edonis project - introduction II

During the summer of 2008 I began work on my thesis. At this time, the working title was, “How are educators using the ‘social web’ to enhance teaching and learning, and their own professional development?” I started to develop a three-year, longitudinal study, entitled edonis (educators online impact study); setting out to have 100 participants by time of commencement at the start of November. The research would consist primarily of: fortnightly emailed questions; monthly online surveys via Survey Monkey; quarterly invited response to some stimulus; yearly extended discussion (online or face-to-face); and a face-to-face or online recorded interview.

After eleven years of teaching and three years communicating online with fellow learning professionals, I was confident that by promoting edonis through several channels, I would attract at least 100 participants. I:

• Emailed seventy teachers on the mailing list of The Access Network (http://accessnetwork.blogspot.com); an online community that I facilitate. These teachers are typified by their teaching of pupils with Additional Support Needs (ASN) in Scotland
• created a social network website (http://edonis.ning.com). Networks created at Ning can comprise several communication tools. The aims of the edonis Ning site are to: promote the building of relationships among many of the participants; continue conversations and facilitate a platform for them to post, comment, and influence the methodology and others aspects of edonis; and share research activities and interim data (including some interviews) with those in the study and beyond
• used a tool within Ning which allowed me to send a mass email invitation to a select list of contacts in my personal/professional email account. This communication invited those interested in the stated research title to email edonis for further details, or to sign-up to the edonis Ning
• sent a message to those who ‘follow me’ on Twitter (http://twitter.com/parslad)
• publicised edonis through a special episode of my ‘edtech’ podcast, Booruch (http://booruch.libsyn.com) and through the weekly recorded group conversation at Edtechroundup (http://edtechroundup.com)
• asked colleagues to mention the study to those within various ‘looked after children’ and residential school networks
• I invited work colleagues to take part after outlining the research during a brief slot in our Monday education staff meeting.

The edonis Ning was created in July 2008, becoming interactive from the October. On the left-hand side is a media player which initially plays a short audio introduction to the study (and has been downloaded and played over 300 times within the first two months). Around every two weeks from January 2009, this player will be updated with an edited version of an interview with one of the eighty-odd participants who have given consent to their conversation (semi-structured interview) being made available for playing on the site, as well as for download from my Booruch podcast channel. A project badge is available to embed into participants’ own websites; this has been done by around fifteen so far. The badge indicates that a number of members of the Ning community are assisting in different ways in the promotion of edonis. The final area on the left provides hyperlinked names, enabling visitors to the site access to the main websites of some of the participants.

The right-hand side provides a significant attraction, encouraging learning professionals to regularly visit the site. All those who signed-up to the study were asked if they wished to provide a link to their main website, if they had one. Each site’s RSS feed was fed into the edonis project Yahoo Pipe. This collects updates from each of the sites into one RSS feed. This has been embedded into the edonis Ning site (after I set up a monthly payment to Ning for the extra space/removal of GoogleAds). Visitors can easily access the twenty most recent blog posts, social bookmarks, website updates etc by some of the participants. I will explore whether this particular tool can be used directly in my research.

Key event details can be posted by myself in the top-middle of the site. This was used to build up to the launch on 4^th November. It provided concise details of the research, participants’ involvement, and how to sign-up. The main body of the site provides space for blog posts. I regularly post information relevant to the study, including: profiles of those who are taking part via email only; the draft research questions; updates, including links to the parts of the study; and stimuli such as Wordle word clouds (http://wordle.net). Any participant who has joined to edonis Ning may create a blog post on their page and offer it to the home page. A variety of purposes have been served so far, such as: outlining initial thoughts on the research questions; creating a wider audience or conversation; and even advertising of vacancies.

Finally, there is a selection of thumbnail images of participants. These link to their own page and profile, and let visitors know if that person is currently visible online. Most created a profile upon signing-up to the Ning which I found useful in constructing the first parts of the study.