Qualitative Research Seminar Tonight

The GSA sponsored Dr. Bobby JeanPierre to present a short seminar on conducting qualitative research. It was exactly what I needed at exactly the right time.

She reminded us to do some things I already knew to do, reminded me of some things I should already have considered, and gave an idea for a matrix. She described a matrix aligning research methods (i.e., interviews), purpose, and research questions. She suggested keeping this matrix visible so as not to go off track duing the research.

I'm going to need to use her handout to review my proposal before my defense. The walls of my study will be completely covered with handouts, reminders, and mind maps before long.

NovaMind - Mind Mapping for MacOS X

NovaMind - Mind Mapping for MacOS X

I was reading Creswell's book on research design. He suggests making a map of the literature before starting the lit review. I love my Inspiration diagrams, but have become a bit dissatisfied that complex maps become such a jumbled mess. I've looked at several different software applications that do mind mapping or concept mapping. The deal breaker, until now, has been that I can't live without the ability to toggle back and forth between outline and diagram views.

Today I learned about Nova-Mind - an application that just might unseat Inspiration as my organizing tool of choice. Nova-Mind lets me move between diagram and outline views, but there's more. It works with project management software, lets me use my iPhoto library, create flexible branches, and export to a variety of formats including web pages, PowerPoint, Keynote, and a host of graphic file formats.

At $79, less a 30% educational discount, I think I might have found a new favorite tool. Thanks to Heather and Andy for this discovery!

Portfolio for Doctoral Candidacy

It won't come as a surprise that I've been doing a lot of reading about portfolios lately. Last night I picked up a couple of books I ordered from Barnes and Noble. One was Situating Portfolios: Four Perspectives. It's edited by Kathleen Blake Yancey and Irwin Weiser. I've only read one paper from it- Portfolo for Doctoral Candidacy: A Veritable Alternative by Janice M Heiges. I wish I had found it before I did mine, although I don't know that it would have made much difference. In this paper, she writes about her experience in the early 1990s creating a paper portfolio. Ten years later, my experience was quite similar.

Web Collaborator - Free web-based collaboration software

Web Collaborator - Free web-based collaboration software

I can't wait to use this for an honest-to-goodness authentic purpose. I've already set up a collaboration space with my roommate - just to show her how cool it is. She immediately realized she could try to use it for one of her projects, and she's not the techy type. I'm just sure my dissertation committee will be able to use this as I move along.

Thanks, Dr. Baumbach for showing it in your presentation at FETC today. Of course, it'll probably be a VERY long night as I visit tooooo many of the links. This is the first time I've used my new Blog This! - another nifty thing I picked up today. Oh, will the fun never end?

Keeping Track of an Idea

Today, I was reading a Passion for Learning at Will Richardson's Weblogg-ed News. He included said this:

"Blogs aren't just technology. They're social studies (citizenship, collaboration, politics, geography, democracy, history), art (graphic design, video, photo, music), English (writing, reading, editing, researching), technology (programming, software, peripherals), mathematics (algebra (i.e resizing), geometry, statistics), world languages, business, etc. I learn about all of those subjects in the context of my passion. Which is why I've said all along, this isn't about blogging, it's about learning."

I wanted to preserve this thought for the folks on February 19.

Threads

When I was still teaching music, my chorus sang a beautiful song comparing life to a ball of mixed up colored strings. Near the end, the singer tells a story of a young man trying to decide between two possible loves. He asks his mother for help with this very important decision. In the story, the mother meets each girl and tosses her a tangled ball of string. One girl works on untangling the knots and eventually gives in to her frustration, attacking it with scissors. The other girl gently works out all of the knots and tangles, one at a time, eventually sorting them by color into neat piles. The young man's mother suggests the second girl would be a more suitable wife because she is more likely to have the patient spirit she will need to work through the problems life is sure to throw their way.

It's been more than ten years since I've thought of that song. It seems the lit review process brought it to mind again. I started reading a literature review paper Joanne Carney presented at AERA 2004. Then I started following some of the threads she had in her paper. One thread led me to Vygotsky and mediation by tools. That led me to Activity Theory, which led me to Engestrom's work. When I went back to Joanne's lit review, I ended up in an online database hunting down another reference. Serendipity! That article was in a special issue devoted to teaching portfolios, so I've started reading all of those, too. They send me off in other directions......and on it goes.

