Action Research Project Title: Using Technology Affectively in the Classroom          

Blog URL: http://shannajan.blogspot.com/

Number of AR Project Documented Hours: 20

AR Project Summary (at least 250 words):  Meeting students in their learning space and making them successful in the classroom should go without saying. Teachers should be able to use technology affectively in the classroom in order to achieve higher scores as well as to maintain a classroom with high expectations and little to no behavior issues.

In my Action Research Report I am comparing several different classrooms scores, behavior, and parental involvement. I am arguing that the more technology that used in the classroom, the more affective the teaching, learning, time on task, and parental involvement they have as well.

In the initial weeks of me getting the teachers on board and sharing what I am trying to prove, they were a little worried that having me observe and watching them would impede what they are trying to do. I gave them some time to get in the routines of what they wanted to accomplish before I started observing. So in this process I think I may have skewed my results somewhat. I feel like the teachers that were not used to the technology, tried harder than they ever had to make sure they are utilizing everything, and they started updating their websites more than they had before. Learning this, I thought I might have to change my research topic, but I decided against this because I wanted them to see that the efforts they put forth were actually working. Some of the teachers were veterans to the use of technology so their scores were higher overall, but I pulled the scores from the other teachers previous years, and they were higher than they were at the same time last year. They also seemed to have a better behaved class and a higher rate of parental involvement than they ever had. So, while my initial research topic changed a little, the results were exactly what I thought they would be.