Week 3, Part 4:Sharing Your Aciton Research

I first plan document much of my findings throughout the research process on either my wiki or my blog. This will both help me to reflect on my inquiry and make necessary changes, as well as show my fellow teachers how they can use blogs and wikis to create an inquiry atmosphere for their classes.

I will also complete presentations to at least three separate groups. The first group I will present to will be the Region 17 Service Center at the annual Technology Stimulus Conference. This will be a great arena for sharing my findings with schools in my area, and perhaps developing a new area of inquiry. The second group I will present to will be the constituents at the T3 conference held annually in Austin. This presentation will be important to my school, as it will help us identify the uses of our grant money. Thirdly I will present my findings to my principals and perhaps other district administrators. Perhaps if it is a fitting topic for the Texas Speech Communication Association in the fall of 2011, I may review and rewrite my findings to show how technology professional development and follow-up can improve learning in the speech and debate classroom (this will use my personal experience as well as the other district speech teachers experience with this research).

In both areas of sharing I will of course review the necessary background information so that my audience can understand the purpose of my action research. While I know my school’s problem is not unique, I am tailoring my plan to fit the needs of my specific peers and the overall personality of our school.

It would be unproductive to share every detail of the design of my inquiry in a presentation, but I will be sure to present foundations, so that my audience can further understand the context of my research. However, the blog/wiki will be the best place to share the detailed information in regards to my inquiry design.

Since my data will be more qualitative that quantitative, it will be very important that in both forms of sharing that I state my inquiry claims with satisfactory amounts of data. I foresee that the most important data will be teacher observations (provided by my principal) and student work. My only planned numerical data will be the updated STaR Chart in the fall of 2011.
Concluding thoughts will be important as well, though I hope that while I create a set of concluding thoughts for the purpose of my degree, my intention is that this will be an ongoing and ever-changing project. The key idea is that through ongoing professional development, Personal Learning Communities, and follow-up teachers will be more effective in the classroom, and therefore students will be more effective in the classroom!