As I reported a couple of weeks ago, most of my research was complete. I was still working on writing many of the ARP's "sections" and I was not ready to complete the data cycle sections. So this week I got a bit nervous when I realized that I really didn't do a "cycle", let alone at least two cycles. After realizing this I began to panic a bit. You see, I did three surveys (parent, student and teacher), I did a pre and post assessment, and I did eight mini assessments per each digital citizenship lesson that I taught. I am still working on student interviews. I thought I had plenty of information but I panicked when I thought they needed to be complete "cycles". With that being said, I would like to thank Dr. Craig for responding to my email and for reaching out to me on her Saturday. She helped me immensely. She calmed my panic. She said I was doing great and showing valuable data. After we talked, I went to work. I have created charts, and I have written a rough draft of my "Study Design" section. Even though I am not as worried right now, I still feel overwhelmed and nervous that I won't be done on time. This will be a week of late nights and deep thoughts.
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As of today, I have conducted the majority of my research. I have given the pre-assessment, the student survey, the parent survey, the teacher survey and six out of eight mini lesson quizzes. However, I have only analyzed the students' pre-assessment and survey results. I still need to teach two mini lessons, give the appropriate quizzes and give the post assessment. Once I have completed these cycles, I need to sit down and analyze/compare all of the results to establish a need for teaching online BEST behaviors through digital citizenship lessons. In this Weebly Blog, you will read the results from the student survey. At of the time of the student survey, I have 17, nine year old students and five, eight year old students. When asked what social media platforms they are on and to check all that apply, 59.1% of this group are using Tic Tok social media, 36.4% also use Snapchat, one student is on Twitter, one student is on Instagram, and 86.4% use YouTube. Tic Tok and YouTube were the overwhelmingly used social media platforms for this age group. Both of these sites are for children 13 years old and older. This group of students prefer gaming (77.3%) over social media (22.7%). The majority of them spend 3 hours or more, outside of school time, online. During this time, 81.8% know the players they interact with online and 18.2% do know the other players online. As for social media usage, 63.6% of the students do not have followers that they don't know but 36.4% do have social media followers that they don't know. Of these same students, 40.9% responded that they have public accounts. When asked whether or not they feel safe online, the majority of the students do feel safe (90.9%) while 9.1% do not feel safe online. The following questions in the survey are geared toward bullying behaviors. The questions were: 1. Have you been called bad names or has someone made bad hokes of you online? 77.3% said no but 22.7% replied yes. 2. Have you had rumors spread about you? 90.9% said no but 9.1% said yes. 3. Have YOU called anyone bad names or made bad jokes about someone online? One student said yes, while 21 others said no. 4. Have you spread rumors about someone else? Two students said yes, while 20 students responded no. 5. Do you play online with people you don't know? 31.8% said yes and 68.2% said no. The results from the last question are similar to the results from the question "Do you have followers that you don't know?" In that question, 36.4% said yes and 63.6% said no. I still have a lot of work to do. However, I am making progress towards my goal, and I am pleased about that! As of now, I am finding that there is a need for digital citizenship lessons, and I look forward to learning more about the results at the completion of my research cycles. Blog about your thinking on your qualitative vs. quantitative data analysis: 1. Why did you choose the analysis methods that you chose? 2. How did each method that you chose answer your research question? I am conducting action research to analyze and support my hypothesis that BEST practices need to be created for online learners. I will employ mixed methods to gather data. First, I will use quantitative data measures because it will be used for the collection of data from the district’s past BEST practices results. Quantitative data measures will also be used to analyze the results from CommonSense.org as to why they concluded digital citizenship lessons needed to be created. Finally, I will use qualitative data research to measure the need for an online BEST program to include digital citizenship at our elementary school sites. It will measure the effectiveness of positive online behavior. As of today, I have started collecting quantitative data from my students in regards to their online usage and their prior knowledge (pre-assessment) about online responsibility, kindness, respect and safety. These four Building Effective Schools Together (BEST) characteristics are our core values at Snow Elementary. An example of online responsibility is shown below: 81.8% of my 3rd grade students know it is a responsibility of themselves to go on a website that they know is OK for kids their age. 13.6% say I can say funny things to make people laugh. Finally, 4.6% say they can download an app that a cousin has shared. An example of kindness is 54.5% of my 3rd grade students think they should only care about themselves online, while 45.5% do not agree. I hope to turn those numbers around once my students have learned about Digital Citizenship. I asked my students the following respectful online behavior question, "Miguel is reading about Minecraft tricks in an online community for gamers. He does not agree with how Minecraft_Ninja says to do a trick. Miguel responds, 'You don't know anything, Minecraft_Ninja. No one wants to read your post.' Is Miguel being a good digital citizen in his community?" 72.7% responded that "No, Miguel is not being a good digital citizen because his post could make Minecraft_Ninja feel bad. Even if he disagrees, he can say it nicely". 22.7% say "No, Miguel is not being a good digital citizen because he's posting in an online community". 4.6% said, "Yes, Miguel is being a good digital citizen because he is talking with others and participating, even if he disagrees". Finally, an example of a safety question and response is: "Jose created a password with his name and favorite sport. His password is 'JoseSoccer". Why should Jose choose another password?" 63.6% responded, "JoseSoccer uses his name and doesn't use symbols or numbers". 18.2% said, "JoseSoccer is too long". 13.6% responded that "JoseSoccer is hard to remember". Finally, 4.5% said, "Jose likes basketball, too". I will use a sample of my convenience sample for qualitative data analysis. I plan to use Flipgrid recordings to interview students about digital citizenship and their online usage. Stay tuned...that part is still to come. P.S. I apologize for not attaching the last three pie chart images. I had a very difficult time getting the image app to work within the body of my text. I will continue to work on this but I got to a level of frustration tonight that is not worth elevating my blood pressure. This week blog about what you believe you need to complete your research cycles this semester.
