Reflection Week 5

Literature review...wow! I was surprised to see how much information I was getting after I started looking at my thesis in different angles. I looked up parental involvement in the classroom...the good, the bad and the ugly. I looked up technology as a form of communication and more. The thing that surprised me the most was a lot of it dealt with the classroom environment. Most of the research support what I was trying to prove which will make my Ch.2 section easier to complete. I used the schools search engines and also Google Beta Scholar and other search engines such as Yahoo. I found a few articles that discussed the cons of technology use in the classroom and most of what they stated are areas I was already planning on looking at.
I felt very comfortable about the research that I have found this far and now it is all about putting it together in a Ch. 2 format. I just need to now sit down and write down all the wonderful information. I think that this will be the most time consuming part of my project. However, it is the heart of the thesis.

Refelction Week 4

This week I have interviewed a few teachers at my school site on what would benefit their students the most in the form of a classroom website. I was able to get some very interesting answers. I will be hosting a buy back day on web design and web hosting coming up soon. I am preparing for that and trying to create a PowerPoint to demonstrate at the training.
I am also finishing up some internet research to go along with ym lit reivew. I have also been working on myy MA proposal.

Reflection Week 3

Reflection Week 3

This week I worked on getting more articles for my thesis and I collaborated with Lisa on how to write up the prelim thesis. I found it to be harder than I originally thought to write up the first portion of the thesis. I think on some ways my problem may be too big but then again- they go together. I may have to drop one of my points of view. I will see when I really get diving into this.

Other than working on the thesis, I bought a new laptop, new car and my Internet went down... so needless to say it has been an exciting week.

Week 2 Reflection

This last week, I was unable to get the blog list off BlackBoard, so I apologize for not commenting on any of your pages. I have it now, so I am up to date.
I worked on what my project is really going to look at. I talked to several teachers and with the help of my friend Lisa H :) I was finally able to narrow it down. On the next post you will see that I have outlined it out to what I am going to look at.
I began my research of lit. articles and websites that support my thesis and started reading them and pulling information from them to see what I want to use versus what I don't need to include.
Glad to have my Blog up and working again.

Outline for Project

Increasing Parent Involvment and Student Achievement through the use of Technology:

1. Parent Contact
A. Benefits
B. Challenges
C. Examples: website, email, blogs, wikis, etc.
D. Research on what has already been done
a. what worked
b. what did not work
c. problems faced
E. Types of involvement
a. effective involvement
b. ineffective involvement
2. Compare and contrast
A. different types of communciation programs available through technology
a. compare and contrast between each
3. Technology- Web guidelines
A. Wed design guidelines
B. ADDIE


Thats it...any help is wanted :)

ETEC 644

For my Masters this far, I have began to pilot my project out to my students. This year I developed and implemented my website which I designed for my students and parents. I want to increase the communication and parental involvement in the classroom, so that is why I worked on this website to see what my parents were looking for and how to help my students. Throughout the year I have added and taken things away to make it user-friendly and informational.
I started my literature reviews last quarter and I will continue to gather more information about my topic. I will be sending out a survey to my students and parents this year and at the end of the year I will accumulate all the data that I have collected and added it to my thesis.
I will also interview some administration members, teachers as well as parents to see what they think about my website and to see if they feel it serves the purpose of what I want it to reach.
I have enjoyed the process thus far and can't wait to get closer to the end.
Please leave any comments and if you would like to view my website, click here www.msokelley.com and you can check it out too.
Thanks!