunately for me, education does not appear to require rats. It does require research though.
Again, fortunately for me it is not just a series of literature reviews and editing the ideas of other people.

Action Research is a method that assumes you are involved in a school and that you can affect change. This is exciting. Your research can have immediate results, and you can operate in an environment where making a difference is an everyday occurrence. The right kind of Administrative Inquiry, another term used for action research, can really harvest results you can see.

The heart of administrator inquiry is asking an important question. The exciting thing is that question can be important to you, your campus, and your kids. How can we make a difference this year?  My research is going to be around Project Mobile Learning Devices at our Junior High. Can adding access to greater information – by placing these devices in kid’s hands 24 hours a day make a difference in their vocabulary? Their test scores? Their opportunity for success in higher learning? This is the exciting path that Action Research is leading me down this year.
   

Intentional Blogging by Leaders

How might an educational leader use a blog? I use my other blog http://jposttx.blogspot.com/ to capture and release ideas I have about education technology. I think that there is a great deal of use that educational leaders could have for blogs - there is a newsletter from the high school each 6 weeks - in that document the principal writes a letter. We have a monthly newsletter that the district send out - there is a letter there from the superintendent of schools. These are obvious choices for things to blog. A person in leadership should blog very intentionally - as if each word was going to be read carefully, and broadcast around the world.
That is precisely what happens. So yes indeed we should blog - but very very intentionally

Blog Prime

This is a blog in accordance with the instructions and strictures of a class I am taking. Now I just bet you are very excited to read that! How many blogs have been started with that exact sense in mind, but without saying it? I myself have assigned - you will now blog. Mama Mia! Now on with the task at hand.

Blogging has a place in the general sense that writing has a place still in this world. I read several blogs and write one occasionally on Education Technology - see http://jposttx.blogspot.com/ .