The day has come...

Well after what seems like months the day has finally come. Today my Applied Research paper is due! I can't even begin to tell you the weight that I feel lifted off my shoulders. Now I do know that I am not completely finished. I still have to defend my paper and make some final revisions before actually being completely done but overall the big part is done!

Now VA has had some scary weather theses past few days and I am currently without power. It's sorta funny when you stop and think about it but right now I am parked at Morgan's house washing clothes and finishing up loose ends on my paper! It's easier to be somewhere else right now since a farm without water is no fun!! Animals need water-power or not...so being away from the farm is a break right now! Plus Allen (husband) was running low on underwear!! haha!

My plan for today is to re-read my paper one last time. Make sure I didn't leave anything out and then place a final copy in the dropbox. After 2 years of working hard and balancing schedules I am happy that the end is so close!

Saturday

Terrible storms here last night! My yard is a mess...fortunately we only lost power for a few minutes! Allen and I had just settled in to do to sleep when it started storming and I said to Allen, "WE CAN'T LOSE POWER-I HAVE TO FINISH MY PAPER TOMORROW!" Then Allen says, "Jessica, we have baby cows, pigs, chickens and puppies out in this storm-I don't care about your paper." haha! I think that Allen is about as over this paper as I am.

When I talked to Dr. Ingram yesterday he gave me a little peace of mind when he said that he knows I am tired of reading the same thing over and over! At least I know that people do know where I am coming from. I can honestly say this is the hardest I have ever worked on a project. My undergrad portfolio was HUGE but this is even more time consuming...I know get what Jackie meant in January about being overwhelmed by something!

Yesterday I worked all day on Dr. Ingram's comments. As you know the Lit. Review was the hardest part for me. Yesterday I got everything but the Lit. Review fix....so that is where today's efforts are placed. I am going to spend the rest of the afternoon working on the Lit. Review and then enjoy the evening with some friends. Tomorrow we are boating with the family and Monday I will read over the paper once more and then send it onto the committee! Come on Monday!!!

The Final Friday!!

Up and at um...went to feed the cow this morning and the thermometer in my car already said 92 degrees at 9:00...whew-gonna be hot!

Not too disappointed that I will be staying inside working on my paper all day! It's cooler in here! Phone conference with Dr. Ingram at 11:00 and then spending the day working through his edits. Hope to have it all done by tomorrow so my sister the "Comma Queen" can check my punctuations.

It'll be Monday before I know it!! Happy Friday!

Thursday!

Got a great email from Dr. Estes this morning...my portfolio only has a few minor errors that need fixing and then I am straight!!

Today and I off to the last day of my conference. We've had a terrible wind storm here with lots of power outages and such! We were fortunate to not lose power but the place where my conference was did, so my 3 day conference condensed to 2! Off to learn all about Science literature in my classroom!

Heard back from Ingram yesterday with all the feedback on my paper. Went through last night and fixed the silly grammar issues I overlooked. Friday and Saturday are devoted to perfecting the paper! Then everything will be uploaded to Dropbox and ready to roll! Allen (husband) says if I work hard on Friday and Saturday he will take me for a boatride on Sunday...I think he is bribing me! haha!

Happy Thursday! Almost there!

Final stretch....

With the help and encouragement of my great friend Morgan, Saturday was totally devoted to finishing up my project. I think I sat in the same chair from about 9:00 that morning until about 6:00 that night....I don't remember getting up once! I can't tell you how great it felt knowing that it was all finished...now when I say finished I do know that I have a whole week left to perfect and revise but my original draft was completed! I then sent the paper on to Dr. Ingram and he began working through it for me! I received the first part of his revisions last night and I hope to hear back from him today with the remainder!

Today's agenda is to work through his comments and feedback. Tomorrow through Thursday I will be at a conference so my assistant principal is going to read over it for me and make sure I didn't make any silly grammatical errors or leave out important details. Then the weekend will be here and I will be making sure all my ducks are in a row before submitting it to the committee July 2nd! Then I get to spend a few days at church camp, come back and finalize my presentation and then defend my project to my committee!! In just a few weeks my masters program will be done!! I am really getting excited!!!

PS-I am also very proud of my project...I think it's the hardest I have ever worked on something!

Day 6

Slept in some...much needed! Gonna spend today taking these numbers and putting them into paper form! Excited that it's coming together. My plan is to have the paper done by Monday (6/25) so that I can have it proofed while I am at the conference.

It hit me last night-this is my LAST CLASS for grad. school. No more checking JMU email everyday, checking discussion boards often, juggling my time to get it all done! I will be Jessica Robinson M. Ed....and believe me-I will sign my name like that for a while!! haha!

Excited that it's coming together!!

Some more day 5...

