Week 5 has finally arrived and so comes the end to
our second class. I feel that I have
gained confidence during this class that I did not have after the completion of
my first class. I am very excited about
my action research plan and what its outcome will hold for my students and my school
district. I have gained a great amount
of knowledge regarding action research and feel that the information presented
in this class was very helpful.
The lectures for this class were helpful. They gave me some where to start each week
and overall had very clear information and instructions. Both the Dana text and the Harris text were
helpful to my understanding in this class.
I really liked that Leading with Passion and Knowledge had numerous
examples and templates that seemed to clarify some of the topics
discussed.
I felt like all of the assignments in this class
were well laid out and progressed in a logical order with the content in the
texts. I had a hard time with the week 3
assignment and felt a bit overwhelmed at the task of creating an action
research plan. I was just not sure of what was expected of me, but after
completing the assignment I do see that you are not wanting to give too many
guidelines on the research in order for each students’ plans to be unique to
them and their schools. But being a
perfectionist I feel that it would have been helpful to have clearer
instructions and to know that we would have a chance to revise these plans later
in the class if they were not exactly what was expected.
I think the blogs are a great idea and could be very
helpful by communicating concerns and reflections with other classmates, but I
found that I was very discouraged by the blogging process. Even though I am following other classmates’
blogs and made numerous comments to other students’ plans, I only had two
comments posted to my blog. This was
very disheartening to me especially when you can see that most of the blogs
were getting up to 5 comments for each post they made. I feel that I got more feedback on the
discussion board than I did on my blog in this class. I think overall students in this class gave
better feedback on discussions than they did in my EDLD 5311 class.
I would say that the weekly web conferences probably
helped me the most. It made me feel at
ease to know that other students were having the same struggles as me and to be
able to get specific questions answered by Dr. Abshire. Even on the weeks when I was not able to
attend the actual web conference, I still feel like I received just as much
insight by watching their recordings.
Out of all of the aspects of the class I feel like this one helped guide
me the most.
I have enjoyed this class and am ready to
start working on my action research project when the 2013-14 school year
starts. I am grateful for a well-organized
class with pertinent information for being a successful leader in the school
setting.
