It’s a dirty little secret but lots of people feel this way. Goals, or worse yet, New Year Resolutions, can be really destructive. I don’t care how carefully they are set, I’ve been down the whole SMART route, they don’t help me. I’m not daft enough to think I’m unique in this. I know the same is true for some other people. Your mileage may vary. Of course. I am not you.

For me then, I had to find a different way. I still need to make progress. I even need to (cringes) get things done! So how to do it? I’m going to continue with what I’ve been doing for the last six months and work on Action Logging.

ActionLogr - the antidote to To-Do Lists

I’m going to combine that with setting a word for the year. This is an idea I toyed with last year but then forgot to actually do

Setting a word works better than resolutions for some people and Quinn (Choosing Your Word) has written a lovely post that explains exactly why that’s the case. I’ll just quote a little bit from her post:

The word should be limber and supple, without any stiffness of punishment, or hashmarks to measure yourself with and find yourself coming up short.

Sounds perfect. I’m going to do a bit of reflection and see what I come up with.

It’s been a while <cough – over a year!> since I posted anything here but I’ve decided this is still the best the place for reflections on my ongoing first person action research.

Action logging prevents a downward spiral developing

For the last 5 weeks I have been keeping an Action Log . I’ve gone back to this practice, which I first used during my degree, several times over the last few years and always found it helpful. The basic idea is to keep a record of completed ‘actions’ rather than to focus on the overwhelming thing that a to-do-list can become. I’ve a poor record with to-do-lists that goes way back so I tend to do almost anything to avoid having one. However, flying without any compass can be deadly. I find it far too easy to get to the end of a week & have no clue what I’ve actually achieved. Being of a slightly negative turn of mind (stop laughing at the back!) I therefore assume that I did nothing and feel really rubbish. My ‘inner critic’ has a field day and I become too demoralised to get anything done. Not good.

Enter the Action Log. I know from previous experience that action logging can be used to get me back on track. So this summer seemed to be a good moment to re-visit it.

I’m going to use Gibbs Reflective Cycle in a fairly informal way to consider my month.

Description – What happened?

I started off using the Notes ap on my iPod Touch to record my day’s actions each evening and this worked fine for the first 10 days. It helped me to keep things short and avoid going into huge amounts of detail. I then decided that it wasn’t useful as a long term method as there was no easy way to access the data. I found a convoluted way of transferring everything I had so far to the mac and carried on using Voodoo Pad to record each day’s actions.

Daily actions varied wildly with some days having as many as six and others with only one or even none. Some things recorded as actions really weren’t, leaving  a total of 4 ‘working’ days with no actions at all. On the other hand after 2 of the 4 ‘non-working’ days  large actions (substantial blog posts) were recorded later in the evening. Otherwise actions tended to happen in the mid morning or very early evening.

My average is 1.5 per day for all actions but only 0.7 for substantial actions.

Feelings – what do I think and feel about it?

My initial feeling is one of surprise. After all this time mostly away from formal job structures I seem to have no clear demarcation between working and not working. As soon as I write that I think “Of course not, why would you? You and most of the rest of the world!” I wonder if this is what I want. Is this helpful? Will it move me forward?

Ironically I also feel that there really aren’t enough large actions. Although my average is 1.5 per day many of those are small. The average for large substantial posts is much lower at 0.7. This makes me feel uncomfortable and has my inner critic jumping up and down shouting “Lazy!”

I’m feeling that I’ve slightly fooled myself into believing that time spent on social media, specifically Facebook Pages and Twitter, are actions, all be it small ones. Discussions with Andy and re-reading the definition of actions suggest not. Sigh!

It’s good to be reminded that mid morning and early evening are potentially creative times. It is also worth remembering that late evening after a day of relaxation can be a very good time for me to get work done. I feel very positive about this.

Evaluation – What’s good and bad

Good:

• The process has produced worthwhile insights
• I’m feeling better about my work patterns
• I can see a way forward
• Overall I feel the Action Logging is proving useful and I will continue.

