Teaching and Learning with Testa

 It's been two weeks since I posted about learning about action research.  I have decided on a question based upon not being in a classroom currently and reflecting upon weaknesses of my teaching CS.  I felt I would love to learn more about teaching cybersecurity.  I don't have enough knowledge to do this well, and I always fumble.  I also think that students need to understand the fields that can be involved in cybersecurity and that it is not just about hacking.   When I have students complete GoCyberStart, I know I am no help.  I have even struggled to complete them.  I need to get better at this, now is the time.   My research question is: How do I design an inquiry-based unit on cybersecurity for students to understand the impacts on their lives? This will provide me with a chance to determine what is essential for students to know about cybersecurity, learn more about cybersecurity, and an opportunity for action research as a teacher who is not in the classroom right now.

  My next set of classes has started.  We are reading The Reflective Educator’s Guide to Classroom Research in one class, and Chapter 1 mentions starting an inquiry journal.  The book is about doing inquiry-based research or active research in your classroom.  It discusses the importance of intentionally writing down the observations of the class (Dana and Yendol-Hoppey, 2020).  This makes sense, given that you have a lab, research, engineering notebook that needs to be done if you are doing scientific research.  These are taken seriously as the documentation.  I think teachers should be doing this as well.  I thought this would be a great place to my inquiry journal and record my thoughts.  My hope of learning about inquiry-based research is to do more research in my classroom.  I want to use data in my classroom to drive my teaching methodologies and maybe publish (One of these days, I will write about how much I fear writing).  Even if I don’t publish, I would like to use my re