Organization

How I am organizing myself to engage with research about educational technology?

Research is like a creature living under the bed to me.  It’s there and I know that it is coming out eventually, but I’m not totally convinced it is friendly.  As a long-term teacher, I have struggled with organizing for years.  If I don’t have a plan in place in the beginning, then trouble is on its way.  I have a scary “to be filed” folder at work that holds far too many documents.  Saving my articles, and notes in specific places and with very specific names is key for me now.  In the last decade I’ve gotten much better.   Folders by subject, by unit, by outcomes.

In my courses so far, research has consisted of a dozen or so articles that I read before my group presentation.  We were encouraged to use a program called Zotero to help make our research easier.  I, however, am a tad stuck in my ways.  I used Zotero for my references, but I printed off my articles and took notes by hand. 

Once the presentation was finished, I decided to buckle down and familiarize myself with Zotero.  The results were lovely.  I remember the days of having a handbook of how to properly cite and reference readings.  It was tedious.  It was time consuming.  It was worth 10-15% of our mark on most essays.  Zotero takes all of that learning and makes it obsolete.  Zotero is a program that helps to collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research. 

After a great presentation about he UVic library I have been exploring the library to find numerous articles that I have been interested in reading.  I have set up a few folders with different articles based on the courses I am taking and my personal interests.  Within those folders I put articles together according to different assignments.  As I read those articles I highlight, take notes, and add different tags.  The notes I make include the purpose of the article, a brief summary and any other information that will help me.  The tags help me find the articles based on the topic.  As well, my professor, Dr. Michael Paskevicius, shared an excel document that he calls a Literature Synthesis Data with us earlier in the term to help us organize our articles and I have started to use it to help organize my information to easily find what I need.

I can see that Zotero can be a useful program and it is definitely going to change to way I do research.  Its’ ability to cite references and make a running bibliography of sources I have cited will be incredibly useful.

 While I am not sure that I will ever have the stomach to deal with my “to be filed” folder, I know that I am on the right track now.  I’m excited to read articles and think knowing how to use Zotero effectively will be an advantage.