Bad:

• Too much time spent on social media masked as actions
• A deep confusion between work and non-work times  leading to too much ‘pottering’ and disappearing down rabbit holes on line.
• Too few substantial actions.

Analysis – What sense can I make of it

As ever Action Logging is reassuring. I have a strong suspicion that just the act of keeping a log makes me do things so that I have something to write down.

Working through the month’s log I have identified an underlying issue, a lack of direction, a tendency to react rather than act.This connects to the ease by which things like RSS feeds and email provide distractions.

Conclusion – what else could I have done

Protected myself from email & other distractions.

Clarified what constituted an action sooner

Made sure that I was at my laptop at the times I am most likely to be productive and was not checking email, writing morning pages or even doing yesterday’s action log!

Action Plan – What will I do differently next time?

1. I’ve already started a ‘no email on Wednesdays’ policy to provide one day with fewer distractions. My intention is to boost the number of substantial actions taken on that day I will report on this next month.

2. Find a better way of recording actions. I am pretty sure there are things I did do that were not recorded in the log. Using my browser history as an aide memoir is one of Andy’s suggestions. I will experiment with moving my logging time to first thing in the morning.

3. Use what I know (and forgot!) about the most productive times for me to make sure I am available to work at those times.

4. Remember that a draft post is NOT an action however long it might be!

5. Limit my social media and Rss usage to early morning, after lunch and some evenings.

That’s enough for now I think. I’m not going to reflect on the reflective process. No one is marking this

What?

State the problem -

I’m only a very part time educator these days. When I do work in education it is with adults and it is very limited. Most blogs that I read or comment on are primary school teachers. After 18 months out of school I’ve lost my common ground with them. I thought I’d find adult education bloggers to be my peers and provide a new community. I haven’t. They are either not there or I can’t find them. It’s not like I can just use university bloggers either – their issues are as different to mine as the primary school teachers.

Mostly now what I do is write: blogs; articles; wiki pages. Some about education, some not. I like to write. I enjoy it.I love the whole gamut of writing from simple factual things about dates and times to long, in depth, opinion pieces. Mostly it’s the sort of writing that combines words and images. Heh – I wasn’t going to get less visual was I?

Put simply then, the problem is that what I read (blogs and twitter) and what I write about (and reflect on) here does not improve my practice. My practice has changed.

So What?

Why is this important? Well, it’s important because I still want to take actions and improve. It’s just that what I do has changed. I still want to use a blog to help me do that. I know it’s a useful tool and I want to use it.

Now What?

Now I get to re-invent my RSS reader and this blog. If you come with me on this journey you are very welcome. If this is where we part company, thanks for being around and goodbye.

I’m going to use these insight to plan radical changes to the blog over the next couple of weeks. It might get a bit bumpy along the way. My focus is going to shift to writing and reading in all it’s forms.

So here’s a few questions for anyone who’s still here after this announcement.

Who writes really well?

Who should I be reading?

Progress to date:

1. Audited my own commenting behaviour,
2. Commented on a new blog,
3. Installed a blog comment tracking service,
4. Asked a question in a comment,
5. Commented on a post I didn’t agree with
6. Responded to another commenter on a blog post.

Task 7 is to identify 3 things I’ve learned in the challenge so far. I’m to think about what I’ve learned about myself as a commenter, what I’ve learned about the act of commenting, and how I think my recent commenting activities have impacted me as commenter and a blogger. The idea is to quickly identify the significant learning. Familiar and not all together comfortable territory from Ultraversity days First the:

Reflection

I learned that I am a reluctant to post comments part because I worry about what people will think of me. I think I sometimes misjudge the tone of what I write and there can be cultural differences that make global blog commenting more difficult. Yet I have no problem commenting on lots of flickr photos, engaging in conversations about the images and their meanings, implications etc. I am more confident in that environment. I also discovered I’m quite likely to respond to a blog post from a contact on twitter rather than on their blog.

