Action Research Plan Reflection

Reflecting on Action Research Plan

I was not very successful in getting this off the ground before the end of the school year. A lot of things happened including losing our Director of Special Education.  With that said, I have total buy in from the Special Education Coordinator and she is ready to move forward as soon as school starts.  My timelines will need to be revised some, but it's totally workable.

I think with the start of the 2013-14 school year, I will have all of the teachers on board and have at least used their technology some.  Over the summer I plan to do the research on the applications I want to be able to test and with the extra time to do that, I can find the apps that are going to work the best.  Before school starts I will meet with the Coordinator and get her approval on the apps I choose.  The great thing will be that hopefully I can work in some time during the in-service before school starts and it will be multi-functional for the teachers.

Action Research Project

In what ways can iPads be utilized by special education teachers and students to increase their learning knowledge on all 4 core subject areas.

Steps to making this happen:

• Survey teachers to see what their knowledge is with using technology devices in the classroom. 
• Research what teachers are actually doing currently to increase learning of special education students.
• Train teachers on downloading and using apps to help special education students be more successful.
• Research studies on the use of iPads for increased learning potential in special education students.
• In what ways can using the iPads increase the students’ potential for learning.
• Evaluate the direct effects that using the iPads have in meeting or exceeding the students’ educational needs.

Activities designed to achieve the objectives

• Research iPad apps for special education students to find apps that are appropriate for learning. 
• We will download apps to use on the iPads in each of the 4 core subject areas. We will also download apps to work with autism, adhd and speech correction.

Resources and research tools needed for data gathering

• We will need 10 iPads(one for each teacher/student to use, applications to download to the iPads and reporting on each of the subject applications to retrieve data usage statistics.

  
Draft timeline for completion or implementation of activities

• August – September 2013 – Download apps and train teachers
• October 2013 – Students begin using iPads for instructional learning
• March-April 2014 – Collect reports and begin analyzing data to determine if students are more successful in learning.

 Assessment instrument(s) to evaluate the effectiveness of the action research study

• We will survey the special education teachers on the effectiveness of using the iPads in the classroom.
• We will look at test results for the students’ to see if achievement is higher.