Writing About Writing
-
A big idea a day – today’s idea “idea technology”
Read more: A big idea a day – today’s idea “idea technology”Over the next month I’ll be doing a lot of reading. In order to prepare for my comprehensive exams I have more than 100 articles to read – I’m about half way through. As I read, I’m finding that I’m learning lots of really interesting things, and I find myself wishing I had an opportunity…
-
An open letter to academic publishers (and academics who publish)
Read more: An open letter to academic publishers (and academics who publish)I am a PhD student – I read a lot of academic articles and the occasional academic book. I have an iPad. I don’t print anything. I have a system in place that helps me keep all my reading organized. I believe that I am a pretty typical representative of the future of academics. Nothing…
-
Design-based research – it’s finally making sense!
Read more: Design-based research – it’s finally making sense!I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Design-based research as part of my preparation for comprehensive exams. My current plan for my thesis project involves the use of design-based research methodology to improve upon resources to support the adoption of iPad technology by higher education instructors. Until today, I didn’t complete grasp why I…
-
File (dis)-organization
Read more: File (dis)-organizationA friend asked me other day what I used to organize my files. There is irony in this question, if you saw what my hard drive looked like! I am completely file inept. I seem to be incapable of sticking to single file system. I forget where I filed things previously, or decide I want…
-
Do I “do” Social Media?
Read more: Do I “do” Social Media?This is my second article for our not-quite bi-weekly newsletter for Graduate Student in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. In my first post, I talked about Social Media and PhD Studies. The prompt for the second article is a follow up question, “Are you connected”? Here is what I had to…
-
Workflows – Annotating PDF Articles
Read more: Workflows – Annotating PDF ArticlesIn looking at activities to promote the adoption of iPads among faculty, it occurred to me that in order to help people appreciate the usefulness of the device, I need to do more than just recommend some apps that make my life easier. I also need to describe the workflow surrounding the apps. A while…
-
Flattr Me
Read more: Flattr MeI’m conducting a little experiment in social economics. I like the idea of crowd sourcing, and I like the idea of supporting people who are providing useful content on the web for free. I myself and working on some content (beyond this blog), and would like a way for those who appreciate the efforts to…
-
Academic blogging and self-plagiarism
Read more: Academic blogging and self-plagiarismI am apprenticing to be an academic (that is a fancy way of saying I’m a PhD student). I’m also a blogger. I started blogging before I started my PhD journey, so it only seems fitting that I would continue to blog. In looking at why some academics choose to blog, I discovered “the idea…
-
Social Media and PhD Studies
Read more: Social Media and PhD StudiesI’ve been ask to contribute to a bi-weekly newsletter for Graduate Students at the University of Ottawa. For each issue, I am to write a short blog type post based on the topic for the issue and my theme (learning technology). I figured the information I provide for that newsletter would also be of interest…
-
A recipe for mixed-methods research
Read more: A recipe for mixed-methods researchI couldn’t figure out why, but I really didn’t like the way Creswell & Plano-Clark (2011) like to create nice neat categories for mixed-methods research. Each category is a specific recipe for how you mix quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methods. I don’t like the forced-structure, especially since the structure needs to be…
-
Now What?
Read more: Now What?The following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. With the end of this semester, I’m officially finished course…
-
Epistemology – The end is the beginning
Read more: Epistemology – The end is the beginningThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. I’ve come to an end of for the required readings…
-
Axiology – What do you value in Research?
Read more: Axiology – What do you value in Research?The following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. Axiology is the study of values (or of ones values).…
-
More on postmodernism and poststructuralism
Read more: More on postmodernism and poststructuralismThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. Further to my investigations into postmodernism and poststructuralism, the next…
-
Postmodernism and Poststructuralism … initial thoughts
Read more: Postmodernism and Poststructuralism … initial thoughtsThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. Crotty (1998) describes modernism as researcher’s response to the modern…
-
Pragmatism and mixed-methods research
Read more: Pragmatism and mixed-methods researchThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. Is it possible to be a pragmatist and not do…
-
Critical Race Theory
Read more: Critical Race TheoryThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. For those that are not familiar with research epistemologies, critical…
-
I am a women, does that make me a feminist?
