Road Map

Background Research

• Initial Reading Reflections (on educational technology)
• Official Research Question
• Literature Review
• Participants
• Perspectives & Biases

Cycles for Master’s Action Research Project

Cycle 1: Using technology tools for shared viewing and reflection on student writing
· Research and reflection: Teacher survey on current collaborative practices
· Research and reflection: Ways of sharing student work
· Research and reflection: Discussion about reasons for sharing and assessing student work
· Action: Examining and commenting on student work using Microsoft Word and a SMART board with projector (Collaborative Assessment Conference protocol)
o Email as a reflective tool following discussion

Cycle 2: Using an electronic environment to research and discuss student writing
· Spiraling into Cycle 2
· Research and reflection: Teachers’ use of technology for activities other than professional collaboration
o Emails
o Social networking
o Chat tools
· Action: Reading and discussing the current literature on assessing student work in a discussion forum (Final Word protocol)
· Research and reflection: Analysis of teachers’ reflective postings on discussion board
· Action: Using a rubric to talk about student writing in a discussion forum (Learning from Student Work protocol)

Cycle 3: Using web-based tools for collaborative inquiry and instruction
· Spiraling into Cycle 3: Availability and cost of technology tools
· Research and reflection: Discussion with teaching teams about preferred ways of sharing
· Action: Web-based word processing for interdisciplinary planning of literacy instruction and assessment
· Research and reflection: Variation in teacher response among different methods of collaboration (email, discussion boards and web-based word processing)
· Action: Collaborative planning and discussion on an electronic calendar
· Action: Teacher inquiry and literacy instruction through the exploration, production and consumption of wikis

Final Reflections on Master’s Action Research Project

MARP Final Reflection - conclusions & spiralling into further research

From my three cycles of action research, I am left with some conclusions and some questions. First, let me state some tentative conclusions. Web-based tools do seem to be a more effective means of collaboration than discussion boards that require sign-in (particularly on more obscure sites) or email distributions. This may be due to the public availability and the lack of a need to remember complicated web addresses, user names or passwords. With Google Calendar and Google Docs, users need only their own email address to receive links and click on these links. There is no need to remember a site URL or a new username. With a wiki like Wetpaint, groups create their own unique and personalized URL, thereby making the site much more accessible and giving its creators a sense of ownership.

While hardware tools such as SMART boards are useful for the environmental benefits of saving paper and the collaborative benefits of shared viewing, the expense creates a situation in which literacy coaches or staff developers cannot rely on the presence of these tools at every work site. However, I found that 80-90% of schools had internet access and teacher computers, so using web-based tools is often more practical for collaboration.

Throughout this process, I learned the importance of 'standing on the shoulders of giants' - using others' research to help me analyze the data I gathered and to support (or refute) ideas I may have. Sometimes data can be overwhelming and puzzling. Using the research of published scholars, I have found a basis for interpreting the information I gather. In my review of my work, I found that I needed to revise my first two cycles in order to more fully interpret the data and support my conclusions with the current research literature. I eventually revised all of the Research & Reflection sections of my MARP to utilize the current literature to a greater degree in my analysis of the data I was collecting.

It was transformative for me to learn and follow the action research cycle - read literature about the topic, gather contextual information, reflect using the literature as a basis for interpretation and take specific and focused action to try to affect positive change. Knowing how to conduct action research in this rigorous way has given me a focus in my work as an educator and gives me a basis for future studies.

To this point, I also am left with some questions for further inquiry.

• First, what obstacles prevent teachers from openly and collaboratively reflecting on their instructional practice?
• Why do teachers, especially new teachers, tend to shy away from offering instructional ideas or feedback?
• What background knowledge (or understanding) among teachers is necessary, about technology or professional practice, for literacy coaches or staff developers to create an effective environment for collaboration?
• How can a literacy leader help teaching teams move from congenial relationships to more collegial interactions?
• What web-based tools work best (with most active engagement, most continual use and are most informative to practice) over a sustained period with a cohort of teachers?

I plan to continue researching this topic with more action research cycles. I have learned that technology tools can have a varying degree of impact on collaboration among educators, with web-based tools like electronic calendars, wikis and documents being the most useful thus far. These tools can create virtual time and space to stretch the bounds of teaching teams whose schedules are already overburdened. Hopefully, I can generate some interesting and innovative ways to encourage teacher collaboration around student work that will actually assist my Literacy Specialist colleagues in their future careers as coaches, teachers, staff developers or consultants.

