I know that my fourth semester of UKSTL finished in December. Except it kind of didn’t. I took an Incomplete in ELS 621 in order to finish my action research.
ELS 621: Leading Action Research II
After the summer with Jayson, I worked with Marti Quintero on the implementation of my action research in the fall. This was my first experience both with action research and working with different professors on the same project. Although frustrating at times, I found it beneficial to have multiple people looking at my project from different perspectives. Our tech integration Critical Friends Group met 7 times during the school year with an 8th meeting tentatively scheduled for May. When I wrote my research proposal in the summer I didn’t realize that I would need to finish my research in the fall semester. Instead of cramming it in or reporting on only part of my research, I chose to take an incomplete to do it right. I’ll write more in depth about my research in an upcoming post 🙂
EDL 664: Tech Leadership for School Improvement
When I found out that Scott McLeod was teaching this class, I was pretty pumped. Meeting him at NESA SEC in Bangkok in 2013 is what prompted me to join the UKSTL family. And he’s the founding director of CASTLE. What a great opportunity!
It ended up okay. I appreciated the idea behind the class – inquiry based, self driven. The goal was to build the class together around ISTE Admin Standard 4. Except it didn’t turn out quite as mind-blowing as I was hoping for. I started the class with high hopes and lots of questions. The class was set up on a blog where we all contributed what we were learning. And then we split up into investigation groups. I joined the performance assessment group. Our end product was a website about authentic assessment geared towards teachers, admin, professors & policymakers. I chose to focus on assessment in the International Baccalaureate. Another investigation group created a website about technology integration.
I would have like to be challenged and supported more. I would have liked to feel more a part of something. I would have liked to have multiple investigations. But the class also forced me to find my own motivation. And gave me a chance to connect with a couple new classmates. I did appreciate Scott’s letter to our class at the end and the chance to give him our honest feedback. I also appreciated that he was a risk-taker. It didn’t work this time but maybe it will next time. I hope the experience and reflections will inform future classes.
Mostly this class made me think about the implications for K-12 education. It made me wonder – how effective (and possible) is open inquiry? Would it have been more possible in a face-to-face class? Can an entire course be dedicated to completely open inquiry, based simply on a standard? This is the discussion I’d like to have now and my biggest takeaway from the course.
te(a)ch french 