Week 5 Reflection

I was anxiously waiting to take this course.  I was anxious for two reasons. The first was excitement to develop my own action research plan.  I have had student interns, in my classroom in the past, who have had to create and carry out and action research project.  I, however, was not an active participant in the project.  I did not really know what the inquiry process was but I knew it would be time consuming and difficult, yet rewarding.  The second was anxiety because I was scared.  Afraid of the unknown and difficult task ahead of me. 

All of the resources provided in this course were valuable to some degree.  The video lectures outlined what the expectation of the course was.  The readings gave information about the subject, and at times, examples to help me complete the assignments. It was the discussion board and the blogs that provided me with the most helpful information.  I was leery, at first, because I am not a tech kind of person.  Through the use of the discussion board, blogs and Facebook, I discovered there were many others in the same boat with me.  There were also those who had answers to my questions and I was even able to answer a few questions for them!  The discussion board was interesting in that I was able to read multiple posts and get insight to other’s point of view.  We have a diverse group of educators in this class and reading about the different perspectives was eye opening.  I was able to process my thoughts through my posts to the discussion board.  I enjoyed replying to others as well as reading the responses to my posts.  I am typically not a reflective person and this course, along with the first, has made me more receptive to this strategy for improvement.  The blog was not something I was eager to get started.  But I soon realized it was not so bad.  I was able to look at the work of my fellow students, on their blog, for examples.  This was extremely valuable when I was feeling confused or overwhelmed.  It was helpful to see the many different action research plans and the formats used to present them.  Facebook was not an official resource for the course, but proved to be extremely beneficial.  I am a night owl and found many others in this course to be also.  We were able to ask questions to each other instead of inundating our IAs with emails.  We could advertise our blogs and posts to solicit responses.  We could also vent our frustrations and feelings about being overwhelmed and be quickly reassured.  I am beginning to like technology better and better as time passes!  I look forward to implementing my action research plan and am curious about the results.  For my inquiry, in particular, it is as much about the teachers as it is the students.  There is an endless amount of self-reflection in my future.  Bring on the change!!