Blog #6 (Final Blog)

For years teachers have been able to teach the same way, and still get the same results. In this day and age, however, times have changed and so have the students. Students are unable to react in the same manner to the teaching that our educators are providing. Students need their skills to be something to be used in the immediate future. They have learned this from using the computer and the internet. Most students go home and dive into the internet. The skills they learn about the computer and the internet are the skills that are most needed. So the question becomes whether or not teachers are prepared to teach in a 21st century classroom where students no longer respond to traditional teaching styles.

  I predict that the findings will find that most teachers do not feel prepared to teach in the 21st century classroom. I also think that even though the ongoing trend is for the current students to become their own “learner producers”, that teachers will have to become this as well, in order to, keep up with the students and their learning. However, this will have to be proved with further studies. With these findings, I believe many teacher preparation programs will change the curriculum for their program. As well. I believe that school systems will start enforcing the learning of technological skills with their teachers instead of students only. The implications of this study will make way for many new curriculums in learning to become a teacher in teacher preparation programs. It could also change the requirements that schools have for hiring teachers, perhaps specifically requiring teachers to know how to use technology in the classroom appropriately, in a way that students are able to both learn the subject of the course and how to use technology in the 21st century.

Blog # 5

#5 – Restate your research problem and questions, briefly summarize your design; that is, explain in some detail how you will answer your question. Then list what you see as the possible limitations to your method. Think about the idea of validity or credibility.  Essentially try to consider all of the factors that are going to weaken the strength of the inferences or claims that you hope to make based on this research. Current research problem-Are teacher preparation programs preparing students so that they can teach effectively with 21st century skills? I plan on handing out surveys with agree/disagree questions and open ended questions, to all the schools in a school district and asking that their first and second year teachers  fill them out and return them. I will answer my question by looking at the responses given from the teachers and comparing them to each other. Possible limitations include: Not enough surveys returned Varying degrees of confidence Different teacher prep programs may make teachers feel different than others Inability to compare open ended questions. Validity and Credibility: I think that this study is valid because it still gathers the information that the research question asks for. However, I am unsure for credibillity. What will I use to back up the data that I get. How will I be able to prove that it is credible is a very good question, that I myself am going to  have to do further research on. I think the most important things I need to work on is how to make it more credible and how to  find a way to get the surveys returned.

blog #4

Current Research problem: Are teacher preperation programs preparing students to teach in the classroom with the skills of the 21st century?

1) The first way that I would measure this would be through a survey. I would measure the degree to which 1st and 2nd year teachers felt confident in their ability to teach this way. I think that this is a valid and reliable way because it bring lots of number data in that can be reproduced again and again.

2) The second way I would measure would be through interviews from a particular school district of all the first and second year teachers. I think that this is valid because it still is on topic and gathers the right kind of data but I do not think it is reliable because it would be hard to repeat, in order to get the same responses over and over again.

3) The third way, I think I would use is a combination of both. I would still do the survey, but include open ended questions on it, and I would still give it to first and second year teachers but I would have to broaden my study size in order for it to be reliable and I think it is still valid because the data gathered would still be about my research question.

Blog# 3

Restatement of research problem: Are first year teacher adequately prepared to teach classrooms with technology?



1) Non probability sampling-  I think the best option for me to use would be this one. I would use a convenience sampling. To do this, I would propose that VCU add questions about technology preparedness to their first year teacher survey. This survey is reached to all graduates one year after they graduate from VCU.   In order to find out how many surveys are normally returned, I would have to get in contact with the people who give out this survey every year. After the surveys were returned, I would look at the responses, to get a percentage of the teachers that felt prepared to teach with technology. I would also like to take a look at open ended questions, such as what was the biggest thing you thought your education lacked? What type of technology do you feel you need to learn more about to feel more adequately prepared for the classroom? The pros of this would be the convience of it and the number of potential responses. The con would be finding a way to get VCU to add questions like this to their survey.


2) Non probability sampling- Purposeful sampling In this type of sampling I would use the students that I know are graduating with me and pass out surveys to them after one year, through email contacts. I would hope that most of them would respond because they know me and would want to for me. However, I think that could be a con of this type of sampling because it would be a smaller group participating and people may feel they need to please me in their anwsers to the questions. The pro would be getting into contact with people would be easy because of the use of email. I could even post the questions online for them to respond to or email their response back to me.

3) Probability sampling-  Systematic Sampling- To do this study I would find a list of the students that graduated one year ago. Then I would pick a random number and go down the list with that number in order to find participants. However, I do not think this is a good idea because I will not have as many participants, as I potentially could. I do not think this is a good sampling technique for me at all because there is a very limited amount of first year teachers that I could gain access to her at VCU.

4) Probability sampling- Random sampling-I could enter the aforementioned list into a computer and allow it to pick the participants. But again I think I will come down with the same problem of not having enough participants because of the limited amount of potential participants.

Blog #2

As I research what I am thinking about proposing I am finding more and more refinements and problems with my research question. So far I have refined my question to Does technology being actively used in a classroom make the students more motivated and achieve better?

So far, I have one really good hit from my research.(http://www.waynecountyschools.org/150820127152538360/lib/150820127152538360/impact_on_student_achievement.pdf )  The impact of Education Technology on Student Achievement, what the research says by John Schacter. This study is from a school doing a meta-analysis study on the almost the same topic. The really great part is at the end where I was able to mine through all their sources, and find another great hit! http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=7spWIqyYdVIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&ots=UL2lO52c2b&sig=_c3PQ9cdU6-OM7sGkqbaegHNxD4#v=onepage&q&f=false ) The meta-analytic studies of findings on computer-based instruction by James A. Kulik.

