Renata’s article on blogging as a research tool
A nice message came in from Renata Suzuki on our Yahoo ESL/EFL discussion group. Renata shared her article on the usefulness of blogs as a research tool. In an email to the group she wrote:
For those of you who are interested, my article on blogging as a research tool is up at the TESL-EJ site:
A giant thank you to the organizers of the blog course, without which this would never have been possible. Your kind introduction to blogging and its uses in education have been really helpful for me.
Thank you also everyone for visiting my blog, commenting and making the research possible, I hope you enjoy the article, too.
Renata Suzuki
The blog course she is referring to is the Weblogs in ESL/EFL Workshop that Sandy, Aaron, Joe and I led back in January-March. The title of her article is “Diaries as introspective research tools: From Ashton-Warner to Blogs”, The study analysed the efficacy of using blogs as a research tool compared to diaries, using the example of research in teacher use of motivation strategies, and found that blogs offer various possible advantages in the domain of action research.
Renata kept a free retrospective, commentative diary entry written in the blog, Getting there. Based on research quoted by Renata, it is suggested that data-reliability is enhanced by collecting as soon as possible after the event. She included a review of the lesson with salient incidents. Further entries comprised thoughts, conversations and impressions, together with data of student feedback acquired from student tests and worksheets. This data provided the basis for analysis. The support and feedback feature of the online comments is discussed.
I find this so interesting. One of the things I wish I had more specific knowledge about is just what and how to most effectively record what is going on as we teach. Teachers are so busy. We never get to that and if we do, we have not been trained in the best way to do this type of recording. I think that is one of the things I like best about blogs- the recording of different educator’s thoughts about this whole learning process with blogs. And I like the different voices and the different ways we view learning and other issues.
Renata acknowledges that some researchers may reject blog-based research, considering it time-consuming and lacking in objective stance. She goes on to say that the weaknesses might in fact be perceived as a strength and she focuses on the strengths of the blog ovservation system being the personalized environment, the instant publishing feature, and how the communicative collaborative blog features link the teacher to a global community. As to weaknesses she points to the time and energy required. Renata writes that the movivatin to write is fueled by the interactive community. She talks about a blog being an ongoing voice in the dialogue of education.
I have to sit down and reread this. I am so excited to see papers being published about this aspect of blogging. This topic is near and dear to many of us edu-blogggers. I can remember when we could find so very little published on the web!
Be sure to go read the article as I have only highlighted some of it.
Way to go, Renata! You have written an article that touches on the many things we have had ongoing discussions about in the world of educational blogs. It is wonderful to see something written that provides information for reading and reflecting.
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