OK! I have spent most of the afternoon working through the data and I have placed a PDF with the initial data in the dropbox...check it out! I'm pretty proud of it!

Day 5

It's a BOY!!!! I am going to be an aunt to a fabulous little boy! As of today his name will be Rudolph "Ruby" Michael Sadler..but that could change 15 times before now and November 9th!!! I spent yesterday shopping for anything that said "aunt" on it!

Now back to reality. I thoroughly enjoyed my day off yesterday-got a pedicure and Sweet Frog!! But alas it's time to get back to work! I haven't heard back from Dr. Ingram yet about my revised lit. review but I am going to go ahead and start working on phase 2-data analysis and results/evaluation! Hoping to get alot knocked out today and tomorrow!

July 2nd is getting close...gotta press on! I'll post later about the data and see if any trends are appearing!!

Day 3/4

I got the chance to speak with Dr. Ingram yesterday and he calmed some of my nerves! It was a nice conversation. He explained to me exactly how the defense would take place and what I needed to have. He also complimented my paper and said to only focus on the lit. review-that was my area of weakness. So that is what I did yesterday. I worked to perfecting my lit. review. I feel much better about it! I finally stopped last night and went and watched my husband's softball game, so now I am going to re-read it one last time and then send it on to Dr. Ingram.

Today my plan is to...

1. Check over lit. review and send on to Ingram
2. Polish the last three books by darlings made for Interdependence
3. Set up my dropbox account and start moving my PDF's there


Tomorrow.....

My sister-in-law finds out if I am having a niece or a nephew so I am spending the day with her! I have been a very calm aunt who has bought nothing but children's books so tomorrow I will get to purchase my first pink or blue item!!! My husband only has one sister and her husband only has one brother so right now I am the ONLY aunt!!! I am very excited! My goal was to have all the books ready and my lit. review done before Thursday and so far I am making my goal! I think I can...I think I can!

What the weekend holds....

I am hoping to hear back from Ingram by Friday concerning my lit. review. If he says that it is good to go then I will have the proposal portion polished and done and I will move on to the data analysis, evaluation, and reflections portion of my paper!

Still aiming for July 2 to have everything in the dropbox and the go ahead to my committee!

Dr. Ingram scared me yesterday when he asked if I was a fall graduate...haha! I quickly told him that I would do WHATEVER it took to be a summer graduate!! Now we are all on the same page!!

Day 2

I will be honest...I wasn't as eager to get outta bed this morning and get working but time is not in my favor right now so press on I must.

Yesterday I got ALOT accomplished During the school year we were able to finish our books and preview them on the ipad but I was never able to actually get them published. Yesterday I went back in and gave credit to the images that my darlings used and then was able to actually export them as PDFs. I am very pleased with how well they turned out. The boys book was having some issues so I still need to work out some kinks this morning but I am going to try and post the ladies books on here so you can view the PDFs. I am very proud of them and their hard work.

Today I also have a very clear path of what I want to accomplish-no library for me today, wanna get some laundry done here at home so I am going to keep working here. I plan to "meet" with Dr. Ingram and iron out some confusion and wrap my head around exactly what I still need to do, I also want to finish up the second round of books and perfect my lit. review. If I can have my lit. review ready to roll and all my students books published then I think that will leave me with Phase 2 (from applied research guidelines)-Data Analysis and Reflections left. Someone correct me if I am wrong!

Yesterday made me feel alot better! I am feeling a bit better about things, I think I just had to dive right in and get busy! Off to swap from the washer to the dryer and then get busy again!

Applied Research-Bootcamp Day 1

It's crunch time. I can remember in the Spring when the Fall graduate Jackie presented on her vid-grid and the one thing that she kept saying over and over was not to wait til the last minute to get busy. Now I have not waited at all, I have used my time very wisely (at least I think so). It's been difficult juggling schedules and working around our SOL schedule but I do feel as if I have used my time wisely. Now it's just down to the wire. In two weeks this will practically all be behind me. On July 2 I will send this beast onto my committee and two short weeks later defend my project! I am excited to have this all behind me but also somewhat overwhelmed for these next few weeks!! So let's get going....

Today's goal is to wrap up any loose ends with my students books, we were able to finish and view them on our iPad but I never actually published them to the Apple Store, and to begin polishing my literature review. Dr. Kellison and Dr. Ingram have sent excellent resources for me to use. When I began my lit. review in the Spring I focused on the Apple program itself where I needed to focus more on students making their own materials, so I need to revamp my lit. review! Here goes!

Check back often...bootcamp will continue until this is done!!!

Due date countdown: 14 days!!

Still alive!

Just wanted to take a moment and check in! We finished our last SOL today and things are starting to wind down! I will be honest-I am so ready for summer break!