The last research problem I found was Is technology enabling students to stay motivated and achieve better due to high order thinking?

The last study I found was on just that. ( http://eec.edc.org/cwis_docs/Vivians/Hopson_et_al.pdf ) However, the wrench they throw into my research is whether or not using a computer at home as well, as school enables the student to already be thinking with higher order thinking. But perhaps, this just backs up my research statement because if the students already have this skill set then teachers should definitely be using it.

My refined research statement is something like this, although I do not think this quite sums up what I am thinking "Are our teachers prepared to teach with technology in the classroom, in order to use the higher order thinking skills our  21st  century students already have, in order to let the students take more control of their learning, to be motivated to have more achievement

Both of these articles are really interesting because they both point to the fact that technology does make a difference in the achievement of students in the classroom.  However, the first one does bring up a research problem for me. It discusses a study called ACOT (Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow), which  came to the conclusion that neither traditional nor technology based classrooms made any difference for students.  The second article is like a gold mind that pins down different levels of students compared to what the students were studying, their achievement levels in the traditional classroom, and achievement levels in the technology classroom. It is a very cut and dry, quantitative, hard facts,  kind of study. I actually think, the most important thing that came out of this study was not their facts but the problem they discussed in the review section. Does the type of testing being done have more of an effect on the student then the technology or traditional based classroom? Meaning are we teaching the students to use the technology or the materials we want them to learn, or for a traditional classroom are we teaching them to take the test or remember the materials we taught them?

After these articles, I just had to find out more about ACOT and see if I agreed with the author of the first article I found. After reading this article, I do not believe that what the author said is completely true, and to be honest I do not think the author finished reading the article. The ACOT article is very critical to understanding if technology in a classroom works. I say this because after a ten year study, Apple was able to stage out the use of technology in the classroom. What I mean is they were able to actually label the types of use of the technology based on the teachers feedback. The point where the teachers found the technology ineffective in the classroom was in the very beginning of its use or their "Entry" level. On this level, the teachers and students were still working out the kinks of how to use the computers in the classroom. So I believe this opinion to be very dated, it comes from teachers in 1986 when most people did not know how to use computers as we do today. I think that many teachers may not even start at such a level in the classroom anymore because of the modern day experience with computers. In the last stage, " Appropriation" students and teachers began to use the technology in a natural way, and a teacher reports that the motivation of the students did improve!  So now my research problem comes down to our we enabling our teachers in teacher prep programs to step directly into  this "appropriation stage", since  most students now are able to use the computer quite easily and naturally. (http://www.psfshl.pudong-edu.sh.cn/E-Learning/ACOT/rpt08.pdf )

On my search to find if the teacher prep programs needed to enable teachers to step in that stage I found an article that says that the number 2 reason for computer based instruction to work right in the classroom is due to the preparation the teacher received in school. So far now we can see that, If technology based instruction is to be enabled so that students can begin becoming the masters of their own education, teachers must be correctly taught how to use technology properly in the classroom. http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:LnG4yJ5ZTLcJ:scholar.google.com/+becker,+H.J.&hl=en&as_sdt=0,47 )

Blog 1

The area of interest I have chosen is motivation in the classroom. Specifically, I would like to look at the motivation of high school students in classrooms actively using technology versus the motivation of high school students in a traditional classroom. To define the classrooms, I would say that a classroom with technology is one where students are actively participating with the technology. One without technology, would be one where students are given a regular lecture type of lesson, this would be including a lecture given via powerpoint, since the students are not actually using the technology, only viewing the instructor's lesson on the powerpoint. The decision on how to test this variable would determine the outcome of the type of study, quantitative or qualitative.

If I were to look at qualitative, I would observe the exact same class on two different days, one with technology, and the next day without.  I would ask the teacher how well he or she thought the students participated in each lesson. I would also ask the students how willing were they to participate? How willing were they to do their assignments? As well, I would ask which lesson sparked their curiosity more, the first day or the second day? As well, I would ask the teacher about the grades on any assignments connected to lessons. This way I would be able to tell which lessons students were able to retain more information from.

If I decided to go with quantitative for this study, I would ask the teacher to give the exact same lesson to two classes again, one with technology, one without. Then after each lesson, I would have the students fill out a survey about one they felt about their motivation for doing their work in class. I would have the answers be on a scale of 1 being not motivated at all to 5 being completely immersed in the lesson. With these answers, I would be able to come up with an average of the motivation for each lesson. And then have an outcome of whether or not technology can make a difference in the motivation of high school students.

The difference between these two types of study lie mostly in the methods. Qualitative studies tend to lean toward open ended questions and the responses of the participants. Where as quantitative studies go more toward number crunching and what the average response is. Qualitative studies looks more deeply about each response. A quantitative study is more about telling you what the average response of the participants would be. As well, in a qualitative study you would be able to see more of the differences between each participant do to their responses, not just the average, or who got the top spot, but how far away were the participants in the anwser. Or sometimes, participants when being interviewed can tell you more than just a yes or no and give you more valuable information.

I am not sure which method I would choose if going with this area of interest. Both ways seem very viable to me. I like that quantitative gives you the "hard facts", but I also like that qualitative lets you see whats going on in between those facts.