I have to admit that when I saw that I was going to be taken a course called EDLD 5301 – Research, my heart and jaw dropped.  In all honesty, I was dreading it and was really worried about writing a research paper.  Much to my surprise, I really enjoyed the class and felt a sigh of relief as we got started on the work during Week 1.  I was very in to it and enjoyed doing the data driven research and I look forward to continuing my action research plan for the remainder of my course work here at Lamar.  It is much more interesting and enjoyable to do research when it is something that you actually care about.  The lectures were good, but I feel like I got much more out of the web conferences.  During this course was the first time that I had every logged on to a web conference.  The readings that we were asked to do were always relevant to the assignments and work that we were asked to do.  I also enjoyed the fact that the readings were so direct and straight to the point.  I hate receiving a reading assignment that is long and very wordy; except for small parts of it, irrelevant for me to spend the time reading.  I never once felt that way with any of the assigned reading in this course.  I love learning new things and so to do the electronic searches for my research was very educational as well as entertaining. The activities assigned for this course were very reasonable and served a specific purpose, which was to teach us how to do action research and how to reflect upon the research that we have done by using the five indicators that we learned about this week, to ensure that we have addressed everything the way that we should.  I think the discussion board assignments are such a great way for us to be able to express our ideas, read those of our peers and communicate with one another on ideas and feedback that we have to our classmates’ ideas. I have never really been the technology type person and was very apprehensive and nervous about making a blog.  I am so thankful that we were asked to do this.  It is a great tool for communicating and expressing your ideas, as well as receiving feedback from your readers. I enjoyed making the blog and was very pleased with the way that it turned out.  I plan to continue posting to my blog even after this class has finished.  I also shared the link to my blog with my principal and invited her to check it out if she ever gets time. I am actually pretty proud of myself for creating a blog and keeping up with it.  I know that blogging came about quite some time ago, but in all honesty, I would have never gotten involved with reading them and especially not designing my own, had it not been for this course. I am thankful for all that I have learned and know that I will continue to apply this knowledge throughout my course work at Lamar as well as throughout the years on my principal journeys.  I sincerely appreciate the fact that Dr. Abshire was so straight forward with her answers and instructions throughout the duration of this course as well as during our web conferences that she conducted.  Thank you to a wonderful staff of professors and instructional associates for making this class that I thought was going to be so dreadful such a wonderful and fun learning experience.  This course has influenced me beyond belief and I plan to use these strategies and knowledge that I have acquired the past 5 weeks for years to come in my career.