More on Mendeley

from OpenClipArt.org

I've been tidying up my Mendeley library, checking on citation formats, organizing readings into folders, attaching my annotated PDFs, and experimenting with what happens to annotated Diigo web pages when added to the library.  (BTW: the Diigo/Mendeley part really works! I don't know why I am surprised by this, but I think this level of integration is cool!  For example, I accessed a recent column from The Chronicle of Higher Education, highlighted important points using Diigo, and then added the link to Mendeley.)

Other aspects of building the Mendeley library have not been so cool. I have tons of reading material related to my frameworks, previous coursework, and past lit reviews that I eventually want to add to Mendeley, but, for the time being, I decided to to focus on the material at hand: the several journal articles, research studies, and book chapters required for EP604, "Digital Tools for Qualitative Research."

Basically, I began by creating an EP604 folder inside Mendeley Desktop.  After I read and annotate an EP604 PDF using an iPad reader app, I "flatten" the annotated version and send it to my Dropbox, at which point I rename the PDF using a standard format of "author_year_annotated." From Dropbox, I can quickly add the PDF file to Mendeley Desktop.  (I will explain this process in more detail in a future post, including my final verdict on which iPad annotator I like the best.)

Once inside Mendeley Desktop, things aren't so efficient and seamless. I don't know if I am missing something, but I have found it necessary to manually add most of the information about each EP604 course document.  This takes as much time as if I was using any other citation management software, and my data input abilities are always error prone. Occasionally, the information for articles from online journals will automatically "pop up" in the reference fields, but more often than not, I must painstakingly enter the title in the right APA format, along with author, year, volume number, issue number, and so on.  

The automatic DOI search feature does work efficiently for filling in reference information for items with an available DOI.  But I can't for the life of me imagine why I would have the DOI number on hand, unless I locate the document myself on the Web, such as with Google Scholar or a library database. For the current task at hand, this represents a major duplication of effort, as all the course documents were supplied via the EP604 course management site.

Insofar as managing references, I obviously (and mistakenly) expected Mendeley to magically deliver me from the tedium of manual entry.  Clearly, I have to lower my expectations and take comfort in the fact that the time I invest now in maintaining my library will pay off later when I need to generate a list of works cited.

So, why use Mendeley at all?  Why not stick with Zotero, which I have used in the past, or try EndNote, which is supported by my university? Well, I am just deeply committed to this idea of controlling my own database both from within the cloud and locally on my computer, even if I have to pay a little extra for more server space. (I am currently using close to 15 percent of my free 500 MB after just two weeks.)  

More importantly, I am intrigued by the give-and-take between Internet as an act of research and Internet as source of research.  I am also curious about this persistent theme in EP604 that suggests digital technologies are supporting conventional research practices but also changing them.  I think Mendeley possibly exemplifies all of this.

The July 19 Mendeley webinar for educational researchers, for example, emphasized that Mendeley was more than a citation manager.  The presenter referred to it as  "a crowd-sourced, publicly searched catalog of research." The Mendeley web client functions as a "collaborative platform." As researchers search for, share, and retrieve data, Mendeley aggregates the "community's processes," supplying readership statistics and disciplinary trends back to its members.

Moreover, according to its developers, Mendeley is highly individualized to fit the "idiosyncratic processes of researchers."  It supposedly has seven different ways to add documents and is compatible with more than a 1000 citation styles!

As I listened, I wondered about Mendeley as a place for self-publishing and dissemination of research.  If the Mendeley community were to grow exponentially, becoming some sort of scholarly version of Facebook, would community members simply bypass the "old guard" of peer-reviewed research journals? Talk about changed practices!

I would love to continue to explore these big ideas, but for my EP604 skill-building project, I also need to attend to some practical concerns that have come up for me in recent days:  

• If there are indeed seven different ways to add docs to Mendeley, perhaps I need to keep practicing until I find the most efficient way?
• I am interested in the TPACK framework for technology and teacher education.  I want to find out if there is a Mendeley group for TPACK.  If not, should I start one?
• Would it be possible to integrate Mendeley with this blog in some way?  Is that advisable? Does Mendeley provide member badges? It's worth a look-see. . . .

More on Mendeley

EP604 skill-building activities

Here are my two ideas for skill-building projects in EP604:

• Mendeley  I will complete my profile, join some public groups (perhaps?), build and organize my library, and figure out the best way (that works for me) to upload, store, and share annotated PDFs.  If I have time, I would like to compare Mendeley to Zotero, which I used last year on a collaborative lit review about podcasting.  I haven't played with Zotero in a while. I see this project as supporting my personal goal to go paperless this year. See Working with Mendeley and More on Mendeley for my current reflections on this project.