Read more: I am a women, does that make me a feminist?The following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. From a qualitative research perspective, being a women is an…
-
mLearn2011 day one
Read more: mLearn2011 day oneThis conference is much smaller than I expected and yet many of the founders and leaders of the mobile learning academic community are here. I’ve met many people, most of whom are PhD students. Today I gave my first conference paper presentation. It was a small room and yet I was a total wreck. I…
-
My first academic conference #mlearn2011
Read more: My first academic conference #mlearn2011This week I'm at my first academic conference as a Ph.D. student. I had been to a couple of conferences in my undergrad, but that was about 20 years ago and I was just a volunteer. I'm in Beijing at mLearn2011 (10th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning). I'm co-presenting a paper on Wednesday…
-
Constructivism and qualitative research
Read more: Constructivism and qualitative researchThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. This weeks topic in epistemologies was constructivism. The readings, including…
-
Post-postivism
Read more: Post-postivismThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. This week’s topic in epistemology was post-positivism. The discussions surrounded…
-
Knowledge agnostic?
Read more: Knowledge agnostic?I’ve decided that I’m knowledge agnostic. According to Gunzenhauser & Gerstl-Pepin, epistemology is “a theory of what gets to count as knowledge”. I’ve been reflecting upon the different epistemologies and how similar the ideas of epistemology are to the ideas of learning theories (some have the same names after all). In an earlier post, I…
-
Reflections on writing a research proposal
Read more: Reflections on writing a research proposalThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. My thoughts on the research process have changed greatly over…
-
Epistemology reflections for week three
Read more: Epistemology reflections for week threeThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. It is only the third week and I have already…
-
Learning Theories
Read more: Learning TheoriesI had an "ah-ha" moment regarding learning theories. It is one of those simplistic realizations that you leave asking yourself why you didn't think about it sooner? One of the struggles I've had with learning theories is how the relate to one other. I think this challenge is compounded by the fact that they are…
-
Mid-week epistemological reflections
Read more: Mid-week epistemological reflectionsThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. This is a mid-week epistemology update – in that I’m…
-
Who is the 21st century learner?
Read more: Who is the 21st century learner?Several of my classes this semester have asked me to put things in the perspective or to take into account the 21st century learner. This got me thinking, exactly who is this mysterious 21st century learner? In the content of K-12 and undergraduate education, the 21st century learner might also be called "the net generation"…
-
Epistemology – Week 1
Read more: Epistemology – Week 1The following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. What does “the nature of knowledge” mean? That is, what…
-
Engaging (or not) in #change11
Read more: Engaging (or not) in #change11I'm finding it difficult to get engaged with the Change MOOC, and I have to ask myself why that is? I know that it "technically" hasn't started, in that Monday signifies the first official week, and this week has been about orientation, or at least that is the theory. Here is the thing, I'm not…
-
The Power of Mobile Devices
Read more: The Power of Mobile DevicesIn reading Paul Muyinda’s dissertation on Learning Objects on Mobile phones, and I was struck by the comments about how mobile phones provided a freedom from power outages – that is, learners were not tied to the source of power in order to do their learning. If the central power went out, they could still…
-
Does a MOOC need a needs analysis? #change11
Read more: Does a MOOC need a needs analysis? #change11This post was inspired by George Siemens post on Who are MOOCs for? Confused personal thoughts. In his post, George mentions that in creating MOOCs he hasn't really considered who the courses are for? Rather, he puts the course out there and allows anyone interested to join in. That got me wondering, do we need…
-
How do I learn?
Read more: How do I learn?A question that keeps coming up on my classes is related to how I learn, such as "How would you describe your learning style?". Before I began my journey into educational research, I would have answered the question "I'm a kinaestheic learner", based simply upon the VAK learning styles that classifies all learners are either…
-
Epistemology – Week 0 Initial Reflections
Read more: Epistemology – Week 0 Initial ReflectionsThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. As I expect that reading and reflecting upon epistemology will…
-
Epistemology – my journey begins
Read more: Epistemology – my journey beginsThe following is part of a series of blog posts I wrote while taking an education PhD course on Epistemologies. A summary of all posts in the series is included in this paper: Developing an Appreciative Understanding of Epistemologies in Educational Research: One Blogger’s Journey. This semester I’m taking a course titled “Epistemologies of Educational…
-
Teaching at University and Student Learning
Read more: Teaching at University and Student LearningAnother semester has begun. My focus this semester is much more on learning theories and teaching with technology. I'm taking three courses: Epistemologies, Integration of Technology in Education, and Undergraduate Teaching Pedagogy. In addition, I plan to lurk and occasionally blog in the Change MOOC. Today's reflection is about the role of the university professor…
