analysis and writing

Interviews - It is really important to have the tape when interviewing someone. When V and I did the pilot with Julia we both took notes as well as taping it (on her XDA2 mobile phone). After the interview we checked through each others notes and we both pretty much had to same information. However, there was a problem with the recording and so this is the only interview we don't have a transcript for and we both feel that while our notes give us the gist but the detail and the flavour.

we have both really really enjoyed transcribing - after all dire warning we had been given about how much time it would take. neither of us thought it took too long.

Writing - this has been a really useful process. It's made it clear that we have achieved what we set out to achieve, even if we were a little bit hazing about what the actual process would be. The template sent from Lancaster was very useful and we have gone through each heading systematically. The analysis this afternoon has been very tiring but so useful, we have both been looking for and finding trends as we read through the transcripts, and V started looking through the blogs, where we hope to find evidence to back up the interviews.

Learner forum - it was interesting to hear Vs comments about Maria's forum, how i felt it was very different to the ones i had led with other classes. I kept very much to the questions, whereas Maria was much more open and I was unsure is this was due to a) having Ss from different classes and therefore not having a shared project, b) her expereince as a researcher or c) other interests in teaching, learning and technology. It was much more difficult for V to pull out the threads/trends for our research questions, and again we discussed whether this was lack of experience on our part, lack of flexiblility or something else.

So we're leaving today with almost 2000 words under our belt and confident that we will end tomorrow with a reasonable first draft to send to Paul and James.