Action Research Plan

GOAL:  The goal of my action research project is to incorporate portable computing devices (or PCD) into the everyday task of teaching and learning within a high school classroom. By doing this I want to increase student engagement and in turn increase the learning and understanding of the content.

Showing the school and district that the these devices can be beneficial tools and not just toys is a necessary extension of this project in order to get the rules that ban these devices modified to some extent.

OUTCOMES	ACTIVITIES	RESOURCES/ RESEARCH TOOLS NEEDED	PERSON RESPONSIBLE	TIME LINE	Benchmarks/ ASSESSMENT
Increase knowledge of available applications for PCD’s	Review of literature, Web search	Myself, My facilitator, internet access, (possibly librarian)	Myself	February – March 2012
Understand the availability of PCD’s within my classroom and school	Survey students to see what PCD’s they have and that they bring to school	Myself, Students	Myself	February – March 2012
Use PCD’s in classroom setting in order to test its usability – tweak as needed to get final workable lesson	Create lesson plan(s) that mirror current lessons but use PCD’s	Myself	Myself	April – August 2012	Compare and contrast lesson with previous knowledge of lesson before PCD
Use PCD’s as a central learning tool in the classroom to improve student engagement and learning	Use the lessons created in previous step – Give district unit assessments along with teacher created assessments and surveys to gauge understanding and engagement	Myself	Myself	August – December 2012	Use common assessments, both formal and informal, from previous years and compare the data with previous years.
Disseminate knowledge	Present information to campus administration and if needed to campus staff	M. Tomberlin	M. Tomberlin	January – February 2013