-
Finding URLs in Blackboard
Read more: Finding URLs in BlackboardI'm a little shocked that the Product Managers at Blackboard let a release go out where linking to internal content wasn't built-in. Learning to use Blackboard for setting up an online course is a certainly a recipe in frustration. Even more so, if you are inheriting a course shell that has had too many hands…
-
Mobile Blogging with Tumblr on an Android Phone
Read more: Mobile Blogging with Tumblr on an Android PhoneI have a Samsung Galaxy S Captivate mobile phone. It was a great phone for its generation, but not without its challenges. Actually, I think Android poses regular challenges because all the devices are different, and not all inter-operate as well as one would hope. For my Mobile blogging experiment, I wanted to be able…
-
My Mobile Blogging Experiment
Read more: My Mobile Blogging ExperimentIn reading "Critical Issues in m-Learning: Design models, adoption processes, and future trends" by Crescente & Lee 2011 (sorry, the article is not open-access), I came across the idea of mobile blogging, that is blogging from a mobile device. I don't know why the idea had not occurred to me before, I was surprised that…
-
Is it or is it not a MOOC? (#eduMOOC)
Read more: Is it or is it not a MOOC? (#eduMOOC)The latest massively open course, offered by Stanford University on Artificial Intelligence is raising the question again. What exactly does a course need to be in order to be classified as a MOOC? There has been some discussion on this Google Plus thread started by George Siemens. Osvaldo challenges that the course itself is too…
-
Social Media, Network Size, and Deep Reflections (#edumooc)
Read more: Social Media, Network Size, and Deep Reflections (#edumooc)Reading George's blog post on "Losing interest in social media: there is no there there", got me reflecting the use of social media for academic purposes and the whole MOOC thing and connectivism too. The key reflection – I mentioned on the MOOCast this afternoon – is the point that large networks of people equate…
-
Cultivating my personal learning network (#edumooc)
Read more: Cultivating my personal learning network (#edumooc)Although my blog may play a central role in my personal learning network, it isn't the only thing that does. I spend a fair bit of time cultivating my network. My network isn't just the people I connect with, it is also the tools I used to connect and learn. And my network isn't strictly…
-
Week 6 – Personal Online Learning Networks (#edumooc)
Read more: Week 6 – Personal Online Learning Networks (#edumooc)This week the #edumooc topic is "Personal Online Learning Networks". The label is new to me, but the concept is not. Throughout my Master's degree I was part of a more formalized "online learning community". Now, these networks may not have been considered "personal", but the less formal networks that formed between students, whilst learning…
-
Using iAnnotate to take notes on my iPad
Read more: Using iAnnotate to take notes on my iPadAs a Ph.D. student I read a lot of journal articles. In order to effectively takes notes while reading, I used to have to print them. One of the reasons/justifications for my ipad purchase was to reduce the amount of printing. After a bit of experimenting I've finally figured out how to effectively use my…
-
Mobile blog post
Read more: Mobile blog postI'm experimenting with the idea of moblogging, that is blogging from my mobile phone. The theory is that I can use my phone to blog from anywhere and that the device camera will let me easily capture content wherever I happen to be. If it is not too difficult to do the I can see…
-
At a crossroads (#phdchat)
Read more: At a crossroads (#phdchat)I'm at a crossroads – and I'm not sure what fork in the path to take. You see, once you start down the path of becoming a researcher, you see research potential in so many things. As a Ph.D. student, I need to choose only one thing and run with it – at least until…
-
Google Plus Hangouts are pretty cool (#eduMOOC)
Read more: Google Plus Hangouts are pretty cool (#eduMOOC)Throughout the day (whenever I'm taking a mental break from what I'm working on) I check out the #edumooc hashtag on twitter – just in case something interesting is happening. This morning, I see an invite for a Google Plus hangout. I have a few minutes so I click the link. I notice that a…
-
Open course reflections (#eduMOOC)
Read more: Open course reflections (#eduMOOC)In my investigations about MOOCs and open courses, I came across the article in EDUCAUSE "Through the open door: Open courses as research, learning, and engagement" by Cormier and Siemens. It was a pretty easy read (not an academic treatise) and provided a good overview of the goal of open courses. One thing that struct…
-
Curation and hosting MOOCs (#edumooc)
Read more: Curation and hosting MOOCs (#edumooc)Ever since the May 5th #lrnchat (lrnchat is a twitter-based open discussion between learning professionals that occurs once a week during the school year, and once a month in the summer), I've thought lots about what it means to be an educator. On that particular chat, the discussion surrounded our role as educators and used…
-
Week 5 learning objectives – why I MOOC (#edumooc)
Read more: Week 5 learning objectives – why I MOOC (#edumooc)This week I've decided to focus on the "open education" topic and specifically to research and reflect more about MOOCs. It has being aparent to me that I need to do some more reading about what research has already been done about MOOCs, so that I have a better understanding of where my contributions to…
