Journal
Sunday, January 1st 2012
I had an interesting conversation last night at a New Year's Eve party with a man who had recently completed his PhD. His main advice was to get the first introductory chapter right as the rest of the thesis should proceed logically from that.
Monday, January 2nd 2012
My Conclusion section has now been expanded with a 'Conceptual consolidation theory'.
Tuesday, January 3rd 2012
The term 'Mixed methods' appears to be quite contentious unless the methods are from both the qualitative and quantitative paradigms. I've now amended such references to be 'Multimethods' (Creswell 2006).
Wednesday, January 4th 2012
Today I contacted my supervisor Susan about our next meeting. I also finished the last student review in the data analysis section.
Thursday, January 5th 2012
I'm wondering if I should I develop my own measures of validity or if this would be like writing my own reference. At least I'm now thinking in terms of relevant selection criteria.
Friday, January 6th 2012
Today I wrote section '5.8 Issues of validation and trustworthiness.' I've also added the extra issue of co-authorship. Would I therefore fail traditional measures of validity? What does my evidence show? Is it not the deficiencies in the children's understandings? Maybe it's not about proving what they know but rather what they don't know?
Saturday, January 7th 2012
In the Conclusion section I've added '9.3 Explanatory animation creation can be a powerful diagnostic tool'.
Sunday, January 8th 2012
Today I read an article by John Dron; Dron, J. (2012). The pedagogical-technological divide and the elephant in the room. International Journal on E-Learning, 11(1), (23-38). This article really resonated with me and I've incorporated it into my Literature review under 'ICT in education'.
Monday, January 9th 2012
I've started the process of proofreading these journal entries. They've been offline since May 2011.
Tuesday, January 10th 2012
Today I received a hard copy 'Annual progress review' in the mail. I rang the university to confirm that this is not the same as the Themis annual ethics report.
Wednesday, January 11th 2012
My annual ethics report has now been lodged with Themis. As the data collection phase is over, this will be my last Themis report.
Thursday, January 11th 2012
There is now a new section in data analysis:
7.5 Multiple levels of analysis
Friday, January 13th 2012
I need to address the fact that there is no special interest or even mention of the ways in which the participants actually got their information.
Saturday, January 14th 2012
Is Storyboard a comparative study? I don't think it is as (generalisations not withstanding) each student is analysed on a case-by-case basis.
Sunday, January 15th 2012
Tonight I finished editing the audio for Debriefing session chapter 4. This video has now been uploaded which completes my editing of the children's data. I will still need to transcribe these sessions.
Monday, January 16th 2012
I've now moved the links to the Reflexive journal and Storyboard 2010 trial. Although both sections can be accessed from the Table of Contents, the Reflexive journal is now linked from the data collection section and the 2010 trial is linked from the Research methodology and Digital appendix sections.
Tuesday, January 17th 2012
I've concluded that the Storyboard would still be QUAL-qual even it is were on paper. This is because of the way that the digital nature of the Storyboard data enables easy recontextualisation of data.
Wednesday, January 18th 2012
As the researcher's reflexive journal is focused on the Storyboard project, it could be considered to be a form of the director's commentary genre.
Thursday, January 19th 2012
I have a meeting set with both supervisors for Tuesday 24th January.
Friday, January 20th 2012
Today I transcribed the first chapter of the debriefing session. I was embarrassed to see how much talking I did. I know the other chapters aren't so one-sided. I decided to add a researchers commentary to the debriefing session in which I've made similar remarks.
Saturday, January 21st 2012
Is animation a metaphor because it is both literal and figurative?
Sunday, January 22nd 2012
All debriefing sessions have now been transcribed.
Monday, January 23rd 2012
I've drafted an agenda for my meeting tomorrow with Susan and Nick as follows:
Tuesday, January 24th 2012
One practical takeaway from our meeting today was to change from 1st person to 3rd person tense throughout the Literature review.
Wednesday, January 25th 2012
I'm wondering how much of the data collection will go into the thesis. Would an examiner need to see the transcripts of all of the data or just the analysis of relevant parts? Maybe some of the transcriptions will go into the Digital appendix section.
Thursday, January 26th 2012
Contrasting the student's director's commentaries with my researcher's commentaries seems to be a practical example of 'multiple levels of analysis' from the QUAL-qual multiple methods research design.
Friday, January 27th 2012
I've now deleted the following pyramid diagram from my Literature review as this hierarchy is too simplistic:
Saturday, January 28th 2012
I was thinking about artificial intelligence today and concluded that it will always be limited because it will always be artificial.
Sunday, January 29th 2012
I've removed the Java functionality from the Reference list because certain symbols can't be used in the pop-up boxes.
Monday, January 30th 2012
Today I emailed draft documents of my Literature review and the Explanatory Animation Framework to my supervisors for their input.
Tuesday, January 31st 2012
I started back at school today for the 2012 year. I'm still waiting for 'Vygotsky and Creativity' to come back to the library so I decided to buy my own copy as Susan highly recommended it. If it's anything like 'Constructionism' (1991) it will be well worth it as I borrowed that book 5 times.