Dribbling the Ball

This week has been rough. I wish I had known several months ago what this course entailed. I knew that when the lit review arrived it would be intense but if I had realized that this past 2 weeks involved acquiring, digesting, and annotating 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, I would not have committed to presenting at a two-day conference this past week. Add in a day driving up (to outside of Chicago) and a day driving back and it's not surprising I am waaaay behind on completing my annotated bibliography. 

I worked on my annotated bibliography ever spare minute I had. Honestly, you can ask my friends who attended the conference with me. One friend drove most of the way to and from so I could be reading and annotating with all my stuff spread out in the back seat typing into my offline Google Docs. Each day the conference started at 8ish and I was up at 3:30 am sitting in the hotel lobby reading and annotating so as to not wake up my friends. Still, I dropped the ball and am highly disappointed in myself.

I say dropped the ball, and I did, but I'm not letting it sit there on the ground. I am trying to dribble it. Keeping my ever-so-slow progress continuing. Even though I will be turning this assignment in late, I have started working on the next part, reworking my outline and planning my approach to the meat of the lit review.

I have read some really good articles that have helped me to gain much increased knowledge and understanding of research that has been done and ways my research can fit into the body of work regarding self-directed learning, teacher professional development, and digital badges. 

Unfortunately, I have a busy week ahead at work, a conference up in Milan, TN on Tuesday, and the UM EdTech Showcase on Thursday morning. There are just not enough hours in the day. Well, I guess there are. It is just that I have filled them up too much. 

As I have been annotating, I still think I am doing too much summary and not enough synthesizing. I am trying to do better. I think that as I gain more expertise in these areas, the synthesis process will become more natural. I just have to keep plugging away at it, even though it is not pretty. 

My next steps? Well, I have to "get 'er done" for one thing. I had printed out a number of articles before I left on my trip and have set about half of them aside because I don't think they are what I need any longer. The other half are still applicable and are sitting beside me as I write this, calling my name. I haven't had a chance to really dig into the "further reading" sections of my annotated bibliography work. There are probably another 100+ (probably more). articles / books / papers listed there that I expect to read before the whole dissertation process is over. While the research on digital badges is still limited, there is some incredible work going on out there. I plan to connect with the names I keep seeing pop up in my research and have already spotted a few conferences / symposia on these topics I would like to attend. 

So, for now, I keep dribbling.