bugsii

Yesterday was all work at ODE and class in the evening.  Today, I woke up to do some schoolwork before I headed back into “the field” (otherwise known as a suburban school district) to conduct more teacher interviews.  I had three today.  It was a gorgeous day and I thoroughly enjoyed my drive out there.  I met with a K-8 STEM coordinator first at the district’s central office, then I had an hour to kill, so I found a park and ate my lunch at a picnic table.  I also did some more schoolwork in my car in the parking lot with the windows open and a nice breeze flowing through.  Then, I headed up to a middle school to interview one teacher.  I had another hour break, so I went to Wendy’s and got a frosty and sat in their parking lot doing work.  I hope no one was following me around or they might have thought I was nuts.  Then, I had my final interview and headed home.  The interviews all went well.  Now that I’ve done more than one interview on the same topic, it’s been extra interesting to hear similar and dissimilar answers to the questions that I ask.  I also noticed that I asked different people questions in different ways.  I don’t know why, but I felt like I was dumbing down some of the questions for the female teachers.  I suck.  It’ll be good to relisten to these recordings to see how it really sounded.  And again, it was just nice to be in a school and talk to teachers.  They’re good peeps.

Last night, we drove to Dan’s parents house in Cincinnati.  Dan wanted to spend a few nights with his Dad working on his Angelone Arcade project.

I got up this morning and had a nice 5 mile run around the neighborhood.  The weather is unusually mild right now, so it was a good run.  Then, I hung out with Katie and Cole, who had spent the night last night too.  Katie read me a story (she’s doing really well) and I read Cole part of a story (he was more interested in talking about the pictures than the actual story).  I also braided Katie’s hair.  Then, we had some lunch and Jess and Jeff came to hang out for a bit.

When they left, I spent the afternoon writing letters to the editors of various educational technology journals.  The professor I’m working on my article with thinks it’s a good idea to send query letters.  This is because when you submit an article to a journal, it can take as much as 6 months for them to get back to you and you are only allowed to submit to one journal at a time (ridiculous).  So, if you write to the editor and explain your idea, they can give you a “Sure, pass it on” or a “I don’t think it will work for this journal.”  It’s actually helpful to get the nos because then you don’t need to send them and wait for nothing.  It’s a good idea, but it took some time.  I’m excited to hear back, but of course, the editor could also just ignore my query.  Hmm.  We’ll see.

For dinner, Joyce made a yummy ravioli lasagna and then we went to The Cone for some ice cream.  It was a good day.

So, I have big news.  I’m doing little study on female blogging doctoral students (I know that’s quite the small group), but I just found out that one of my participants (of 3 so far) is going to be danah boyd!!  This is good news because she’s a pretty well known researcher.  For her dissertation at Berkeley she did a long study of teens using facebook and she is sort of the social networking guru.  Having her in my study will definitely at least get a few glances if not more.  I’m psyched!

Once upon a time, in the land of Heritage Elementary, I could hold it all day long. All day long. I’m serious. But, today at work, I realized that I was going to the bathroom about every hour. And it wasn’t because I was bored, it was because I really had to go. So, I started thinking. I really had to work up to holding it all day long. It’s kind of like training for a marathon. Each day you hold it a little longer and a little longer until the whole school day has passed and you didn’t even realize that you hadn’t peed one time (except no finisher medal). Well, I guess my bladder has become lazy and undisciplined because I cannot do that anymore. And, on a funny side note, one of those times later in the day, I noticed that I had sleep lines on my legs. Like, you know when you wake up and you have pillow lines on your face. Well, I had them on my legs because I had been sitting in a certain position for so long. Sleep lines on my legs (!). How much more sedentary could I be? I should definitely reconsider the mailman gig.

Oh, and I also decided to do some research into blogging because I had the thought the other day that I should study it. I like it, I do it, so I should study it. Right? So, I went online to find some articles and I found this one called “Who blogs? Personality predictors of blogging” (Guadogno, Okdie & Eno, 2007). Here’s the part that made me laugh out loud.

“The results of two studies indicate that people who are high in openness to new experience and high in neuroticism are likely to be bloggers” (p. 1).

Hahaha. I think I could have told you that. I am neurotic. Poor Dan.

And I like it.

But, I’m tired. Today I interviewed a teacher (it went just fine), observed three classes (for the most part), interviewed some kids (that was very interesting) and then took all the notes I had an wrote them out in long form (exhausting). I finished at the school at 3:15pm and finished my notes at 8:00pm. I would like to tell you all about it, but I said I would keep it confidential in the consent form, so I better keep my word. It was definitely interesting though and I learned a lot (about how video games are used in a classroom and about how to observe and interview, which was sort of the point). Now, I need to relax and get ready for a second (but shorter) day tomorrow.