Research Week 5

So this week has been entirely about the Lit Review. I spent about two hours each day last week researching each of the topics I mentioned in my blog post last week.

Then I looked at the requirements again, and noticed that I was completely ignoring the part about "learning theory." The dreaded learning theory. So I spent another two hours Saturday researching "Cognitive Constructivism" (vs. social constructivism). This actually made things a lot easier. It did a great job of explaining the "cumulative learning" theory Gagne discussed in the paper from the 60's that I had been using. More recent sources, jackpot!

I also spent an hour on Saturday creating an outline for my literature review and getting the heading in place, copying my reference list over and getting things set up for Sunday

All day Sunday was dedicated to organizing my information and writing about each topic. I started out by writing my introduction. That took a lot more time than expected. It was tough putting all of my ideas together into one main thought. I also changed some of the titles of the topics I mentioned last week. Instead of "ePortfolios," I talked about "digital note taking." I found through my research that digital note taking and digital curation were much more appropriate names for what my students would be doing.

I also included a section on "mobile devices in the classroom," or "BYOD."

I'm not quite finished my literature review, I still need to write up the section on "self-regulation of studying in middle school math." That will be my job tonight.

Boy is research tough!