Recurring themes? Feeling safe, comfortable and ownership

About commenting in general I’ve learned that it’s harder than I thought. It’s given me an insight into why people might be reluctant to comment on my blogs. I read so many things and am interested and enjoy them but I still only respond to a small minority. It’s made me more aware of the need to get a response from the blogger, to be made welcome and comfortable even if I’m disagreeing with them. Hard! See the point above. I might just face the fact that avoiding conflict is a deep seated personality trait and stay in my comfort zone.

Recurring themes – difficulties, balance, conflict avoidance

Now for some quantitative data:

There seems to be a 10% responding to 90% reading balance now compared to 2% – 98% before the challenge.

Ok – that’s pleasing This is partly because I culled my feeds and removed a lot of stuff I skimmed and wasn’t relevant to my current needs and interests. Even so I think it’s progress. None of these comments were just “me too” posts and I tried to add something and engage with the poster and other commenters in all of them.

However – I still commented on 3 times as many flickr photos as blogs! These comments were almost never of the ‘lovely photo’ variety

Themes – progress, engagement, visual stimuli

Significant Learning

I avoid even minor conflict – even on blogs,
Visual stimulus is important to me
I can change my commenting habits with a small amount of effort

Progress to date:

1. Audited my own commenting behaviour,
2. Commented on a new blog,
3. Installed a blog comment tracking service,
4. Asked a question in a comment,
5. Commented on a post I didn’t agree with
6. Responded to another commenter on a blog post.

Task 7 is to identify 3 things I’ve learned in the challenge so far. I’m to think about what I’ve learned about myself as a commenter, what I’ve learned about the act of commenting, and how I think my recent commenting activities have impacted me as commenter and a blogger. The idea is to quickly identify the significant learning. Familiar and not all together comfortable territory from Ultraversity days First the:

Reflection

I learned that I am a reluctant to post comments part because I worry about what people will think of me. I think I sometimes misjudge the tone of what I write and there can be cultural differences that make global blog commenting more difficult. Yet I have no problem commenting on lots of flickr photos, engaging in conversations about the images and their meanings, implications etc. I am more confident in that environment. I also discovered I’m quite likely to respond to a blog post from a contact on twitter rather than on their blog.

Recurring themes? Feeling safe, comfortable and ownership

About commenting in general I’ve learned that it’s harder than I thought. It’s given me an insight into why people might be reluctant to comment on my blogs. I read so many things and am interested and enjoy them but I still only respond to a small minority. It’s made me more aware of the need to get a response from the blogger, to be made welcome and comfortable even if I’m disagreeing with them. Hard! See the point above. I might just face the fact that avoiding conflict is a deep seated personality trait and stay in my comfort zone.

Recurring themes – difficulties, balance, conflict avoidance

Now for some quantitative data:

There seems to be a 10% responding to 90% reading balance now compared to 2% – 98% before the challenge.

Ok – that’s pleasing This is partly because I culled my feeds and removed a lot of stuff I skimmed and wasn’t relevant to my current needs and interests. Even so I think it’s progress. None of these comments were just “me too” posts and I tried to add something and engage with the poster and other commenters in all of them.

However – I still commented on 3 times as many flickr photos as blogs! These comments were almost never of the ‘lovely photo’ variety

Themes – progress, engagement, visual stimuli

Significant Learning

I avoid even minor conflict – even on blogs,
Visual stimulus is important to me
I can change my commenting habits with a small amount of effort

Her new venture takes that work and extends it out to a wider audience:

Folk Fiddle lessons online

Learn OnLine 4 life and Laugh Out Loud 4 Life
Learn Folk Fiddle tunes by ear and and improve your aural skills, memory, musicianship, awareness of harmony, violin technique, appreciation of musical form and structure, and enjoy practical application making sense of music theory in a logical way. Most importantly though – have a great deal of fun and get involved in a really sociable activity!

Sarah’s work is always innovative and interesting. She provides a flavour of what people can expect:

A free course of online lessons

I have posted videos for the tune Trip To Matlock that you can access without charge so that you will be able to get an idea of what to expect.

Please would you give a donation to one of the charities suggested in the Trip to Matlock News Forum for the use of these videos. There is no need to sign in – just click on the blue i button to find out how to access.

