The purpose of CRADLE is to create a strong research community with high international impact, a national and international cradle of activity-theoretical and socio-cultural research.
"Quality Matters (QM) is a faculty-centered, peer review process that is designed to certify the quality of online and blended courses. QM is a leader in quality assurance for online education and has received national recognition for its peer-based approach and continuous improvement in online education and student learning."
A number of researched-proven learning theories are ideal for use with response technologies. Teaching strategies that were difficult to implement become ideal with the use of immediate feedback in the learning environment.
"action research is briefly described, and the simultaneous achievement of action (that is, change) and research (that is, understanding) is discussed"
FireStats – Full featured statistics including referrers and popular pages.
ics including referrers and popular pages.
ics including referrers and popular pages.
FireStats – Full featured statistics including referrers and popular pages.
FireStats – Full featured statistics including referrers and popular pages.
FireStats – Full featured statistics including referrers and popular pages.
WP-Post Ratings – Allows readers to rate your posts.
nline Ajax Page – Displays a snippet of a post and then allows the reader to click a button to load the full entry without going to another page.
Tagboard Widget – Adds an auto-updating tagboard to your site that displays new messages as they are posted.
wp-chunk – Truncates long URLs in comments to prevent them from stretching the page.
WP-Most Commented Posts – Displays the posts with the most comments in the sidebar.
Simple CoComments – Tracks the conversation across blogs.
Comment Karma – Digg-style voting on comments.
Google Analyticator – Inserts Google Analytics code on every WordPress page.
Leprakhauns Word Count – Adds a Java powered word counter to your editing page.
Simple Tagging – Simplifies the tagging process to drop down menus and includes the ability import from your current tagging plugins.
Playing Music
Del.icio.us MP3 Player – Makes links to MP3s in your posts playable and easily postable to del.icio.us.
Audio Player – Inserts a simple MP3 player into your posts that plays uploaded audio files.
XSFP Player – Flash player that allows you to embed music on your blog via http.
WP OnlineCounter – This plugin counts the number of readers currently online, highest number of visitors at the same time, and the total count of visitors.
mpress – Display number of users, posts, pages, comments, categories, words, and more on your blog.
Limit the size of main page posts – Set the number of words you want each of your main page posts to contain so that if they exceed that limit, a link is provided to a page with the complete post.
Phoogle – Add Google Maps with markers you choose to any of your posts.
expression and communication of
these values is essential in any valid explanation of your educational
influence in your own learning and in the learning of others. I am thinking here of values such as
freedom, justice, care, love, compassion, respect and knowledge-creation
three assumptions
'How do I improve what I am doing?' in
your professional practice.
onversations between pairs of practitioner-researchers
in which we take some 4 minutes each to outline our contexts, what really
matters to us, and what we would like to improve
motivating you to improve your
practice it often helps in the development of realistic action pla
After the initial
conversation on values and context in relation to your desire to improve
practices that relate to helping students, yourself and/or colleagues to
improve their learning, I believe that you may find the following action
planning process most useful.
'How do I improve what I
am doing?'
tions,
ideas and actions that can distinguish an action reflection cycle:
1) What do I want to
improve? What is my concern? Why am I concerned?
2) Imagining
possibilities and choosing one of them to act on in an action plan
3) As I am acting what
data will I collect to enable me to judge my educational influence in my
professional context as I answer my question?
4) Evaluating the
influence of the actions in terms of values and understandings.
5) Modifying concerns,
ideas and actions in the light of evaluations.
Making public a
validated explanation of educational influences
7) As I evaluate the
educational influences of my actions in my own learning and the learning of
other, who might be willing to help me to strengthen the validity of my
explanation of my learning about my influence with responses to questions such
as:
i)
Is my explanation as comprehensible as it could be?
ii)
Could I improve the evidential basis of my claims to know what I am
doing?
iii)
Does my explanation include an awareness of historical and cultural
influences in what I am doing and draw on the most advanced social theories of
the day?
iv)
Am I showing that I am committed to the values that I claim to be living
by?
nhancing professionalism with TASC (Thinking Actively in a Social Context)
. In producing a valid explanation for our educational
influences in the learning of others I believe it to be necessary for the
other's explanation of their own learning to be included in our
explanation.
ecognises the creativity of the
other in engaging with ideas
I believe that Sally's writings make an original contribution to
educational knowledge whilst showing that she has found useful some of my own
ideas in making this contribution.
Educational Enquiry (EE), Research
Methods in Education (RME), Understanding Learners and Learning (ULL) and Gifts
and Talents in Education (G & T) you can access these at: http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/mastermod.shtml .
To see the criteria used in assessing these units click on this link for
the MACriteria.
virtual learning space for this CPD project go to http://www.spanglefish.com/livingvaluesimprovingpracticecooperatively/ . You can also read Walton's (2011 a&b) ideas on developing a collaborative inquiry.
In an inclusional way
of being and knowing an individual recognises that they exist in a relational
dynamic of space and boundaries. Hence one of the tasks of the
practitioner-researcher is to express and communicate this relational dynamic
in explanations of educational influence.
An example
here would be the use of Foucault's (1977) ideas on Power/Knowledge to
understand the relationships between the Truth of Power and the Power of Truth
in the workplace when seeking academic legitimation for new living standards of
judgment.
Appendix 1
Action Planner
You can access this curriculum at http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/bishops/bish99.pdf
How do we contribute to an educational knowledge base
Hymer, B. (2007) How do I understand and
communicate my values and beliefs in my work as an educator in the field of
giftedness?
Learning Circle Model and Phases; Specific Learning Groups addressed: Elem/HS students/university students/teachers/action researchers, evaluation researchers/other