for the past three days, i've been working on refining my research proposal (which has grown from six pages to twelve :-P ), based on the suggestions made by john and sengchee during our meeting on saturday.
on saturday itself i did not do any work, but on sunday i spent some time trying to reformulate my research questions, based on the tighter draft (which essentially describes how multimedia messaging might be used in orienteering, in order to get glimpses into how teenagers construct and share meanings about space and place) which i had been asked to submit earlier in may (that same draft was approved in principle during saturday's meeting).
i had a block on sunday, while trying to reformulate the research questions. i kept running into the wall of thinking that i should investigate demographic determinants of the degree of success / failure of textual and non-textual clues during the proposed orienteering activities. if i had gone down that road for the actual research, i would have ended up in a quagmire of statistical analyses.
then i went for a walk to clear my head and i was able to shift my paradigm, towards differentiated curricular tasks, based on the various high-stakes topics in the Geography elective at the 'O' level national examinations, instead of the demographic determinants problem.
so, just so that you can gain a better understanding of just how tightly my study has been focussed so far, here's a comparison of my old research questions, and the present ones :-)
first, the old:
What affordances of the mobile internet offer opportunities to improve teaching and learning, and in which specific ways?
How can technologies of the mobile internet change the way content is delivered in and out of the classroom?
Which specific demographic and socio-economic groups would benefit most from instruction which uses the mobile internet as a complementary technology?
How will such technologies change how values are imparted, and how schools are managed?
To what extent will these changes facilitate greater and more timely communication between teachers and the wider school community (such as parents and counsellors)?
now, the new:
How do pupils make meaning of the local environment in which they find themselves?
How is this meaning shared with their peers and friends?
What are the mechanisms (including textual and non-textual cues) which teens employ to teach their peers to help themselves?
How can the technologies of social software, specifically messaging technologies of the mobile internet, augment and/or detract from the processes of making and sharing meaning about place?
i'm going to bed now...
