Update of Action Research

My goal in this research is to determine if international connectivity to other classrooms will promote appreciation for other cultures within my students. Our community is quite homogeneous, so this should prove very interesting. My first task at hand was to join Skype and begin searching for other classrooms with which to Skype. I also learned from one of my fellow classmates that Twitter is a great tool for connecting with other teachers internationally. Skype actually offers one year of free service to teachers which is perfect as this is the amount of time I will need it to prove whether it is effective. If so, I can show the results to my administrators and request to continue next year. I have found several classrooms so far in places such as France, Egypt, South Africa, Poland, etc. I have planned which topics of study to correlate with other classrooms, but I am remaining flexible as it is possible to acquire a new skyping connection as the year progresses. The first step in beginning with the students was to create a survey for their parents. I researched the best way to create a valid survey and used Survey Monkey to do so. I am in the process of acquiring releases from the parents to conduct the survey with them. I will assess my student’s through discussion and interview based on curriculum. Once I establish a baseline for beliefs, I can incorporate the Skype Lessons in conjunction with our course work and begin to monitor change if any in my students’ ideology.