• Inqscribe  I will use this tool to complete transcription for a study on the use of eBooks during Kindergarten literacy instruction. This project will challenge my skills at reflexivity because the lead investigator on the study has not prescribed a format for the transcripts.  As I teach myself how to create "shortcuts" and "snippets" with Inqscribe, I will also have to use my developing expertise about the transcription process to figure out how to accurately and adequately represent the essence of children's emergent readings. This is crucial, as the data will be interpreted to determine what impact exposure to eBooks had on their developing literacy.

EP604 skill-building activities

Reflection on transcription in the digital age

Several course readings this week focused on the researcher's act of transcription and the impact of digital tools on this process.  As I read, I was reminded of a central question posed by Brown (2002):

Where might we explore the potential of digital convergence in ways that provide catalysts to individual creativity, plurality of thought and representation, and at the same time benefit from the obvious efficiency gains from using the computer as a digital hub for the entire research process?

In his side-by-side comparison of the listen-and-type method versus voice recognition software, Johnson (2011) provides a good example of what Brown's question might look like in practice. Johnson's research note is a measured and systematic exploration of the affordances and constraints of a new technology. Despite his strange conclusions about hiring a graduate student to "intelligently transcribe" using a combination of both approaches (p. 96), Johnson provides a service to researchers who might be curious about voice recognition software but who don't have the time or the means to take the plunge.

Regarding the ability of voice recognition software to ease "mental comfort," Johnson said, "My initial amazement at the software's work quickly wore off and I found both means of transcription equally dull" (p. 95). You have to wonder that if transcription is indeed the qualitative researcher's first interpretive act, then why is he so bored with his own data? Nonetheless, his findings underscore that "new and digital" does not always equate to "better and more efficient." 

 
Putting aside the as-yet-unproven voice recognition software, computers have made a significant impact on the listen-and-type method. If used judiciously and reflexively, digital tools for transcription can live up to Brown's standard of improving efficiency while supporting flexible, open-ended, and inductive inquiry.  For example, it is possible do download audio files from a digital microrecorder into transcription software on the computer and listen and type in one integrated interface using keystrokes to pause, rewind, and so on. This is hugely efficient in itself, as it is now easy and inexpensive to archive, share, and transport digitized transcripts.

But my big take-away this week is learning that certain software, particularly Inqscribe, will allow me to synchronize my subsequent readings of the transcripts with the audio, something I have never tried to do systematically.  I created the transcripts, and then the audio files went into a folder, never to be heard from again. Because I was never meticulous enough to manually insert timestamps into the transcripts, it was always tedious and cumbersome to locate a specific excerpt in the audio when I had to.  Inqscribe enables timestamping with two keystrokes, and when clicked, the timestamp takes you to the precise location within the audio.  I am looking forward to trying this function in upcoming transcription projects.

Reflection on transcription in the digital age

More thoughts on blogs as research tools

I am beginning to wrap my brain around the idea of "Internet research."  I am also refining and clarifying my vision for this blog as "research tool," a process I started to explore in an earlier post.

What is Internet research? It could mean two things. There is a distinction between gathering data through the Internet (email, videoconferencing, discussion groups) versus gathering data about the Internet (crowd sourcing, marketing analytics, "trending," and so on).

In other words, the Internet functions as both a method and object of study. As diverse approaches for studying the Internet flourish (Dominguez et al. 2007), the Internet gives rise to new approaches for studying the offline world as well.  Dominguez et al. claim this diversity is the result of "the way in which the Internet is conceptualized as both culture and context for social interaction."

Of course, in a very Marshall McLuhan sort of way, there is no clear distinction. I may choose a face-to-face, "real world" research context, but with the constant proliferation of digital tools in contemporary society being what it is, it would be foolish to ignore "the current blending of offline and online worlds" (Garcia et al., 2009, p. 53).  As such, I must remain consistently reflexive of the influence of digital technologies on my everyday practices as a student and novice researcher, regardless of my research context.

It's time to review "The Machine is Us/ing Us."

To take this one step further, I was struck by Dr. Paulus' comment in class last night that researchers tend "to put the practice first, then choose the tool." The same can be said about educators. For a long time, the conventional wisdom in K-12 education was that content and pedagogy should drive teachers' decision making around the integration of technology. But what if the pedagogy and the theory stagnates or fails to keep pace with the technology? We are prevented from envisioning and leveraging new pedagogies -- and new research practices -- that never would have been possible without the new tools.

