Literature Review

I don't think that I have ever spent so much time on one part of a paper before! So, I am thankful that I didn't wait until the very last second to work on my lit review since I think it took forever! I imagine that I spent several hours just looking up key words in EBSCO and summons to find articles that I found useful to supporting my research and theories. After finding 15 useful articles, I went about the task of reading each article in detail to make sure that it really was helpful, I highlighted specific information and made colored note cards for different points of discussion. I think after 9 hours of reading and writing note cards I had about 40 of them, scattered in different spots on my bed (My desk :) ) Next came the writing part....4 hours later I only wrote 6 pages but had found common points of studies that had been done that supported my research project and the need for further research in Spanish language pronunciation. I hope I can pull this whole thing off!!!!

Article Critique

Wow....I have now learned how much time goes into researching your articles!  I spent 3 hours reading different articles to find an article that I actually want to use for my paper.  I was happy to have Amy's sample to guide me and the practice one that we did in class in groups.  I still found that I had some difficulty with the difference between research methods but I think I might have worked it out! I think!!!!

Tools...

I love polleverywhere.com! I wrote my needs assessment tools portion of my paper in a little under an hour because I thankfully had compiled prior info last year for my research paper.  I used polleverywhere.com to survey my students in class about their fears/weakness in Spanish. They loved using their phones in class to take the survey....

I also had used my PLN on edmodo.com to survey other Spanish teachers to find out their findings on sounds that L2 students struggle with. I got a lot of responses and great feedback as well.

My third component of my tools was also gathering actual speaking tasks from the students.  I used Google voice, voki.com and PowerPoint with microphone audio recording to gather all of my data.  That data was probably the biggest help to realize the gap in pronunciation for L2 learners.

I hope I can organize my data, that is a weakness for me!!!!

Revision and needs assessment

So, this week was about revision of my topic paper.  I had to do a lot of reading to find articles that will be useful to substantiate my research on pronunciation enhancement in my Spanish 7 cycle classes.  I found some that will be useful but must have spent about 8 hours just looking through a lot of articles! I am glad that we did that assignment in class to learn about article evaluation, that was really helpful as I was going through all of my readings this week.

So I have submitted a revision, and also a needs assessment (twice) since my first one didn't work out right, I hope the second one is better but, I'm not sure yet.  I am greatly helped by Amy's comments in the topic paper....They were quite helpful in creating my revision. I hope that it is better now!!!!

I am happy that I knew what topic I wanted to pursue since last year, that was really helpful in knowing some background information and already having some data collection from previous classes and online survey data from my edmodo Spanish teacher share learning network.  Now to keep moving forward. 

I hope I am in the right direction!!! I am a little nervous!

So I have finished the rough or first draft of my opening proposal.  I think I have a good grasp of the topic that I am choosing but I am sure that Amy will guide me if I am too big or off track! I think I spent about 2 hours writing the two pages, luckily I did this topic for IDD and had already had some information for my Spanish pronunciation topic.  I am not altogether sure that I did the right thing with my definitions section but, luckily it is a rough draft and I will have the opportunity to make it solid!

Hold on to your hats folks.....It's research time!

Wrap it up!

Wow, are we really at the end of another MAIT class?  I can't believe how fast this class has flown by!  I really learned a lot this semester about implementing different learning theories and especially Connectivism and even created a podcast with a true founder of Connectivism, Stephen Downes!  That was truely a highlight to our collaborative learning presentation. Thank you Vicky and Shawn for being such great partners to work with!

I am also really happy with my new global connections and am so excited to work with my partner, Tricia, after Easter break with our new group online classroom!  YAY!  Our group classroom is through http://www.edmodo.com/, a resource that is so user friendly!

Now it is time for some ribs and other goodies at our last class night of the semester where we will get to share our portfolio.