6-28-2015 Roller Coaster

This week has been like riding a roller coaster.  The first part of the week was fine by the end of the week I thought my next trip was going to be to the hospital.  SINUS INFECTION.  The Doctor gave me a Sinus Cocktail shot on Friday and I could not swallow without my head wanting to come off.  Somehow the semester came together for me this week.

Apparently for me it finally clicked “Better Late than Never,”  I was thinking about the literature review as being very localized versus very nationalized.  Once I got to thinking about things as being very broad in scope the paper seemed to come together.  I was able to use a lot of the original paper that I had written.  I just revised the sections to reflect more of the literature about technology funding from a national level.  This class has flown by and now we hit the final week.  If I could make a suggestion for other folks from the old program in IDT either take 8100 then this class of see if IDT department can give us notes from the 8100 class. 

Good Luck to Everyone.

Blog for 6-21

Blog for the week of 6-21

This week has been recovery week.  I finally feel as though I made some progress in catching up with the rest of the class.  I even had some time to visit the Teachers showcase on Thursday and help out.  It was nice to see some old friends from other classes.  Good to see other students that have had our class and have gone through the same things that we are going through. 

                I have been thinking about some advice that former students provided along the way through this journey.  One person told me to try not to let the scope of the study get too big, and another told me the scope of the project was too small.  The question to determine is, both have merit, so do I try to broaden the scope of the project or do I continue the same road?  Only time will tell.

                The class is heading into revision week.  One thing that I have found, in my last couple of classes, is that individuals do not turn in the best work to be peer reviewed.  In my qualitative analysis class the person who wrote a two-page paper on an event in which she participated, had sixty five spelling and grammar issues and a sentence that just stopped in mid-stream.  I also have had the case where my paper was never peered reviewed or people did not turn in papers at all.  My hope is that everyone turns in a paper that is ready for peer review. 

                We are coming to the end of the class, and I feel as though I have learned that by having an outline, it makes it easier to write and stay on target for completing a scholarly work.  I also picked up the tip from someone in the class, to list the annotated bibliographies in the outline to help out with cohesiveness.   If I may impart some wisdom for the group regarding a piece of software that is not too terribly expensive, is a product called X-1.  It is $70 for a single license.  X-1 will go and index all documents, including all MS Office, and PDF documents.  It also indexes all e-mails and will make them be searchable.  If you are looking for the word “Memphis,” that you used in an e-mail two- years-ago, it will find it.  If you're looking for a word in a PDF article for this class, it will tell you the name of the document and show you where it was used in the PDF. 

Blog for 6-14

The week has been okay. Early in the week, I answered Dr. Weaver’s question about the second set of bibliographies being harder than the first.  She made a comment that some of the topics might be coming too saturated, and for us to go back to the original question to branch out from there.  That was not the problem.  The problem is time and the lack of it.  The first and the third set of bibliographies had a weekend involved, and the extra days made it very relaxed to be able to have plenty of time to write, and review and feel comfortable about the bibliographies.  The second set of bibliographies fell right in the middle of the week so working full-time  8:30 -5:00 Monday - Friday left little time to effectively read and write the second set of twenty bibliography. I felt extremely rushed and I am sure that others felt the same way. The third set of bibliographies went just fine with plenty of time to prepare and document the way I really felt I needed to. After reading the reviews of the second set of bibliographies, I was beginning to question if I had made the right decision on attempting the E.D.D. or the E.D.S. degree choice I had to decide quickly the week before. I believe that I made the correct choice in going forward with the E.D.D.  Looking forward, I have to learn not to let things get to me, just do what I can do if the deadlines are tight and hold on. 

Blog for the week of 6-7 2015. 

Well, this has been a whirlwind of a week since I started out behind everybody.   I quickly had to play catch up as I was dealing with an adviser meeting to discuss the topic.  (I have not had the 8100 course.)   My advisor and I, finally settled on a topic, and then I had a meeting with Dr. Dennis from the library via Google hangout.   I recalled that she gave me information on the different databases that I needed to look at for my particular topic, which is technology funding for the new Shelby County Schools and the Six Municipality schools, what has changed?   Others of the class and already selected their topic and had pulled most of their 20 bibliographies.  They just needed to take and put them into the annotated version.  Moving forward I started from scratch so therefore it took me a bit longer, but once I sort of got the groove going; I could pull most of the ones I needed in a day or two.   Then of course there are the write ups, that took a bit longer than I was expecting, but I was doing pretty considering that I am working full-time. It just seems like the process was going awfully slow, and I was not going to make the deadline.  I didn't put myself in panic mode yet.  I haven't pulled what little hair I have left out yet. So, I’m on to the second set of annotations, which is due Wednesday, and I have pulled the information that I need to work on those.   In the future, I should be good hopefully for Wednesday of this coming week.  

"Behind schedule already and I haven’t started class:"

By Stephen Herriman

According to Pappas, I remember and recall the following events while on vacation.  I looked at five or six different topics for the research and dissertation.  After getting back from vacation this past Wednesday from Chicago, I began reading my e-mails.  There are two from Dr. Weaver.  The first asks us to contact her if we have not IDT 8100.  Since I am from the old program, this was not a class that was offered under our program.  So the rest of the class has the upper hand on me.  I was following the old program that indicates after the last required and elective classes that you proceed to take comps and start research and dissertation.  I am just following the rules.  So I seemed shocked to find that I am behind from the start.  On Friday, I am setting up appointments using Google Hangouts to talk with the Librarian and making phone calls to my advisor to pick out a topic. 

To proceed forward, I made an appointment with the Librarian for Wednesday, June 3^rd at ten o’clock via google hangout.  This is set in my calendar.  I then contacted my advisor but have to leave a voicemail.  I then contact the advisor on Saturday the 30^th of May at 3:00 in the afternoon, to discuss the research topics of choice.  Dr. Martindale asks if would answer the big question ”Did I want to pursue and EDS or an EDD degree?”  I indicated that I wanted to go for the EDD.  We talked about the three choices that I had sent to Dr. Weaver.  I then offered up a fourth possibility. And that is what we decided on.    So the topic of the dissertation is “Since the Memphis and Shelby county schools have merged together and Since Millington, Bartlett, Arlington, Lakeland, Germantown, and Collierville schools have formed their own municipal schools, How has funding for technology changed and how is technology being delivered in these new systems?”

So I began to start looking for articles at the library for information on funding for different types of schools.