Cycle #3 - action (part III)

For my final action, I continued my Cycle #3 focus on free, widely available, web-based tools. I had experienced a modicum of success with my first two actions using Google web tools (Calendar and Docs) - I received a higher response rate and more active engagement with these tools than in previous collaborative attempts using tools such as discussion boards and email. I was beginning to wonder whether perhaps the Google brand also had something to do with the higher response rate - were teachers more familiar, and therefore more comfortable, with using these tools? Were the Google tools more well-designed than other communication or networking tools out there? To find out, I continued my study with a non-Google web-based tool: Wetpaint wikis. This action addresses both the Inquiry and Instruction aspects of collaboration, as described in my literature review and supported by many researchers (Kinnucan-Welsch, Rosemary & Grogan, 2006; Foster, Lewis & Onafowora, 2005; Fisher, Lapp & Flood, 2005).

As part of the Learning Technology Grant LEO, the teachers at K323 in Brownsville, Brooklyn and COGCA in Far Rockaway, Queens (click on hyperlinks to learn more about these schools), planned to teach their students to become producers of cybertext. To accomplish this, they were to create a web tutorial using a wiki. We considered using Dreamweaver to create the tutorials initially, but the teachers at K323 lacked the necessary software. We researched several different wiki hosting sites and eventually decided on Wetpaint because of its familiar formatting tools (very similar to Microsoft applications) and user-friendly design. The teachers felt that it would shorten the technology learning curve, allowing them to focus more on the literacy learning of writing and producing cybertext. In particular, the teachers at COGCA were less familiar with the concept of a wiki and enlisted my assistance in teaching them about this tool, as suggested in professional development research by several researchers (Richardson, 2000; Fisher et al, 2005; Buly, Coskie, Robinson & Egawa, 2006).

I set up a basic wiki template for the two groups of teachers and then invited everyone to join as Writers, allowing them to add content and use all the tools needed. One thing we realized at COGCA was that the wiki would not function properly with any internet browser; it was necessary to use Internet Explorer on PCs and Mozilla Firefox on Macs. However, most internet browsers are available as free, reasonably fast downloads, so it did not prove to be too much of an obstacle. After the teachers joined, they began experimenting with the manipulation of text, links and widgets. On Wetpaint, there are small banner ads that rotate on the periphery of the screen; these are a source of funding that makes Wetpaint a free host for educational wikis. However, since COGCA is a Christian academy, the teachers felt a unique responsibility to control the content or type of ads that would be appearing on their students' eventual wikis. To solve this problem, we found a link to email the designers of Wetpaint that would block media images and ads.

Collaborative teams must ask themselves during inquiry, what do we want students to learn (Johnston, Knight & Miller, 2007)? This collaboration focused on the quality of student work: 1) what did we expect the students' final products to actually look like (e.g. page names, content, level of detail)? and 2) what types of tech tools did we want the students to include (e.g. photos, video, audio)? Since the abstract of the original grant referred to the relationship between content areas and the arts, the teachers agreed that audio would be essential.

At COGCA, the teachers chose Imeem for all their media uploads. Since their curriculum has more flexibility for interdisciplinary studies (including the arts), the teachers at COGCA expressed their wishes to have the students spend more time on the music and musical theory. At K323, the DOE filter blocked Imeem, so we chose JukeboxAlive instead. This wouldn't allow students to actually embed code for music players in the site; however, through our collaborative experimentation we found that it would allow students to place links in their wiki that would activate a pop-up music player. Similarly, most media widgets were blocked through the DOE filter except for JukeboxAlive.

These teachers were actively engaged in the process of learning in order to teach. Kinnucan-Welsch et al (2006) have stated that this is an essential aspect of good professional development. The teachers experimented with different parts of the wiki in order to come to agreements about what they would need to teach the students and what they would expect of the students. The teachers also invited a few students in their initial steps to experiment with the consumption and production of cybertext by using the sample wiki we had created. This was part of the planned procedures outlined in the LEO (see previous posts for a link to this document) and followed the research of Fisher et al (2005) who believe that teachers must teach according to their research-based plan.

