There must be something more interesting for social scientists to do with their computers than coding data.

Mason & Dicks, 2001, p. 441.

And I certainly agree! I gave a “Friday Morning Seminar” presentation to the faculty of Education a couple of weeks ago in which I described how I am using technologies to research technologies.

When I first started this research “journey,” I was highly influenced by what I read in the Horizon Report. I knew that working and researching in the field of educational technologies would mean that my work would be quickly outdated unless I was very forward thinking. My “contribution to knowledge” may be obsolete before I could even start writing! In this goal of forward-thinking, the Horizon Report was of great help. The Horizon Project, for which the report is produced, “charts the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning and creative inquiry.” And so in writing my research proposal, I paid close attention to the ideas and technologies the report charted for 3-5 years time (now!). I was particularly interested in the ideas of “The New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication” and, of course, the many tools that would (could) be used for and in research.

Cue a few technological developments that occurred as I engaged field work, in a very short amount of time. Digital still cameras became far cheaper and accessible, often with video capture; netbooks (sub notebooks) were released and again, were cheap and accessible; USB digital video cameras became the norm rather than tape-based cameras; WiFi became widespread not just in libraries but also in cafes and many schools; wireless broadband coverage increased and became a viable option; and finally the iPhone was released. Online video (YouTube, for instance), blogging, and data storage in “the cloud” also became a part of many web users’ vocabularies. I experimented using all of these tools during my field work to capture, collect, collate and re-present data. With traditions of ethnography in mind, I was looking and seeing (ala Harry Wolcott) technology in classroom case-studies using technology to do so, and now I am evaluating its use. What happened? How? Why? Was there any (perceived) benefit to using ICTs when more ‘traditional’ methods may have sufficed? But my biggest question -

How do we ensure that looking with technology (in ethnographic fieldwork) is good looking?

Stay tuned – this is what I’ll be writing about over the next few weeks. But first, the nitty gritty of the methodology chapter!