Update on Action Research Project: EDLD 5326 Week 5!

It has been a few months since I last checked in back in May but I spent a good chunk of June working on my action research project first draft for my 6th class. I'm currently in my 9th class and the end of my program is quickly approaching me. While I still would like to do an additional revision to my action research project, I will be finishing up my abstract this fall. Below is an update to my action research plan as requested in Week 5 of my EDLD 5326: Action Research Project Title: Plascotrac and its Effects on School Attendance Blog URL: http://travispatocka.blogspot.com/ Number of AR Project Documented Hours: 28 hours working directly with faculty on software instruction, diagnosis, training and teaching that I lead. Hours spent on research, first and second draft, reading and revising (over 40 hours). I spent 7 days (7 to 8 hours) in June working on the most recent draft that is present on my website and blog. This time was not included in the documented 28 hours, nor the prior time spent in research. Total time invested, close to 100 hours over the last 12 months. AR Project Summary (at least 250 words): I began my internship project in October of 2012 after several brainstorming sessions with my building principal to create a list of possible topics. We covered everything from looking at more parental involvement in the school to the possibility of hosting an on-site day care center at the high school. As I needed to make technology a part of the focus of my action research study, we decided on a piece of software our building was going to be testing for our district. This program, called Plascotrac, was installed in August of 2012 and was up and running literally the Friday before school was to start. The level of understanding of the program by our front end office assistants was functional, yet what we really wanted to discover from my research was whether or not the software would deliver as the company had promised in their research, as well as any additional features that could be used to encourage higher attendance figures. I began my research looking into just how Plascotrac functioned, how it would actually boost attendance and what features and options the program offered in order to save time and paperwork with more traditional methods of attendance taking. Even more importantly the idea of student absence, truancy and why students continue to show up late for school was investigated as one of the features of Plascotrac was how it was able to alert administrators early on to quickly get them in contact with students. By finding out why students were late and focusing on the problem early, in many situations the problem could be resolved. It was the highly detailed, yet easy to generate and easy to read programs that Plascotrac produced that helped administrators quickly follow up on student absence. My data was actually sourced from several sources as I felt I needed both qualitative and quantitative forms to balance out my research. I documented monthly attendance figures in a Google spreadsheet from the prior year with the current year and compared those figures in order to see if significant gains in attendance would be possible due to the newly installed Plascotrac software. My quantitative data pointed to an increase, albeit incremental, yet consistently each month with higher daily attendance after Placotrac had been used. This data was also shared with the public at a presentation that I made to our school board in May of 2013 on my preliminary findings. Other quantitative data was sourced from my literature review of school attendance because not only would Plascotrac tell us who was in school, but also the research that I investigated would explain why students choose not to be in school and how schools alleviated truancy and absenteeism with both traditional and technological means. My qualitative data consisted of interviews that I conducted with front office administration and a survey that was administered to front office assistants based on their experiences with the Plascotrac program. I am in the process of final revisions of my action research project paper, mainly formatting and citations as well as making sure the paper contains the entire action research process within what I have written. I have to write my abstract as I was informed to hold off until all of my research is complete and I plan to revise and check all data and data sources before my paper is dude. This entire process of action research, in my opinion, can have a tremendous impact on how you would make decisions on the instruction in your school. You learn where to look for the data, how to interpret it, and present as well as explain it to your stakeholders. You also come in close contact with the administrators in your building and district and learn to appreciate how wonderful it is to have such hard working individuals take an interest in your work as well as want to cooperate to help you succeed. I am beyond thankful for how generous all of those that I have worked with on this action research project have been and at times they had gone out of their way to supply me with the data that I needed to compose my report. The entire experience has been life changing and I do feel that I have matured professionally as I have learned how to do real, valid, research. Finally, I have invested considerable time in my research, readings, and paper production and have had to make little, it any changes from my preliminary reports. Good, constant communication with my building principal has ensured that I present updates on my data, research and findings to my building principal/mentor, as I wanted to maintain constant transparency about my work. In fact, I have found that through my research on the Plascotrac program, I have become somewhat of the go-to person when questions about the features and software should come up and have led several training session on the programs features and use with front office staff. This goes way beyond my initial beliefs that I would simply research data and learn to use the program. This additional portion of my program has also been tremendously rewarding.