This experience thus far brings me mixed feelings. On one hand, I am loving the deep conversations, the enriching reading and podcasts, challenging my creativity and thinking brain, and meeting with colleagues and professors each week. To be honest, I admittedly embrace the stressful challenge. On the other hand, I feel like I accomplish so much each week but then I realize how much more I need to do. In order for me to maintain my sanity, I have to write lists and cross off what I have accomplished. The past few months, the list has been long and accomplished. Now that I am writing my new list, I am overwhelmed again. So, I am going to go with the flow. This has been a successful week. I have submitted my IRB, I have scheduled my Lit. Review with Amy, and I have started my research for my ARP. I am pleased to report that not only have I created all of my google form surveys and questionnaires, but I have sent them out to my colleagues at Snow Elementary, and I have given my students the general information survey and the pre-assessment. My next step is to teach a digital citizenship lesson next week. I plan on teaching 2 lessons a week because of the time crunch. I originally was thinking one a week, on Wednesday's when I have all of my students together, but I don't think this schedule is feasible due to schedule constraints. I am excited about the lessons because this is the fun part. I am looking forward to using the Digital Citizenship lessons through CommonSense.org. I think my students will love the interactive lessons and the new activities. Throughout the lessons, I will give my students short quizzes to collect data. Following the conclusion of the lessons, I will give my students the post-assessment to see what they have learned. Stay tuned... What's on my mind this week? Well, I am still overwhelmed by all the research, organization, literature review material and information, and creating surveys so I can complete my IRB. However, I feel a little better than the previous week. I was able to create my parent survey, my teacher survey, a student information questionnaire and my pre/post assessments. I have to say I felt a huge weight off my shoulders when I emailed them to Dr. Craig for suggestions. She has since returned them and now I need to do a few edits. It makes me feel like I am getting something done. However, that is the ironic part. Even though I feel accomplished with this task, it is only the beginning. Now I need to begin the actual work.
First, I plan to send out my parent permission slips this week. I have to wait to get the English version translated to Spanish. Dr. Redmond recommended a former Touro Alum to translate it. I have since emailed it to him and he is working on it. I hope to have it back this week so I can get them mailed. Second, I need to submit my completed IRB to Dr. Craig. Depending on how quickly I receive the translated consent form, I may need to adjust some dates on my IRB. I also have a couple "holes" that I need to fill in before submitting it to Dr. Craig. Next, I would like to give my students the information questionnaire so I can gather a little background information. Simultaneously to this, I would like to get my teacher survey and parent survey out. I am going to send the teacher survey through gmail using Google Forms, but I would like to try to do a Parent Square for the parent survey. Amy is sending her consent forms through Parent Square, and I thought that was a genius idea. Unfortunately, I already addressed all my addresses (times 2 because I am sending the parents a self-addressed and stamped envelope) so I think I will commit to snail mail. Once I have my consent forms returned, I would like to gather my first round of data which is in the form of a pre-assessment. I look forward to seeing how they answer these questions. I expect that they may not know too much of the information which is good because that validates my hypothesis that we need to "teach" digital citizenship and BEST lessons. Then, I will teach some digital citizenship lessons that have embedded SEL lessons through CommonSense.org. I figured why reinvent the wheel if CommonSense.org has already created great lessons. I may enhance them a bit with some additional SEL lessons. However, I have not made it that far yet. Finally, I will give my students the post-assessment and analyze the before and after results. I hope the results are what I expect. I think the students will really enjoy the lessons and the break from our regular "Math and Language Arts" lessons. I expect that we will have some fun and I am looking forward to it! This week we were tasked with exploring Touro University's library. I spent quite a bit of time researching keywords of my driving question. I found several articles relating to my topic of exploration. I printed off 5 different research articles but found three of them to be more relevant to my area of study. The image below, titled "Community of Inquiry" is a framework created by D.R. Garrison, T. Anderson, and W. Archer (The First Decade of the Community of Inquiry Framework: A Retrospective, 2009) establishes "three types of presence necessary for online students to have a positive educational experience: social presence, teaching presence and cognitive presence" (Garrison et al, 2000). The article titled, "Using VoiceThread to Create