Interested readers can view the experimental wikis for K323 and COGCA by clicking on the hyperlinks in this sentence. By clicking on the "What's New" tab, readers can see the collaborative effort that went into these wikis. As the group facilitator, I added a lot of initial content to model procedures. However, as the meetings wore on, the contributions came more and more from teachers and students.

Cycle #3 - action (part II) & further reflection

DATA: CALENDAR POSTINGS

I set up a Google Calendar event for my next two visits to J.H.S. 216 in Fresh Meadows, Queens, and "invited" the six teachers with whom I work. This action addresses the Instruction portion of collaboration as described in my literature review and as supported in different aspects by several researchers (Kinnucan-Welsch, Rosemary & Grogan, 2006; Fisher, Lapp & Flood, 2005; Buly, Coskie, Robinson & Egawa, 2006). An electronic invitation contacts the teacher via email with an embedded response option and links to a place to add a note. For my first event, I included the following description:
"Hi teachers! Please confirm my visit on Tuesday and add a comment to this calendar event letting me know what lesson you would like me to teach that day - thanks!!! (Make sure to include your name - e.g. Mr. Rayner - Lesson 5.1)"

I wasn't sure how much of a response I would get based on my previous experience, so I just asked the teachers to indicate the lesson number so as not to overwhelm them. Within 48 hours, two-thirds of the teachers had responded. Here are their postings below:

Mr. Rxxxx: 5.1 Thanks.
Ms. Dxxxx: great my students have started their first body paragraph today in class, so we will work on the second one tomorrow!
Ms. O'Sxxxx: hi Jen. My students are also up to drafting. 4.1 would be great. Thanks. Let me know what we'll need for the lesson. Thanks. Nxxxx.
Mr. Fxxxx: Hi Jen. My students have gathered all of their information and are ready to write their first draft. Can you teach lesson 4.1? We can focus on supporting arguments and evidence. Let me know what you will need to teach the lesson. Thanks, Sxxxx.

I was impressed by the way these teachers took ownership of the calendar and really used it as a way to plan collaboratively. Kinnucan-Welsch et al (2006) state that one of the four essential domains of professional practice is planning. In this school, there seems to be (based on my informal conversations with teachers) a greater push from administration for content team collaboration than in some other schools with which I've worked. However, these teachers are mostly new, just like in other schools, and are less experienced than some other groups with the use of technology in general. Therefore, I can attribute the relative success of this collaborative attempt to either the administrative encouragement to collaborate, the effectiveness of a web-based tool like Google Calendar or some combination therein.

Next, to make the calendar truly interactive, I responded to the teachers' notes on the discussion board (included in the virtual space of every Google Calendar event). Here are my notes:

Steve - for Lesson 4.1 we will need your laptop/projector with the following items pulled up: introductory animation, 4.1 lesson visual and a mentor text from the Editorials packet or Prof P's office. The students will need their laptops. We also need a plan for where students will post their work - I will be happy to help you provide comments for revision if you would like!
Hi Noreen - I love your "+33 guests"! :) For 4.1 (limited tech option), we will need: chart paper & markers, a copy of a mentor text (e.g. one from the original Editorials packet) and writers' notebooks. See you tomorrow!

Although I tried to focus the conversation onto instruction and the quality of student work by writing about revising and publishing their writing, I had already made the original invitation fairly generic because the tool was experimental. Upon reflection, I realized that I needed to make both the event and the surrounding conversation a little more specific and focused on the context of student work. I created my second calendar event for the following week as follows:

"This Tuesday is my last day to work with you on Editorials! :( However, I will still be at your school, working with the 6th grade teachers on poetry, in case you need anything. For tomorrow, please respond with your lesson # and anything I can do to be of assistance as we wrap up the unit!"

The teachers once again responded quickly. Again, I received responses from two-thirds of the group within 48 hours. However, this time the responses were either simple "Yes" clicks or very short:

Ms. Sxxxx: Hey Jennifer, I'll be up to lesson 5:1 tomorrow 6th period with class 8245. See you tomorrow! - Bxxxx Sxxxx
Ms. Dxxxx: [clicked Yes]
Mr. Fxxxx: Can you teach lesson 5.1 tomorrow?
Ms. O'Sxxxx: [clicked Yes]

In spite of the shortened responses, I decided to still respond on the discussion board. Buly et al (2006) have found that a collaborative meeting (in this case, using virtual space) dialogue should give teachers one focused idea for instruction. This time, I tried to focus my posting a little more specifically on the work of providing a solid context for student learning by writing about how the teachers could activate their students' prior knowledge about language:

Sounds like most of us are at the same place - that's great! Step 5 is all about revising, so in 5.1 we'll be working on adding a pattern of transitional phrases to lead the reader through an Editorial. Anything you can do to activate your group's prior knowledge on the topic of transitions when I ask them for suggestions will be great - thanks!
Thanks, Nxxxx - I got your email (Lesson 5.1)! If I don't hear from Mr. Rxxxx, then we are also on for 3rd period! See you tomorrow!

