How Educators Can Use Blogs

Blogs are a great tool for educators to use. There are many practical uses in the classroom- students love for peers to comment on their ideas. This is a great way to get students to write and write more effectively towards an intended audience. Educators as leaders can use blogs to allow their staff to see why they make decisions they make and see their adminstrators as actual people. By keeping a blog, an administrator can give valuable insight into what is going on behind the scenes at school and allow the community to feel closer and more connected.

Action Research

This week, through watching the introduction video and reading the four excerpts from the two course texts, I have gained a whole new understanding of action research. I honestly did not know what it was (or had a different idea in my head) before reading the texts. What I have learned is that action research is the process of looking inside of one's own self. One must examine his/her own practices, how he or she leads and make decisions on what is working and what is not working. Action research pushes a leader to collaborate with other professionals and really delve into a personal pursuit to make changes and decisions based on what he/she finds. The idea of internally examining leadership skills as opposed to buying the latest book on leadership research is a fairly exciting idea. By challenging a leader to take an honest look and evaluate his/her own performance, an exciting change to the leadership culture can take place. I plan on beginning this immediately. I almost always look to the latest research on how to be a technology director. I buy new books when they come out and read what other people have to say. But, after learning about action research, I plan to examine how I am performing at my own job. I will examine what leadership skills I am performing well and which ones I am not. I am excited at this idea and the thought of really changing the way I lead.