Reflection for online research and the quality of that research - 3 views

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  #1 Professor Scott Hull on 03 Feb 17

   

  As someone who enjoys technology and the advantages that it allows us there are times I think it can also be a burden. Not that it is hard to manipulate or use but more so toward the overall perceived benefits it can offers us. As an instructor I feel that I must constantly challenge myself to become familiar of the newest and next best technology advancements. This is usually my undoing. So, for this assignment I want to streamline my ambitions and allow myself the freedom of not over thinking.
  I began by choosing wide range of relative criteria for my intended search outcomes. For example, instead of a search titling "new educational technology for University of Central Florida" I would search a wider criteria titling; "county and district educational requirements". Taking this approach allowed me to create a breadcrumb path that I could expand upon as well as retreat within to find pertinent information.
  Overall the subject matter for the searches allowed for accessing wonderful scholarly articles very easily. Some of these sources presented great resources others were more theory based and offered very little in practical approaches. Mostly, I searched for newer technology adaptations; I wanted to concentrate on the ISTE standard "Model digital age work and learning". So I started searching "current technology tools within education" within the UCF online library engine. I was trying to acquire a journal or article written and published through UCF. However, I did not find many articles within search; what I did find was an online resource written by R.J. Marquez. His electronic resource offered a look into pro and cons toward technology and the use of technology as an accepted well developed model. This article leads me to continue my search within the UCF library toward more educational tools focused on current trends. So, the next search I inputted into the database was for anything dealing with virtual reality and how it could be implemented in to an educational model. A few articles came up; one that was authored by a handful of universities caught my eye it is titled "Making Learning Fun: Quest Atlantis, A Game Without Guns" (Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Carteaux, Tuzun, 2005). This article goes into a descriptive analyzation of a particular game used for educational pedagogy by utilizing a virtual world as well as persona. This interests me because it touched on sociotechnical structures that are aimed at engagement and solid participation. Much of preparing a proper teaching model is taking into account many outside factors that can affect transference with an intended intervention.
  Although, the articles were enlightening I want to also test the search within a popular search engine such as Google or Google Scholar. I again searched with "virtual reality (VR) in education", as this title was intended to narrowed the search. However, within Google Scholar the result was vast over one million. Therefore, I narrowed the search by "time selecting" only current articles within 2017. This did lessen the results, although the majority of articles were geared toward more medical training. Although. As I continued to look further within the results. I did find several on standard k-12 level education, which informative and well developed.
  Having the Google search in hand I thought I had a good amount of references developed from scholarly articles so geared the same search criteria toward web sources.
  With the same title for searching I input the criteria into the normal Google engine; my intention was to find some websites with extensions such as .edu, .org, .gov, etc. I was truly surprised at how many I actually found. Author Elizabeth Mann from tech tank was one result the site was a .edu and provided information pertaining to the readiness of k-12 schools in order to implement virtual reality tools into pedagogy. From the site I gained mixed reviews for utilizing VR most opinions from the source called it ubiquitous and overzealous. Perhaps the models they chose to review were not compelling enough to prove beneficial. Overall, most educational resources that I searched shed some light on the subject. Some were pro and others con, yet that is what I set out to find. With research you should not try and create an alternative result swayed by one's belief; we as instructors should try and stay open to all input. That way we can take what we want and leave what do not want without having created a bias environment.
  Having been given this assignment dealing with researching and reflecting I have been humble in away. I have been in a master's program for two years plus a certificate program as well and all this time researching only one way. I would look for reference solely to support my opinion. In most cased I would stop reading a particular finding and look for an alternate just because it was not supporting my intended outcome. With this particular project, I found that if you can utilize all information and read carefully you can provide a better finding. Overall, I believe that my best results came from the UCF library search. It offered complete articles with professional authors as well as rich content that could be considered current and reliable.
  
