Virtual Networking

Today in class, we discussed the importance of developing your personal learning network as a student and moving forward as an educator. I teach community college students who are just embarking on their educational journeys, but it's never too early to start. I found this great SlideShare presentation from CalState. It's worth taking a look at and sharing with anyone that is looking to start creating their professional social networking presence.

Get Linked In on LinkedIn from Cal State L.A. Career Development Center

Making Progress

I am making progress with my living room learning lab and my wall of dissertation data posters. In an attempt to take some of the data and use technology so I can view it and move it around to come up with summaries and categories, I tried using Note.ly (www.note.ly#). I believe they have a sister product called Easel.ly, which I have used in the classroom with my students to create infographics. The address for my site is. I don't have a lot of time to fool around with this tool at the moment, but from what I found, it seems like you can only have one "wall." This doesn't particularly serve my purpose as I need about 10 "walls" for different coding areas, but I tried it out anyway. Although not exactly a concept mapping tool, this helped me make post-its for various themes I found and then I was able to move them in groups virtually to try to make sense of it all and come up with a summary overview. I imagine students who are visual learners and those who love post-its can use something like this for brainstorming and organizing their ideas, which can move around pretty quickly to become groupings.

Data Reduction Week

This week I am in the process of trying to make sense of all of the data I collected during my qualitative interviews for my dissertation. My living room/dining room has been transformed into my learning lab, where I am going through pages of interview transcripts and trying to make sense of all of the information. Although I love technology, I decided to go back to basics for this effort, which is how I started studying for my cert exam a few years ago.

Eventually these pages will be filled with information (and taken off of the walls)...at which time I will turn to my new laptop to get the work in a usable form!

The 29th International Self-Directed Learning Symposium

My proposal has been accepted for a poster presentation at the 2015 Self-Directed Learning Symposium. This is both extremely exciting and extremely terrifying. Exciting because I am moving down the path of scholarly activities. Terrifying because the presentation is based on my preliminary dissertation findings. That means by the first week in February, my findings have to be pretty solid and I need to really be comfortable talking about them. I had planned to get my draft into my advisor at the beginning of January, but now the pressure is really on. The symposium is in Cocoa Beach, Florida, so a chance for me to get out of the cold weather and to get some different perspectives on my work before it is finalized.

Thinking About "Student to Scholar"

I just got back from the International Transformative Learning Conference last week, held at Teachers College. One particular roundtable session about moving from considering oneself as a student to becoming an academic scholar. The discussion inspired me to reflect on how I am managing this transition in my own life as I work to complete my dissertation. At this conference, I was a presenter in a roundtable discussion titled Selecting Supportive Spaces for Personal Transformation: A Reflection on How Personality Characteristics and Past Experience Impact Support Group Success. This research was an extension of a collaborative inquiry group formed in my doctoral cohort. More importantly it was a milestone in my personal transition from student to scholar because it was not only my first time presenting at an academic conference, but also my first time attending an academic conference. Here's a snapshot of my co-presenters after we finished the session.