Blogs as lit-search tools

There is nothing new under the sun.

In 2010, all you knew was that you wanted to use Facebook to gather your data. Your hopes rose as time and time again you found literature that studied Facebook users and Facebook networks. Not once did you find a study that actually believed Facebook status updates are worthy pieces of data. Your ego is boosted by Ethic’s decision that your study proposal was necessary, despite the warnings from methodology experts. Ethics is wary but social media is not going away. You formulated a plan. You experimented with ways to archive the data. In 2011, you spent 10 months ploughing through the (often mind-numbing) eating, sleeping, partying and studying habits of 17-18 year olds. You began your analysis. You find out it’s been done before.

The real reason for writing a blog

1. PhDs and travel snaps have a lot in common. Everyone is interested but no one wants to sit through hundreds of photographs of beaches and waterfalls. Just as Facebook and Flickr have become our salvation from the dreaded slide show, this blog will become the online depot of stories I am itching to tell. Read or ignore at your will.

An open apology to Twitter

Publication in the academic world is very hard but necessary. How are you supposed to get your ideas out while bashing on the tightly shut iron door of the academic journal?

I have finally bitten the bullet, practiced my preaching and joined the "life world" of the tech savvy academic (yes, I will have a Twitter feed). 

For years I have looked at social media through the eyes of my high school students. They see the digital world as mundane. They hate blogging and Twitter and love Facebook and YouTube. I derided the "luddites" that thought students would love a lesson plan because they were blogging and got to use a computer (it is still journal writing). I smirked at PowerPoints as glorified OHTs and started using Prezi (a glorified OHT that whooshes).