Managing the Mini-Setbacks
Goal: To put the finishing touches on this project.
Action Steps:
Collect Data from pilot schools.
Continue trying to get approval from AVID to host the videos on their website.
Send interest survey to middle school principals.
Fine-tune my ePortfolio.
Fine-tune my capstone presentation PowerPoint.
Reflection:
Disaster strikes! At the TLCA meeting in April I was talking with one of the teachers that was conducting the pilot and I realized that the pre-survey had not been given at his school. His school was piloting the videos with their entire intermediate school and this was a real blow. However after talking with my advisor we decided that we would cut the losses and salvage the pilot by conducting several teacher/student oral interviews to help gather qualitative data. And I think it really added a human element to the data. I was seeing through the numbers how much the videos were helping students improve their note-taking skills but when I sat down with a young lady and asked if the videos changed how she felt about yourself as a student and she answered, "Yes, I feel like I am becoming a better student," I was really excited. Numbers can not show that!
I still have not heard back from AVID but I was invited to become an AVID professional developer for their summer institutes and was required to attend a two day training. As part of the training you have the opportunity to socialize with a lot of the AVID center staff so I made it a priority to find someone that could help me get the videos uploaded. I think it is a lot easier to put off someone you are emailing or talking to on the phone but when you meet the person face to face, that is harder to do. Luckily I was able to connect with Ben Solomon, from the curriculum department, who was actually forwarded the videos and he is going to be taking a look at them. Fingers crossed.
Because of the set-backs there is not much I can add to the project at this time. I still need to get data results so that I will have something to report for my evidence of success. However, on a positive note the Google Drive Principal Survey went really. Four intermediate schools want to use the videos school wide and two other schools will be using them as well.