  References
  Mann, E. (2016) Is Virtual Reality Ready for School. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2016/09/01/is-virtual-reality-ready-for-school/ retrieved Jan 26, 2017
  Marquez, R. J. (2011). A cultural-historical activity theory analysis of factors affecting technology adoption by higher education program faculty. [electronic resource]. Orlando, FL University of Central Florida, 2011
  Barab, S., Thomas, M., Dodge, T., Carteaux, R., & Tuzun, H. (2005). Making Learning Fun: Quest Atlantis, A Game Without Guns. Educational Technology Research and Development, 53(1), 86-107. doi:10.1007/BF02504859

   

  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">As someone who enjoys technology and the advantages that it allows us there are times I think it can also be a burden. Not that it is hard to manipulate or use but more so toward the overall perceived benefits it can offers us. As an instructor I feel that I must constantly challenge myself to become familiar of the newest and next best technology advancements. This is usually my undoing. So, for this assignment I want to streamline my ambitions and allow myself the freedom of not over thinking. <br /> I began by choosing wide range of relative criteria for my intended search outcomes. For example, instead of a search titling "new educational technology for University of Central Florida" I would search a wider criteria titling; "county and district educational requirements". Taking this approach allowed me to create a breadcrumb path that I could expand upon as well as retreat within to find pertinent information. <br /> Overall the subject matter for the searches allowed for accessing wonderful scholarly articles very easily. Some of these sources presented great resources others were more theory based and offered very little in practical approaches. Mostly, I searched for newer technology adaptations; I wanted to concentrate on the ISTE standard "Model digital age work and learning". So I started searching "current technology tools within education" within the UCF online library engine. I was trying to acquire a journal or article written and published through UCF. However, I did not find many articles within search; what I did find was an online resource written by R.J. Marquez. His electronic resource offered a look into pro and cons toward technology and the use of technology as an accepted well developed model. This article leads me to continue my search within the UCF library toward more educational tools focused on current trends. So, the next search I inputted into the database was for anything dealing with virtual reality and how it could be implemented in to an educational model. A few articles came up; one that was authored by a handful of universities caught my eye it is titled "Making Learning Fun: Quest Atlantis, A Game Without Guns" (Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Carteaux, Tuzun, 2005). This article goes into a descriptive analyzation of a particular game used for educational pedagogy by utilizing a virtual world as well as persona. This interests me because it touched on sociotechnical structures that are aimed at engagement and solid participation. Much of preparing a proper teaching model is taking into account many outside factors that can affect transference with an intended intervention. <br /> Although, the articles were enlightening I want to also test the search within a popular search engine such as Google or Google Scholar. I again searched with "virtual reality (VR) in education", as this title was intended to narrowed the search. However, within Google Scholar the result was vast over one million. Therefore, I narrowed the search by "time selecting" only current articles within 2017. This did lessen the results, although the majority of articles were geared toward more medical training. Although. As I continued to look further within the results. I did find several on standard k-12 level education, which informative and well developed. <br /> Having the Google search in hand I thought I had a good amount of references developed from scholarly articles so geared the same search criteria toward web sources. <br /> With the same title for searching I input the criteria into the normal Google engine; my intention was to find some websites with extensions such as .edu, .org, .gov, etc. I was truly surprised at how many I actually found. Author Elizabeth Mann from tech tank was one result the site was a .edu and provided information pertaining to the readiness of k-12 schools in order to implement virtual reality tools into pedagogy. From the site I gained mixed reviews for utilizing VR most opinions from the source called it ubiquitous and overzealous. Perhaps the models they chose to review were not compelling enough to prove beneficial. Overall, most educational resources that I searched shed some light on the subject. Some were pro and others con, yet that is what I set out to find. With research you should not try and create an alternative result swayed by one's belief; we as instructors should try and stay open to all input. That way we can take what we want and leave what do not want without having created a bias environment. <br /> Having been given this assignment dealing with researching and reflecting I have been humble in away. I have been in a master's program for two years plus a certificate program as well and all this time researching only one way. I would look for reference solely to support my opinion. In most cased I would stop reading a particular finding and look for an alternate just because it was not supporting my intended outcome. With this particular project, I found that if you can utilize all information and read carefully you can provide a better finding. Overall, I believe that my best results came from the UCF library search. It offered complete articles with professional authors as well as rich content that could be considered current and reliable. <br /> <br /> References <br /> Mann, E. (2016) Is Virtual Reality Ready for School. Brookings. <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2016/09/01/is-virtual-reality-ready-for-school/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2016/09/01/is-virtual-reality-ready-for-school/</a> retrieved Jan 26, 2017 <br /> Marquez, R. J. (2011). A cultural-historical activity theory analysis of factors affecting technology adoption by higher education program faculty. [electronic resource]. Orlando, FL University of Central Florida, 2011 <br /> Barab, S., Thomas, M., Dodge, T., Carteaux, R., & Tuzun, H. (2005). Making Learning Fun: Quest Atlantis, A Game Without Guns. Educational Technology Research and Development, 53(1), 86-107. doi:10.1007/BF02504859</div>

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