Educational Leaders Using Blogs

I believe that educational leaders can use blogs in many effective ways.  Administrators can use blogs to communicate with their staffs offering information to be discussed among the group. 

I also think that blogs would be a great tool for teachers to communicate with parents.  There could be a daily or weekly blog about what is going on in class.  The blog could offer links that would support the curriculum being studied.  Notices of importance could also be communicated through a blog.

Blogs could also be used with educational leaders to form Professional Learning Communities.  Small groups of educators could study more effective teaching and learning strategies. 

Action Research and Its Use

Action Research seems to be the way for teachers and administrators to hold themselves accountable for what they are teaching and how they are teaching.  It is a name given to what successful teachers are doing already.  Successful teachers continually evaluate the students by looking at how they are responding to the learning opportunities in their classrooms.  It allows for educators to constantly evaluate whether the way they are teaching is effective with the students.  This research gives them a systematic avenue to explore data, research different ideas, implement ideas that might work and then evaluate with new data as to whether that way of teaching would be beneficial to the success of the students he or she is teaching. 

Action Research is grounded in what is actually happening in the classroom or if you are an administrator in what is happening in your school setting.  This kind of research allows for collaborative decision making and gives participants an ownership in change that might need to happen. 

Principals that use Action Research are setting examples for their teachers and their students.  Principals are setting the stage for best practices to flourish on his or her campus among the teachers, staff and students.  They are also enabling the success for learning through this research on their campus.