Silver Lining

 I was so excited during our last meeting that I thought that I would create a ‘real time’ blog for that post. Here is what I put in Evernote (in green):

Learning about evernote.  I am sitting here trying out all of the things that you can do--I've downloaded skitch, drew on my photo, and now I've decided to type up a note for later.  This tool has been available for quite some time.  My husband downloaded it for another purpose, but I did not realize how powerful this tool (if you combine skitch) is.  I can add so many things.  I was planning on putting all of my pdfs in ATLAS.ti, but now I'm not so sure.  I appreciate having Ginny show us Evernote.  I am very curious to try it out.  I plan on playing around with this later--I put endnote as a skillbuilder because I DO need a citation manager, but this is really cool.  Also installed my first RSS feed on my computer and my smartphone.  I'm feeling pretty tech savvy at this second.  This makes me excited about my coursework--because I am learning about these tools that can benefit me for my work!! Eureka! :)

Today, Monday July 15, I drafted an IRB for an interview study and I stated in my IRB that I was going to use ATLAS.ti for document management and analysis.  I am curious to see what my chair has to say.  My chair has no experience with any QDAS programs or tools, nor is my chair even close to what I would consider ‘techie’.  This exact dilemma is discussed in Davidson and DiGregorio (2011), when they discuss that most senior researchers have little practice with any QDAS programs, and I must proceed with caution and, I believe, write everything I can about what I am doing with ATLAS.ti  in order to a) make sure I am using the program correctly and keeping a log of my activities (this will only help) and b) clarify any questions that my chair (or even my committee) may have. 

In regards to the class thus far, this is one of the classes that has gotten me excited about my progression from comps, prospectus, and dissertation. Up to this point, any of those words would carry ominous dark clouds full of fear and fraught with anxiety.  Although I still worry about my immediate future, learning about technology is the silver lining that can possibly assist me in managing that fear and anxiety. That is a welcome feeling.  The first day was full of so much information (thank you for posting Dr. Wood’s slide presentation) and finally using a software package like ATLAS.ti made sense to me, as shown by Dr. Wood’s presentation.  Everything you’ve done is in there—by using this, we explain what we did and how we did it, which allows us to state our findings.  (These reasons for using a QDAS package are on her 7^th slide.) Ginny’s presentation of Evernote was very exciting (as you saw in my first paragraph), but what I am enjoying is that we are given permission open the programs presented (ATLAS.ti, Evernote, etc.) and see for ourselves if we deem them useful.  I am more of a late adapter/resister (Straub, 2009) and maybe that is due to who I surround myself with (Bandura ,1986, as in Straub, 2009).  When I was teaching, everyone in my department had been teachers for years (many of them had no computer skills), and they pooh-pooed nearly every technology inservice we had.  Plus, there was minimal support from our IT person, as he seemed to guard the lab for those with only high technological skills.  At that time, the student body knew more about technology than the teachers, and often times, those students were the only ones in the lab.  Now that I am back in graduate school, I am finding that many of my colleagues are very adept within the world of technology, and I am grateful for their experience and knowledge.  I am open to learning new things, but (as is the issue with many, I assume) my schedule is full and my time is valuable, so I need to be able to incorporate something new with minimal issues, and the tool must have a user-friendly interface with the affordances greatly outweighing the constraints (Straub, 2009) .  I am hoping we can work with others in the course that are interested in the same tools, and share some insight with one another.