For now, I've decided that I need to use more than just EndNote to keep track of two of the major threads. I've started a matrix for methodology and another for theory. I imagine I'll refine these as I move on but those are my starting threads and this is my plan to sort them out.

Song lyrics (as far as I can remember them):
Sometimes my life is like a ball of mixed up colored strings
So full of knots and tangles, I just can't do a thing
and when I try to sort it out I realize that I'm
gonna have to take it one string at a time.

One by one, each shining colored thread,
Blue by blue, green by green, and red by red.
‘Til the colors come untangled and the knots are all undone,
I’m gonna have to take it one string at a time.

UPDATE: Ian dropped by today (11/29/05) and added the full set of lyrics.

One By One (author uknown)

Sometimes my life is like a ball
of mixed up colored string
So full of knots and tangles
I just can't do a thing
And when I go to sort it out
I realize that I'm
Gonna have to take it
One string at a time

Chorus:
One by one, each shining colored thread
Blue by blue, green by green and red by red
Til the colors come untangled
And the knots are all undone
One by one, one by one

The mail I should have answered
The friends I ought to call
The gifts I haven't given
I just can't do it all
It lies on my horizon
like a mountain I must climb
And I'll have to take it
One thing at a time

Chorus

The songs I haven't finished
Unwritten and forlorn
Are stacked on my piano
Just waiting to be born
The tangled strings of melody
The ragged scraps of rhyme
I'll just have to spin out
One song at a time

One by one, each shining colored thread
Blue by blue, green by green and red by red
Til the colors come untangled
And the knots are all undone
One by one, one by one, one by one.

What does ETD format really mean?

Over the last several days, I've started on my dissertation proposal in earnest. I've been reading and reading. Much of my current reading is chosen to inform my methodology, but I go off in new directions. I'll almost certainly do interviews and then transcribe them for analysis. Other dissertations include screen shots of the portfolios that have been analyzed. My PDF copy doesn't show those screen shots very well, though. I can't tell what the author is talking about.

Excerpts from interviews are turned into text. This is, according to the dissertation author, to enable readers to hear the voices of the participants. The page remains silent - I only see words.

These things made me start to wonder about the tools I would use for my own dissertation. I'm required to submit an electronic dissertation. How far do I take that? Do I merely write my five chapters in the same way those before me have? Or do I incorporate the audio from my participants, truly allowing their voices to be heard? And what about videotapes? They are a richer channel than audio, conveying information no audio ever will. Those before me have static screenshots of interactive eportfolios. Can I include and link to the eportfolios - or copies of them? I know how to do all of these things. It is technically possible...even feasible.

But can I do it?

Will the IRB approve videotaped interviews? If they haven't considered the implications of the ETD, they will need to confront it eventually. (Do I want to be the catalyst for that?) If I get past the IRB, what will happen as I submit to UMI? Will professors accept the idea that the dissertation is more than the five chapter bound book it's been up to this point? (I think mine will) And what about a submission to UMI? Are there file size limits? How do future readers get my dissertation? Is it a zipped file? Will future readers have the players they need to read it? Will anyone want to read it? I wonder if reading is the right term for what they will do.

Should I do it?
If I videotape parts of my interactions with participants, how much would the technology impact the interactions? Would the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

Someone (other than me) should do their own dissertation about how the requirement for electronic thesis and dissertation submissions impacts what is produced as a thesis/dissertation. That will be an interesting analysis.

Do I want to push the envelope? I need to think about this.

Testing a Flickr Picture

quilt,
originally uploaded by BeckyF.

I set up a Flickr account to see if I could figure out how to post photos. My friend is making this quilt for my nephew. She let me help cut out the scales. She recognizes my (lack of) talent in the domestic arts.

Testing an Audio Blog post

Andy Carvin has been creating some tutorials on audio-blogging and of course, podcasting is all the rage, too. When I saw that I could easily set up my blog to do a podcast from a phone, I had to give it a try. Even those who are slow typists can do an audio post using a cell phone!

How cool is this?!?