Erika Apathy EDET 636

This week we focused what is important when observing students. I am having fun creating infographics, they seem to be an easy to put a lot of information in single location for easy viewing. I am having a bit of trouble with the organization of this class. It seems to be very unscheduled with when things are due, which is throwing me a bit off. I like to know exactly the due dates for assignments. I am also having trouble with LiveText :( I am also stuck because I have not been able to upload my research template to live text. I enjoyed looking at everyones blog posts this week. I think it's interesting how everyone choose different approaches when creating their infographic.

This week we focused on observing students. There are many ways to observe students including, formal assessments, conversations, and informal approaches. Each type has its benefits, so it is important for teachers to evaluate each situation individually and find which approach will be most beneficial to the student. According to Bigelow (2014), teachers already observe students informally everyday. They may scan the classroom or watch students work. They are always looking for students who may be confused or disengaged. This blog post mentioned an interesting idea that it is important to not only observe students, but use the information gathered in a meaningful way. A teacher can collect data but if it is not used in a beneficial manor or at all what was the point to taking the time to collect it in the first place.  As I was doing research for this post I found the below video on youtube. I thought it was very beneficial and well produced source. I also liked the illustra...

This week I had a lot of fun creating the infographic I used for this weeks blog. It was fun creating a image that in one glance a person can learn all the basic facts about Remind. For me personally this really helps me because I don't like looking all over to find information, I prefer it to be in one centrally located spot. This weeks blog post was very interesting to think and look back on pervious interviews I have given.  I think the biggest take away from this week was to make sure you come to an interview prepared. I think this is just good life advice. It is always good to be prepared because it shows the person that is being interviewed that you took time to prepare questions so their time wasn't wasted. This week I struggled with posting things on time. I have to say I am not sure how other students do this with a full time classroom. I subbed for 2 days and it completely threw off my homework schedule.

This week we are focusing on the important things to remember when conducting interviews. According to an article on Matador Network the most important thing to remember is to find a good location (Stuteville, 2013). Their example was to avoid Starbucks (pretty easy here). Find a place where the person being interviewed feels the most comfortable and will feel better about giving honest responses. Another important thing to remember is to write down the questions you want to ask. This article suggested you bring in twice as many questions as you expect to ask. This will help with your confidence as an interviewer and you never know what questions will get and answers you were looking for.  As stated by an article from Scholastics.com the first step to a successful interview is to research the interview will be about. This will help form questions that will lead to the necessary information. This also shows the person being interviewed that you came prepared and took the time to ...

This week was in interesting one because I had to think so much in terms of pretend. I think this assignment is difficult for me because I am not in an actual classroom so I don't have practical observations I can apply to this assignment. As I looked back at this post I realized that realistically this research idea may be one that get more realistic and accurate results over a longer period of time than a single semester. I think it would also be interesting to see how it changed over entirely different classes of kids. Again this is not realistic to do during a single semester. I really liked Jule's idea of reaching out to other teachers in the district who use Remind in their own classrooms. This may fill in the pieces I feel are missing from my data, because they have actual data the got from implementing this app in their own classroom instead of the theoretical results I may get from looking up articles.

In order to get the data, I need to complete this research project I will first need to pick what type of communication app I am going to use. There is a teacher I worked with previously who exclusively uses Remind, and even gave a presentation on her experience with the app in front of the entire school board at the beginning of the year. I think I would like to use Remind because I can speak to her to see if any of the data she has collected would add value to my project. Data collection for this research project may look different from others in this class because I am focusing on a less tangible object like increasing math scores. I am working to see if the Remind app helps increase parent-teacher communication and parent involvement in the classroom. There may be many reasons my results may be not accurate. Some adults may not get a message to volunteer because they are sick or work during that time and so regardless of the use of the app they would not be able to volunteer reg...