writing a literature review

LIterature set for review. Articles organized into three areas of discussion.

1. Effects of message boards on student peer-to-peer communication

2. Effect of message boards on student peer-to-peer documentable achievement

3. Designing an appropriate message board (a literature review of different types of message board peer-to-peer interaction analyzing the best ways to teach peer-to-peer in the class.

Meeting with Tim on Sunday.

Update

Writing is scary! Last week I spoke on skype, and tonight I'm submitting my first draft. I have only written 3 pages, yet I feel it encompasses the main points required. My wife has said that it should probably be longer, but I do not know what to add. Waiting now to see the response from Tim.

Survey's

I believe I have found the way to prove and signify the problem. Tim mentioned using survey's and that's what I will do. Today or tomorrow I am creating a technology survey for the school I am working at. It will be based on both the levels of technology, and aggregate of technology practices ideas. Further it will involve teacher use and competence with forums, blogs, wiki's, and other online tools of asynchronous communication. It will then also include questions about the LiveLesson form of synchronous communication, and phone use as communication in our online school.

Then at the end of the PD I will perform a post intervention survey and see how their responses have changed to the use of the asynchronous technology.

I will admit I am scared of writing the survey because I am paranoid that my questions will be worded in a way that do not produce the correct results, but it should be good.

Updates on Survey if I perform it tomorrow, or updates next week if I perform it then. I still haven't asked permission from my new teaching job to produce and distribute a survey.

Survey Tool Used: Google Forms
Survey Style: Multiple choice (with possibly a few areas for extra comments)

Starting Section 1

So to begin let's look at section 1:


Chapter One Analysis Phase

1. Introduction to the Problem
a. What led you to this problem?
b. What need are you trying to meet?
c. What questions are guiding your project?
i. In other words, what do you want to find out?
ii. What do you hope to provide a solution for?

This section focuses on the problem and how to make it important. This part has been the challenge as well for me because I have problem writing the questions.

I have two questions already


1. With the increases in class sizes what are effective ways to increase student collaboration?

2. With the reduced time for Professional Development what are the effective ways to increase teacher participation for professional growth?

The hardest part is trying to justify what led me to the problem. Originally it was because the school I was at did not use discussions in their classroom effectively. Now, in my new school it has changed to a dilemma about the Stages of Adoption and the Adopter Categories. I believe myself to be an innovator in the invention stage. By realizing my stage of development I have realized that I will keep trying new technology and applying ideas to the classroom even if I'm not sure that they will work.

I personally like using forums and other alternative tools to increase student participation. The problem I find is too many teachers believe still that synchronous communication is the primary form for communication that needs to be used. Meanwhile, I believe that asynchronous communication can have so many more opportunities to interact with students. This is the problem that I have and I hope to fix. I feel too many teachers are stuck in old ways of synchronous communication and can't see that it's more challenging to obtain with student busy schedules.
The same problem exists with teacher's and PD. They complain that PD is time consuming and is a waster after school. I feel that asynchronous PD decreases the amount of time teacher's have to spend working together at the school site and exploring PD from home might make teacher's more receptive to the process. I intend to find out if this asynchronous communication does make a difference and if it can be effective in solving the problems I have seen.


...These are my thoughts, by Friday they will begin to take form.

Over the weekend I hope to write a first draft of the problem as I sit by the pool in Palm Springs. It should be a nice afternoon :).

Reflective in nature

How are you feeling about the project now that you have looked at other projects and have reviewed the overviews of the course?

This project is exciting and scary at the same time. I am excited that I get to create professional development that I can add to my repertoire. I'm further excited to create PD in the format that I follow. What I am nervous about is the write up. I'm scared of writing inferior lit reviews. Or that I was not specific enough in my writing style to support the body of research. The creation of PD is easy for me. It's lesson planning expanded. However, writing justification extractions of information from the PD, and expanding on the literature that created my PD is scary. I feel that though I have been in this masters for a year now I have not performed these types of tasks before.

My question at the moment is what are the steps I have to do and how much time should I give to each step. The class has a basic outline, but how can I set a timeline for myself to keep to it. Also with this timeline how many hours should I put into it a week, and when can I find time to do this. Organization is my next big hurdle and will be the start of my blog posts for week 2.

It begins

The PD blog has started. I already have two questions to research and I cannot wait to get going. I already have 10 good sources 7 of which are academic with studies to support my information.

Next week we'll go as follows. Obtain more sources start outlining what I will do.

At the moment that is where I am. so let's do this one step at a time for now.