Thus, the traditional lecture format is "transformed" by presentation and slide software, with the phenomenon of death by PowerPoint following soon after. Similarly, O'Connor (2008) claims a similar lack of inspiration exists among online researchers, who "have done little more than transfer traditional, and in some cases outdated, approaches to a new arena" (p. 281).

People across all sectors of society, public and private, are beginning to rethink common, everyday practices in light of Web 2.0 tools.  In a recent online column Daniel Pink called it flip-thinking, in which digital technology "melts calcified thinking and leads to solutions that are simple to envision and to implement."  Pink described the work of U.S. educator Karl Fisch, who assigns YouTube lectures as homework. The Kahn Academy is another example.

I am curious about how "the tools are enabling new research practices," as Dr. Paulus said. I would like to continue to explore this idea, particularly as it relates to the blog as a writing repository documenting the research process and as a venue of reflexive practice for the researcher.

Specifically, I want to learn more about:

• The blog as a "methodological strategy for research" (Wakeford & Cohen, 2008, p. 311)
• Sharing research with participants--But how to get them to read it??
• Using a blog to expose the process of doing research 
• "Compensating for the relative isolation of graduate work" (p. 312) 
• Better organization of ("tagging") fieldnotes, possibly using Richardson's typology in the 1994 version of her essay "Writing: A Method of Inquiry" (if I can get my hands on it!!!)
• Gregg's (2006) idea of blogs as "conversational scholarship"

More thoughts on blogs as research tools

Paperless, Part I

By hook or by crook, by laptop or by handheld, I'm going paperless.  

At the outset of my third year of doctoral studies, I get knots in my stomach when I look at the accumulation of books flagged with sticky notes and the crates of binders overloaded with highlighted articles, conference papers, and research studies. 

So, paperless academic reading is my latest "new routine." But I'm taking baby steps, starting with one class. This summer in EP604, I will not print a single page of the assigned journal articles or book chapters  -- not one page of the 521 pages of required reading. (That's more than a ream of single-sided copies.)

Instead, I am downloading the digital files from our course website into an application for reading and annotating PDFs. Then, I am "flattening" and exporting the marked-up PDFs to my virtual library, which, for the moment, is housed at Mendeley.com. (See also my post Working with Mendeley.) Mendeley is a web-based personal citation and reference manager that enables users to store their research documents on remote servers, or "in the cloud."  That means I can access my personal collection of EP604 course readings anytime, anywhere, provided I have a reliable Internet connection and web browser.

Let's be honest here.  Cloud computing may sound all warm and fuzzy and environmentally conscious.  But this is not about saving trees. For me, at least, it's about saving my sanity.

Anyone (read:  "any sleep-deprived graduate student") who has desperately thumbed through stacks of paper at 2 a.m., searching for that singular, seminal piece of writing -- that 37-page, heavily annotated and many-times-read journal article -- only to realize she has left the printout on her desk at school, can understand the value of the "cloud."

Managing one's resources in graduate school has surely never been easy. Now, ironically, digital and web-based technologies provide greater ease and efficiency with which to gather mass amounts of information, while making it more difficult to stay organized. According to Anderson and Kanuka, authors of E-Research: Methods, Strategies and Issues, "...[T]he amount of valuable research information available 'anywhere/anytime' continues to grow," and more time is needed for "assessing relevance and veracity" (2003, pp. 41-42).

When one factors in Hart's assertion that the graduate student "is expected to search more widely, across disciplines, and in greater detail than at undergraduate level" (1999, p. 9), there is major imperative for adopting and refining the practice of reading in digital and online environments.

In sum, my tools for converting to paperless are (so far): 

• citation management software (Mendeley is one example, but I would like to compare it later to Zotero.)
• a PDF annotator
• Dropbox.com

What other tools might I consider?  And, more importantly, what is the value-added of going paperless and what are the costs?  I will explore these questions in future posts.

Paperless, Part I

Working with Mendeley

I attended a webinar this week to learn more about the personal citation manager Mendeley, which I have started using this week (with mixed results, so far). I established an account and user profile at the Mendeley website, and I downloaded the desktop application to my PC, which syncs with the web account. I also installed the mobile Mendeley Lite app on an iPad.

In an effort to go "paperless" this academic year (more on this later), I was especially motivated to try the desktop version of Mendeley, which provides highlighter and note tools. Yet, after reading and marking up one PDF file, I could not successfully save or export the file with its annotations. Each time I attempt to do this, the application crashes and closes. Consequently, I cannot see my annotations anywhere except locally on my own laptop within the Mendeley Desktop environment.  They do not appear inside the library within the Mendeley "cloud," and the cloud, according to today's webinar presenter, is just what makes Mendeley so special!

