Education Technology – My Journey

I thought that once my qualifying project was accepted that the rest would fall into place. I would then have a plan of attack, a way forward. However now I feel more lost than ever. I'm afraid that trying to do research in a military environment is tantamount to getting an effective bill passed through Congress. If there was a logic to their requests perhaps I wouldn’t be so frustrated, it’s not the hoops that I mind, it’s the feeling that I’m blindfolded and there’s a pit on the other side. This semester has been a struggle, it’s not particularly harder, I’m just questioning my ability to finish. I have found it harder to stay motivated, focused and engaged. I love research, just not sure if I have what it takes at this level. How do I get myself re-invigorated? Sleep would help I’m sure. I have started working out again, getting back into a routine. I think I just let myself down, physically and emotionally; not taking care of me. I feel inadequate against many of my cohort who

So here I am, I'm supposed to have a great idea for a qualifying project and written up and ready to go. Now the problem isn't in coming up with an idea, it's in coming up with an idea that is a) Useful b) Practical c) Doable in a timely manner e) Will be approved by three branches of the US Military There are so many things I would like to do and create. Technology, especially Web 2.0 and Open Source tools. can address so many communication, knowledge management and functional problems within an institution, and yet, the knee-jerk reaction by many IT departments is a simple No. Too many security issues, not enough control. IT people aren't the only ones to shy away from these tools, especially social media. The fear from many in leadership positions is that people will behave badly. Well guess what, they will. They will behave badly even if you don't have a social media site and a netiquette guide, but by having one you can have some control. Often the best way

It's been quite a while since I've posted. I've started several times in response to what feels like an avalanche of negativity against education. There has always been those who claim that those with a higher education are "elite" and somehow no longer true Americans. But the war on education has taken on new fervor, as YouTube now has a rash of videos and there are numerous articles on the scam that is higher education (see Questions About Higher Education’s Value Go Viral on YouTube ). As the cost of education continues to rise and jobs continue to disappear the value of a degree does seem to be questionable. Yet there are jobs, such as in engineering, that employers just can't fill because job seekers don't have the skills. Perhaps what is needed is less of a dialogue that contains school is bad and worthless, but more of a rework on how we train people for their careers. It may be worth taking a look at the "antiquated" apprenticeship model,

I stumbled across a blog today via ProfHacker of The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School . The initial posting I went to go read, as my qualifying project has been on my mind this week, was Reason #60: " The Tyranny of the Dissertation ." But I ended up at #50. You are surrounded by graduate students. I was taken aback by the comment "The professor responded without the slightest hesitation: 'There is nothing to be gained from the company of graduate students.'"Is this really the reality of graduate school? I do remember having very little interaction with my fellow Master's students. Once class ended, we all went our separate ways. Now I worked a full-time job while doing my Master's degree, so by the time class was over at 10 pm I was ready to call it a day. But in truth, there was no feeling of community, and as there were only 3 required classes I rarely saw the same people from semester to semester.

The Journal just published an article looking at the new report by the Net Media Consortium (NMC) in collaboration with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), " 2011 Horizon Report K-12 Edition ." My interest is in adult education, but the technologies work for K-12 or adults, the difference is often in how the technology is implemented. The near term technologies include mobile learning, a technology which interests me a lot, especially as one who deals with medical and military personnel. I think mobile technologies have a lot to offer, but one aspect that seems to be left out of the conversation is how to develop curriculum for these mobile devices. Do we use the same ISD as we do for WBT and just scale it down? Are students actually taking classes, accessing supporting material or using it for remediation? In fact as a developer I am stuck between the Flash issue. Are schools giving students the technology so all students have the same abilities or are we suppose

I've been trying to figure out why it's been so hard for me to articulate my niche and brainstorm a qualifying project. When I applied to the Ed.D.  program in Education Technology I was full of all sorts of ideas, the problem was narrowing my focus. Today I seem to lack any focus whatsoever. Research that idea from your practice which keeps you up at night, what a great idea, only the issue from my practice that is keeping me up at night is the fact that my contract ends in September. Real life has thrown a real wrench into my plans to be a scholar and a researcher. When I first applied for the program I had a secure, so I thought, position at a research institute. Where better to conduct research? Since then the division I worked for has been disbanded and I am on my second contract position.It is difficult to plan a future research project when you don't even know where you'll be in the future. Historically I have been a courseware developer and an ISD, emphasis

As a doctoral students we are told to find an issue we're passionate about, on that's not too small, or too large, too hard or too soft. Use that area of passion, that question that keeps you up at night, to help develop your niche area and therefore your area of research. Easy right? So what keeps me up at night? Lately it's trying to develop a niche. While reading Machi & McEvoy (2009) The Literature Review i can't help but think "what a great idea" if I lived in a parallel universe. "Schedule at time with no interruptions and quiet surroundings" (p. 10). Awesome now if the family, friends and neighbor's kids will just cooperate. For those of us in my Ed.D. program who are online students with full time careers and family responsibilities the idea of taking two hour chunks everyday to do a lit review with no interruptions seems somewhat far fetched. I'm sure it's good advice but not sure my boss will go for it. But doing a li

So during a conversation at work today the wheels started to slowly turn as the beginning of a research idea began to take shape. Can Web 2.0 technologies be used as a method of knowledge capture and management for our faculty? We currently have no method for gathering, storing or disseminating information between current or future faculty, so while not a perfect solution, until the institution gets around to setting up a true knowledge management plan, can we start by developing a community of sharing driven and supported by the faculty and staff themselves?

Today is the first day of Summer Session 2011. On the menu for the summer is Seminar in Educational Media and Foundations of Educational Research (qualitative). I'm trying not to psych myself out about the statistics class. Did I really dream about a t-test last night? Probably not as I can't actually remember what a t-test represents. I really shouldn't have taken 12 years between my Master's and my Ed.D., but then again I didn't know what I wanted to get my doctorate in until a couple of years ago. Which leads to the second of today's psych outs. Finding a niche. I really thought this would be easier. There are so many things I would like to study in relationships to ed tech: social media, virtual worlds, serious games, blended learning, using software life-cycle best practices in ISD. Oh the possibilities are endless, but how do I actually go about studying any of these? They all seem to fail the practicality test. One of the biggest issues I am seeing in

I should have posted this back in September in order to track my progress in the field, but better late then never right? I keep going back to one of the very first pieces I ever read as a doctoral student, Grover’s (2001) piece on the 10 mistakes doctoral students make. I refer to it in an attempt to avoid making too many of them. There are so many different things I am interested in, and in theory they would all make interesting studies, but as Grover said, my project must be more than just interesting and relevant, it also must be defensible and feasible (2001, 13). I can imagine all sort of interesting ways to test my possible research topics, but when I factor in time, ability, money, and practicality, many of those projects end up being crossed off the list. My main areas of interest include the design and development of virtual environments and social media, including Web 2.0 technologies, but after reading Noffke (2008), I am less interesting in developing something as opp

Technology has brought about a change in the way people do everything from making reservations, to getting directions, to keeping up with old friends. Yet the research methods for assessing if technology has any impact on learning are rooted in comparison studies developed to compare similar processes and standardized outcomes. Often the result leans more towards a simple evaluation of the methods, leading researchers such as Clark (1983) to conclude that there is no significant difference between delivery methods. It is time to forget comparison studies, as researchers we should be testing theories to inform practice, not comparing effectiveness (Lockee, Moore & Burton, 2001, 62). In the following post I will first look at how comparison studies have failed, and then discuss why a paradigm shift is necessary. Then I will pose some generalized questions researchers should be asking in support of this paradigm shift. Finally, I will follow-up these generalized questions with questi