The site is great for individuals or could be used by schools groups. Sarah’s charges are very reasonable and you’d certainly be getting expert coaching.

You don’t have to be the class teacher to initiate this sort of thing. If a TA or a Learning Mentor is prepared to see it though the teacher is often delighted to let them. It would make a lovely action research project. Note the exchange is of “stories, photographs or podcasts” so not too tricky, even better if your class is doing something like “The Travels of Barnaby Bear”.
There’s a flyer to download and print on Sylia’s blog and more details on the Teddy Bears Around the World Blog

Can you answer “NO” to all 5 questions?

* Do you put our names at the BEGINNING of directed questions? If you put names at the beginning of a question, the rest of us will tend to ignore your question, since you have already chosen who will do the answering for you! Wouldn’t you, too?

I can mostly answer No to this one, but it’s good to be reminded

* Do you ask “whole group” questions like, “Does everyone understand the difference between…?” Hope not, because it is simply an invitation for a chorus of “yes” responses and the 2 or 3 of us who do not understand probably would not let you know because, “everyone must have understood it but us!” Instead, ask, “Who would like for me to repeat those directions?”

Oh – yeah, I knew that but I’ve still caught myself doing it a couple of times

* Do you repeat student answers? If you do, then you’re teaching us not to listen to each other, because we know the answer will be repeated by you! Instead, try other responses such as “Tell us more,” or “Someone else?”

Ouch! Guilty as charged Need to watch this one!

* Are you always the “answer-giver” in class? If you turn our questions back to us, you will encourage us to do our own thinking and learn to answer our own questions. For example ask, “That is a good question. What do you think?” After giving us a chance to state an opinion, the question can then be directed to the class for discussion. At that point you can add your comments to ours.

Ok I get an A+ for this one, I’m smiling again:-)

* Do you practice less “wait time” for the slower students than you do for the smarter ones? Researchers have clearly demonstrated that teachers typically wait less than one second after asking a question before calling on a student, answer the question themselves, or make an additional comment! Increasing wait time results in dramatic improvements in the overall quality of class discussions.

I’ve been working on this one, counting up to twenty elephants in my head. Adults need thinking time too especially when English is their second language.

There’s lots more good stuff on this site.

What aids do you use to reflect on your teaching?

Like the web head I am the first thing I did was ask round in the TA forums for people’s impressions and experiences of the course. I got lots of helpful advice and encouragement and a great book list! However one of the main thing that they agreed on was that sometimes the tutors ‘waffle on’ about things that don’t seem very relevant to the evidence based assessment criteria. This instantly rang bells for me. I could be wrong but this may be a case of surface versus deep learning. The TAs want their ‘bit of paper’ and as stressed, busy people, they want to achieve it by doing ‘just enough’ work to get them through. The tutors though have other objectives, they want to produce rounded, competent TAs who are reflective about their work, apply theory to their practice etc. Is this starting to sound familiar to any one? Especially people at Ultraversity?

I have no idea how to resolve this at the moment but I think the key is in carefully structured assessment assignments that encourage a reflective attitude without overburdening the students. Oh, and finding a variety of ways of providing evidence for meeting the assessment criteria. Time to put the money where the mouth is! Watch out for a batch of blogging TAs!

Our ICT Cluster, Nelson City Schools, consists of nine city and rural schools; eight of which are primary and one which is an intermediate. We are in the first year of a three year professional development contract with the Ministry of Education.

Last week I interviewed our Cluster’s Director (and also my school Principal), Paul Potaka, and made a podcast on the action research process, reflection and development our ICT cluster has/is undergoing.

Paul’s contribution to the Time4Reflection Seminar is embedded below in podcast form… Sorry but I cannot locate the process diagrams that he references but it is still a very interesting interview in which you can see the journey our cluster has been on
…. oh, and you can also hear me struggling to produce my best “teacher voice” even though I have a cold!!!

Click here to get your own player.

I like the tools they’ve chosen to use to judge their success. Now I’d quite like them to start looking at children’s voice as well as student achievement. That feels like the riskiest thing to do but it’s also often the most powerful.