Community in Online Learning" is written by Peggy M. Delmas. This case study and its statistics was not relevant for my age group of study but the underlying foundation of "Community of Inquiry" is relevant for all students' distance learning experiences. She describes all three of these experiences into detail. Together, Social Presence, Cognitive Presence and Teaching Presence create a "sense of community". Research has established that a sense of community enhances student learning (Garrison et al. 2000; Palloff and Pratt 2007; Rovai 2002). Palloff and Pratt stated that community is "the essence of distance learning" (1999, p.163). Delmas states that "As early as 2002, Rovai wrote about the need for more attention to community building in distance education programs, emphasizing that learners were attracted to and retained through a sense of community". The second article I reviewed this week is titled, "Encouraging the positive use of technology through community engagement" by Leanne Lester, Donna Cross, Debbie Terrelinck, Sarah Falconer and Laura Thomas. It explores the transition of students from primary to secondary schools. They explain what it means to transition successfully versus an unsuccessful transition. An unsuccessful transition can have "long term, negative impacts on their future success and development" (Lester, Cross, Terrelinck, Falconer & Thomas, 2016). One of the greatest concerns among students, parents and professional staff is cyberbullying. Cyberbullying has broad social, emotional and mental health implications for your people (Campbell, 2005). In addition, cyberbully is a greater threat than bullying behavior because it has the "potential to reach a much wider audience than merely close friends within the school or neighbourhood, with one e-mail, text or social media message able to be sent to everyone in the school within a matter of seconds (Patchin and Hinduja, 2006).
Finally, the most useful article I read this week is titled, "Exploring Cyberbullying among Primary Children in Relation to Social Support, Loneliness, Self-Efficacy, and Well-Being" by Dorit Olenik-Shemesh and Tali Heiman. Their study included 398 Israeli students aged 10 - 12. 20.4% of primary school children indicated a significant prevalence of cyber-victimization. "Cyber-victimization was correlated with low social support, low self-efficacy, low subjective well-being, and high sense of loneliness" (Olenik-Shemesh & Heiman, vol. 3, No. 5). Cyberbullying (CB) shares some common traits with traditional bullying but it has unique traits, also. For example, the cyberbully can be anonymous, and the internet creates rapid communication to a wide range audience. The bulk of research of cyberbullying has been among adolescents. There is a need for research in the area of younger children. Monks, Robinson, & Worlidge state, "the rapid growth of internet use among younger children has created a need for research on cyberbullying among them as well" (2012). With that being said, there is a need to examine the social-psychological aspects that affect the younger population of cyberbullying. I believe the key for prevention is intervention. This leads me to my driving question. I am exploring the need for PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) and Digital Citizenship for distant learning within students between the ages of 7 and 10. After reading the aforementioned articles, I believe I am on the right path to support students' social-emotional learning. Currently my epistemologies about respectful and safe online behavior is that students need to be taught how to behave online. There is a need for students to consider other people's feelings over the internet, and not sit behind a screen and act cruelly because you feel protected. Human kindness is not always visible...it is how it makes you feel. In order to prove belief versus opinion, I need to know what percentages of students, under the age of 13, are using social media with and without parent permission. This will make my case that students under the age of 13 should be taught how to engage in social media and how to use the internet responsibly because parents are not monitoring their online usage. Steve Johnson states, “It is becoming our duty as educators in the 21st century to guide our students towards responsible use of social media” (Edutopia, Making the case for social media in schools). I will need to create surveys, and gather information from both students and their parents. Also, I will use Snow Elementary School's Healthy Kids Survey to support my theory that students do not feel safe online. In addition, I need to contact NVUSD to gather data regarding BEST practices and how BEST implementation in the classrooms has resulted in positive behavior changes. I will need to research “already created” social - emotional lessons to add to the protocol I would like to create. Finally, I will need to contact online companies, such as CommonSense.org and PBIS websites, to gather data results pertaining to why there is a need for digital citizenship and BEST (Building Effective School Together) lessons in our online classrooms. I have a lot of work ahead of me but I am excited to get moving on my action research. |
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May 2021
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