Back in the saddle again

I have not blogged for a while. I could give various excuses, school workload, wanting to spend more time with my family, making a Bar and Bat Mitzvah for my children etc. etc. etc. The real reason that I have not blogged is because of a promise that I made to myself which I now regret. I promised that I would not post to my blog until I had completed my doctoral dissertation proposal.

You see for the past few years I have been an ABD (All But Dissertation). I have completed my coursework for a dissertation in educational technology from Yeshiva University's Azrieli Graduate School or Jewish Education and Administration. This summer I made a lot of headway in my dissertation work. I decided on my area of research, online discussion forums in a Yeshiva High School. I have already collected my data since I have been moderating the discussion forums on the Frisch School Wiki for 3 years and have an archive of every discussion forum containing thousands of postings. I even determined my research method, a qualitative study using grounded theory to look at student interactive patterns and evidence for higher order thinking skills in postings to the online discussion forum on the Frisch wiki. I also collected a great deal of articles and books for my Literature Review. I went through all of them taking copious notes using the Qualitative Research Tool, Atlas, to help me organize my thoughts. I exported all of these notes into a Word document ready to compose my Lit Review.

Then life got in the way. Summers are easy to get work done. During the school year it is much harder. Balancing my work at Frisch and time for family, Limud Torah, and recreation, I have had little time to work on my dissertation. I thought that my promise not to blog would give me more time for my doctoral studies but this has not been the case. It has merely deprived me of my primary forum for fleshing out my technology ideas and deprived you, the reader, of the opportunity to join in on the conversation.

So I am back in the saddle again. I am restarting blogging with the hope that this will get my intellectual juices flowing. This should benefit my continued growth in educational technology, hopefully, contribute to your knowledge and application of Ed Tech, and perhaps, hit the restart button on my dissertation proposal as well. I welcome all encouragement and/or ideas for pulling this off. I will keep you posted.