If there was any doubt in my mind that I’m going through with this project, this week I made an official commitment to present at Lasell’s Connected Learning Symposium. This event is kind of a big deal. It’s a showcase of all the work that people on campus have been doing all semester. I will be presenting on my experience as a research assistant and maybe even some of our early findings. I had a hard time figuring out a title but knew it would come to me and it did: “Diary of A Research Assistant: Thoughts and Findings From An Urban Educational Case Study” (look out for my presentation!).
For my assignment this week, I listened to an interview by the school’s principal and the art teacher, who is one of the highest user of Universal Design for Learning in her classroom. One of the things I noticed, that kept coming up in the interview, was these teachers had so many tools at their disposal, but still found that they were running into problems implementing UDL or simply making their students pay attention. This is certainly not for lack of trying, but it just goes to show that technology can’t solve everything, nor should it.
The second half of my work this week was to look through the software we’ll be uploading our data into, which is mostly in the form of interview transcripts, pictures, lessons plans, and agendas. Upon looking through the overwhelming amount of information and options, I had an important realization that I’ll have to keep this in mind throughout this whole process: I don’t and won’t ever know everything about this research. I am not at the level of understanding my professor is at right now, but that’s not the point. The point is for me to ask questions, gain as much knowledge and experience as I can, and give my perspective on our findings.