Based on the different types of responses I've received, I am beginning to hypothesize that perhaps teachers, especially new teachers, feel intimidated by requests that are too heavily laden with the call to reflect on instruction. Perhaps they lack confidence in their expertise and are afraid to post their ideas in a public forum or in an email reply-to-all. A question for future research might be something like, What background knowledge or experiences can I give educators to build a foundation for active and effective collaboration?

Cycle #3 - research & reflection (part III)

DATA: TEACHERS' RESPONSES TO CYCLE #1 - ACTION

DATA: TEACHERS' EMAILS (FROM CYCLE #2 - RESEARCH & REFLECTION)

DATA: RESULTS OF CYCLE #3 - ACTION (PART I)

In alignment with the research of Buly, Coskie, Robinson & Egawa (2006), I feel that it is my role to ask critical questions that will help teachers analyze the quality and context of student work. In my first cycle, I received no responses to the email I sent to teachers asking them to reflect on their instruction and the student work we'd analyzed together. In my second cycle, I observed that the subject of teacher emails was often a request for immediate assistance with some crisis, rather than using it for collaborative planning or analysis, even though I tried to pose critical, generative questions. This has led me to hypothesize that perhaps teachers would respond more readily if there was some level of accountability involved. Perhaps email is not a productive tool for collaboration; perhaps the overloaded inboxes of many teachers cause them to feel overwhelmed or to ignore messages. If the critical questions are not being addressed, then it is also my responsibility to try a different method of posing the questions.

In contrast with the above failure of a tool, I reflected on the success of my Cycle #3 action with Google Docs. ALL involved teachers were able to access the web-based document both during and after our meeting. This was partially due to the ease of use in the two different electronic environments - some teachers had experienced sign-in problems on the Writing Matters website which they did not experience when using Google applications. In addition, I think it also may have been due to the fact that there was more of a culture of collegial teamwork at K323, COGCA and Q216 than there had been at M321. Often, teachers end up feeling isolated by their classroom walls and individual responsibilities and accountability, but administrators who encourage and support collaboration can help to overcome this by providing structures for team interaction.

For my next action, I decided to try using Google calendar for collaborative planning. Having a common virtual space in which to plan and assess our progress in a unit would hopefully increase accountability among teachers for responding in a timely manner. It would also incorporate the benefits of a web-based tool like Google Docs in that it is free and available to all via any internet-connected computer at school or home. In addition, it would give us an ongoing reference for the progress being made in different classrooms, providing a connection between teachers' current practice and next steps to be learned and taken (Blachowicz, Fogelberg & Obrochta, 2005).

Cycle #3 - action (part I)

Learning Experience Outline

For my first action, I facilitated the creation of the first three parts of the Learning Experience Outline - learning context, assessment and procedures. Click on the link above to view the LEO-in-progress.

I opened a new Google Document and gave it the title "LTG K323 & COGCA LEO". Then I published it to the web, which caused Google to assign it a public link, and sent this link to all the teachers via email. Next, we collaborated on the different aspects of the outline one by one, with me as the typist adding to the document as decisions were made. Teachers were able to refresh their screens to see ongoing real-time updates, as well as to make changes themselves. This also allowed different members of the group to adopt the role of typist if I needed a break or in the future if I were absent.

For this unit, the teachers wanted to integrate several content areas with their literacy instruction. The LEO follows a backward design model, so the first step in determining how these different content areas would be integrated was to plan the learning context (standards) and assessments. The primary goal of the web tutorial that students were to create was for them to learn informational writing and speaking (standard ELA1).

