Action research for ICT in the classroom

how can I contribute? You may read these notes on-line, or print them - all the information is on the page below. Above all else we want you to know that this is a place for your contribution, for your ideas and for your practice, as well as a place where others might discover and share those contributions, ideas and practice. For these to be useful we want to ensure the best quality contributions by teachers for teachers. Below is some help for you to understand how to contribute:

Principle

The principle of this collection is simple. You are asked to contribute a reflection on your best use of ICT in the classroom for other teachers. This is more than a set of "lesson plans" or collection of "good ideas" (although intentionally complementary to both), but something more reflective. We want you to reflect critically on an enduring, activity spanning a period of time in weeks or more. You will be asked to reflect on your own practice and on why you thought the use of ICT was a success (see below). Further requested details will give colleagues in other schools confidence that what you report is authentic and may be a good starting point to build on, or to adopt. Some information will be public, some private and some not disclosed at all. In some cases you may limit the audience for your work. The notes below help you to structure your responses to the contribution form, or start you thinking about a contribution that needs researching now, to post later. The symbol will always reveal more detail for you if you need it and the same detail is available from within the contribution form. A Certificate of Action Research will be awarded to accredit all successful contributors. The certificate is unique and carries the support and identity of a wide range of institutions and corporations. It confirms the importance of your work, of this collection and of ICT in learning. We have designed the certificates to be useful in your professional life, to celebrate your contribution and to say "thank you".

WHO ARE YOU ?: Section A

This is a collection by teachers for teachers but it also a chance to celebrate your successes and share them with others. Although the system is open to all to read we do need to know that you are a teacher (and not a salesperson for example) if you want to contribute. There are checks in place therefore and you will need to know your teachers' registration number. You may choose whether to offer an email address publicly or not; if you are prepared to take the occasional question about your use of ICT and you may choose to do this either only for other contributors or for the world at large. The bottom line is: many can read this, but only teachers can contribute - we need to know that you are one!

YOUR CONTEXT: Section B

If your work is to be useful to others it will need some context. Remember that this site is publicly available to read so that your context should be written with this in mind. Some sense of size, age phase, curriculum level, subject specialism (if any) will be part of the form completion but other details are welcomed too. The simple guideline is: if other teachers are to find your work useful and build on it, what else is it useful for them to know, about your school? The bottom line is: for your work to be useful we need to know about its context.

SOMETHING TO SHOW: Section C

The collection shows the world ICT in action and we need to do that with image/s as well as words. We are asking for a simple image, or short movie, to illustrate your work. To keep the collection fast and efficient to search there are some guidelines for these images. You will need to contribute an image or movie to complete your contribution and gain your certificate. The bottom line is: pictures make your context and thoughts more vivid for colleagues and others.

RESEARCH FINDINGS: Section D

None of this would be of any use unless you were convinced by your observations over time that something had improved, but the collection is not prescriptive about what that might be: "the children seemed more reluctant to leave at the end of the day"; "they lined up quicker at the start of the lesson"; "their oral science questions and contributions leapt upwards afterwards"; "their test scores improved in both years"; "they seemed more able to critique the news as a product"; "my three slowest readers became my three best movie producers"; a year ago they were coasting, now they are more ambitious than I had dared to hope"; "their examination grades improved, largely because they reported that the subject was more engaging throughout the term"; "I only had one really spectacular success but she changed beyond recognition during the year". Of course the point of action research is to be able to share evidence rather than hunches and this means collecting some clear evidence to share in this section of the collection. However, as you will see from the methodology section this can be (and probably should be) something different to just numbers and can be collected without becoming a burden in our already busy lives. The bottom line is: what improved and how do you know that it did?

VALIDATION: Section E

If this collection is to stand as a quality record of teachers' successes and ideas it will need quality and some rigour. Without both the ideas and successes will be devalued and they are both too important to waste. The collection management team (at Ultralab) will therefore need the address, phone number and (ideally) email of someone else who is able to validate your work over the time period that you have been researching. This validation contact will never be displayed on the site and we will, of course, only contact a sample of such validators. However, we feel that a dialogue with such validators may well help you to "stick at" your research. Such validators may be: other colleagues; governors; local college; subject associations; the students' School Council even... The bottom line is: who confirms that what you describe is real?

REPLICATION: Section F

Finally all teachers are individuals - that is often their great strength, but for the collection to be useful we need to be clear that your ideas and work are capable of replication (although others are bound to do things differently for their classes and their context), or at least convincing enough for someone else to try to replicate them... To complete your contribution, we are asking for the name of one other who has used / tried something from the work you describe in your contribution, however early on they are in that process. As elsewhere, these replicators names and details will never be published and again we will only be communicating with a sample of these colleagues, but if the thesis is that teachers' great ideas can help move other teachers forward you will see that this is an important part of showing that everyone's work is genuinely useful. The bottom line is: have you persuaded anyone else to begin to try your good idea? who?

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