Since my last post we have wrapped up all loose ends on Energy, pretest Interdependence and worked diligently on our books whenever we could catch a spare minute around our testing schedule. This week we are going to wrap up our books and try and post-test! Interdependence is a funny SOL strand..it encompasses alot of content! My goal is after this week to have all that need from my darlings and then once school gets out I will dive into working my way through the data and pulling it all together!

Hope everyone's week is going well! Check back this weekend and see if the week went according to plan!!

Let's reflect...

I was hoping to update this a lot more often but for pete's sake I can't catch a break! No excuse just simply defending myself! Let's recap!

After submitting my proposal to Dr. Kellison and getting the go ahead (after a few rounds of editing) I began my Applied Research project. As you all know I am currently a third grade classroom teacher in King William County. AES has a 40 minute block everyday for enrichment and remediation. This works AMAZING well for me! This gives me the time everyday to work with my group of eight. As you will see in my proposal I am testing a theory based on student achievement, we are using Apples iBooks Author to create our own picture books and see what our end results look like after direct instruction and authoring our own books. 

At this point we are wrapping up the loose ends on our Energy unit. Here is an overview of what happened during this unit. 

1. Pretested Energy Unit (Hot Mess)

2. Broke into group for iBooks Author

3. Direct instruction in our own classrooms

4. Working on picture books during Encore

5. Publishing

6. Posttest Energy (Not to hot of a mess)

I was very nervous at first, as you know the mac is new to me so using iBooks Author also took a leap of faith! But we charged forward and made it work! I am very please with the results of our books. Publishing to the iBooks store is what I have left to accomplish but the books themselves are done!

We worked together as a group on these books. We took it one step at a time, We started with our table of contents, glossary and indexes. Then we broke up and worked on our text. My above grade level learners took the ball and ran with it. My other buddies needed a bit more attention and help-so I put my behind in a rolly chair and slid around the room! It was great! I really enjoyed it! 

After about 3 weeks of direct instruction and Encore we were ready to "publish" and post test. If you remember we are comparing the results of these 8 students to my class who are only receiving direct instruction. I have only just glanced and printed the results but at first I was very disappointed. Some of my scores didn't seem to budge. However, I know that just looking at the data isn't enough. I really need to dive in question but question and search for patterns and trends. 

We have also pretested our last unit Interdependence and are starting our books on Monday! So far so good!

As for limitations I have already discover a few...

1. Only one MacBook!!! We're making it work but 8 year olds don't have much patience.

2. 40 minutes flys by!

3. I struggle with being a grammar gooroo!! I have to remember it's their work not mine!!!

4. Some of the questions on their pre and post test had unforeseen errors!!! ( IA problems)

Keep checking back...we're on a ROLL!!!!!

And so it begins....

I am finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now it's not a very bright light but I have determined that the end is near. I have just wrapped up my last semester of actual classes at JMU and now I am diving head first into my FINAL Applied Research class. This class actually started a few months prior to this but now we are really getting down to business. This post is simply going to bring you up to speed on where I am and how I got to this point. 

Back in the fall of 2011 I was enrolled in Inquiry in Education, this class was basically to get my feet wet when it came to research and to start to decide on a topic for this final project for JMU. My original idea, while good in theory, really didn't excite me enough to want to focus on it for months. So with that in mind I survived research and decided when the time grew near I would start with a clean slate and choose a new topic. One rainy Sunday afternoon I was playing on Facebook and stumbled across a posting in the JMU Ed. Tech page about iBooks Author, a new program unleashed by Apple that let you create and publish your own textbooks. JMU Ed. Tech mentioned that this would be an excellent idea for an Applied Research project and here we are two months later running with that idea. Now if you know me at all you will know that I am a new convert to the Mac world. If you asked my classmates some of them would agree that this day would NEVER, and I mean NEVER, come. However, I have jumped ship and will never look back.

So what exactly am I researching? How am I tying this all together? Well funny you should ask...this final summer semester myself and nine AES students are creating our own Science textbooks. I currently teach in King William County where there are no current Science textbooks. My project will focus on student achievement and the pros and cons of creating our own textbooks. We will be comparing the results of these 9 students scores to the rest of my class (18 students). Both groups will receive direct instruction and the group of 9 will receive 40 extra minutes a day where we work on our textbooks. The main goal is to compare pre and post test data and decide if the gains are more significant when the students create their own study mechanisms. 

We are actually about 2 weeks into our study. We will be focusing on two specific Science units and then also comparing the data from these students Virginia SOL Assessments. We are about 2 weeks into our Energy Unit and will still be covering Interdependence this year. 

I am very excited about this study and so far my students are loving iBooks Author! Check back often for updates and progress!!!

-Jessica