However, the teachers also wanted to integrate mathematical communication and reasoning (standard MST3), technological skills (standard MST5) and the arts through response to music (standard ARTS3). Since we were made up of an interdisciplinary team, several teachers in the group had experience teaching technology and math. Several researchers have found a sound basis for interdisciplinary collaboration (Richardson, 2000; Buly, Coskie, Robinson & Egawa, 2006; Foster, Lewis & Onafowora, 2005), including the common institutional context that can increase understanding of student needs.

We accessed the standard through NYLearns.org and used these standards to then develop our own performance indicators as relevant to this project. Fisher, Lapp & Flood (2005) have found that state standards are often too broad to apply directly to classroom teaching and learning and therefore need to be unpacked by teachers at the local level. To facilitate the process, I planned to use Johnston, Knight & Miller's (2007) guiding questions for collaborative planning. These questions would help to ensure that the teams were staying focused on the goal of student learning through backward design. The first question that we needed to address was, what do we want students to learn? The performance indicators represent these teachers' vision of exactly what we want students to know, understand and be able to do by the end of the unit.

Next, we needed to develop some assessment tools to evaluate the next guiding question (Johnston et al, 2007): how will we know the students are learning? We discussed possible ways of evaluating their learning - checklists, presentations, written products, tests. Through discussion, we determined that we wanted to assess three artifacts from their project: the overall wiki design, the informational writing on the wiki and their in-class presentation of the wiki. To do this, the teachers indicated that they would like to customize some rubrics so that the standards would be clear to both teams of teachers as well as their students, since this was a multi-school partnership. We used several rubric generating web sites to fine tune our assessment tools, then created one rubric for each of the ELA performance indicators (both speaking and writing). We also created a rubric to evaluate the overall web design.

Because of the technological aspect of our collaboration, we were able to simultaneously view web content and the newest version of our LEO on our own individual laptops. The laptops were teacher units provided by their individual schools at no cost to the teachers; the web applications we used (Google Docs and an internet database of standards) were free of cost.

Cycle #3 - research & reflection (part II)

DATA: TEACHER INTERVIEW AND OBSERVATION

After determining that I needed to shift my focus toward more inexpensive, widely available technology tools, I was left with a huge array of possible options. To figure out what would best suit teacher needs, I decided to interview a group of teachers about a project that we had just begun working on.

This was the second year for them in a partnership between public and private schools. Through the Learning Technology Grant, the partnership schools are awarded software and hardware in exchange for their participation in a process called statewide Peer Review. Using the software and hardware, teachers develop a Learning Experience Outline (which is basically a very detailed lesson plan) and bring it to a collaboration session with teachers from all around New York state in order to receive feedback on their teaching and learning.

The Learning Experience Outline includes the following components: a description of the learning context; an assessment plan including checklists or rubrics; student work; procedures for both teachers and students; resources; instructional/environmental modifications; time required for collection of resources and actual execution; and reflection. The goal of the second year of the Learning Technology Grant participants was for students to create a web-based tutorial to demonstrate their knowledge of the connection between mathematical concepts and musical theory. There is a total of six teachers from the Church of God Christian Academy (COGCA) and I.S. 323 (K323) in Brooklyn participating.

At our initial meeting, I began our discussion/interview by asking how they had composed their Learning Experience Outline (LEO) in the past. Dxxxx told me that one person would type the notes as decisions were made about various parts of the LEO and then periodically email everyone the updated versions. From there we discussed the following options:

• Microsoft Word .doc in conjunction with email: Using the commonly available Microsoft software to create the LEO was an obvious option. We actually started typing the LEO - all of us on our own computers in a .doc - as we planned it. This quickly turned messy as teachers had to repeatedly stop one another mid-sentence to say, "Wait, say that again, I didn't get all of that..."! To solve this issue, we decided that we would have one typist. However, several teachers pointed out that doing it in Word would still require a great deal of saving, re-saving, emailing, and emailing again. In addition, when multiple versions of a document have been shared, it's always possible to confuse the versions.
• Projector: One teacher suggested having one typist and using a projector to display the LEO as it progressed. However, we discussed the fact that we would still need to email the document back and forth if changes were made between meetings.
• Google Docs: The next option we discussed was having one typist create a web-based document allowing real-time collaboration and editing in Google Documents. After the document was created and published to the web, the typist could email all other team members the link. This would allow all members to edit the LEO and see updates instantly and remotely.

After some negotiation and experimentation, the group ultimately chose Google Docs as its LEO site, therefore determining my first action for Cycle #3: facilitating the creation of their document in this web-based format.