Meanwhile, I have not been able to explore the functionality of MendeleyLite because it continually crashes on my iPad.

Frustration! 

I suspect the problem with Desktop relates to different versions of PDFs, depending on when and how the file specifications were generated.  But I really don't have the time nor the inclination to explore the issue in-depth. At any rate, I have already located a handful of other PDF readers/annotators that upload reliably to Dropbox, enabling me to then download my marked-up pages to the Mendeley library.

Still, out of curiosity, I raised the issue during the Mendeley webinar and was pleased with the timely manner in which the presenter responded. But she didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, except to contact support, which I have done.

The overall purpose of the Mendeley webinar was to provide a broad overview of its features. I learned about some new tricks I can do with my Mendeley reference library, such as:

• Synch with my account in Zotero, another web-based citation manager
• Create "watch" folders on my desktop that synch with Mendeley each time I add new content
• Use the document identifying number (DOI) to fill in missing information on a resource

On a broader scale, I can view and sometimes access what others are reading within the Mendeley community, which numbers in the millions. I can also connect with other researchers in my discipline who share my interests, thanks to a variety of social networking features the Mendeley developers added.  

This is what Hensley (2011) was referring to when she described the development of Mendeley as " a clear indication of the future direction for research tools." According to Hensley, developers will continue "to look for ways to embed the organization of research materials, add social collaboration features, and incorporate compatibility with smartphones and tablet technology."

Mendeley, it seems, exemplifies the  "potential of digital convergence" that Brown described back in 2002 in his article "Going Digital and Staying Qualitative."

It sounds great. It really does. But for now, all I want is a citation manager that does double-duty as an e-reading utility, or that at least "plays nice" with the other tools in my digital toolbox.  

Working with Mendeley

Re-purposing this blog as a reflective research journal

from OpenClipArt

Over the last several months I have struggled with writing my final representation of fieldwork for a year-long ethnography course that ended in May 2011. At my instructor’s behest, I am rewriting sections of my findings to include “more of me.” It’s uncomfortable, unfamiliar territory, and navigating it would have been so much easier had I had the discipline and foresight to keep a daily -- or, at least weekly -- reflective journal, such as the one described by Watt (2007).

Lesson learned.

Soon, I will embark on a new research journey, a pilot study of literacy teachers learning “new” digital literacies such as podcasting and digital storytelling as alternative formats for case study representation. Pending IRB approval, the study will begin in fall 2011.

The journal begins today.

I am dusting off this old blog and re-purposing it as a reflexive research journal. I am not sure of all the implications of this, especially since I have not yet fully formed my research design or invited participants to the study. But I am excited at the prospect of breathing new life into this blog. Even if I only use it to document "tasks, events, and actions," as LaBanca did (2011, p. 1164), it will be worth it. After my most recent academic writing experience, I am invigorated by the thought of having a "permanent record" and "memory prompt" (Watt, p. 83).

I started this blog in 2007 as a master's student in Instructional Technology. At the time, it was a place to document and reflect on what I was learning about web-based technologies and social media and how it all related back to my interests in language arts instruction, adolescent literacy, and 21st century classrooms.

Periodically, I have returned to the blog, mostly to model reflective practice and to engage with students in the technology course I sometimes teach.

Sadly, I have not used the blog at all in relation to my work as a PhD student in reading education. This was not a conscious choice or decision, just the result of the rigors and cognitive mayhem imposed by a graduate-level workload and a full and happy home life. I couldn't figure out how to fit it in. I'm still not sure how it's going to fit, excepting for the fact that I am required to post at least twice a week in connection with a course I am currently taking this summer titled "Digital tools for qualitative research."

Over the last four years, this blog has had three different names, two different hosts, and more different themes, templates, and header designs than I can count, but my core interests and passions have remained unchanged. Despite the long periods of inactivity, I am excited to keep past, present, and future posts together under one digital "roof," a document of my growth and development as a teacher/learner (and, now, "researcher").

Over the next several weeks in connection with coursework in EP 604, I hope to sort out some of my questions about using a blog as a reflexive research journal.

Primarily, I am wondering about audience and feedback, once peer and instructor support of EP 604 goes away. Perhaps it doesn't matter; I will surely benefit, as did Watt, from the "generative nature of this practice" (p. 83) regardless of readership. But then why choose an open and accessible medium -- a blog -- to begin with? Why not use a word processor and create a digital journal right on my computer desktop? And, assuming I secure the permission of participants for my hoped-for pilot study, what impact will my online, reflective writing have on them? More importantly, how do I encourage them to join me? How do I build a community of practice around this blog?

Re-purposing this blog as a reflective research journal