Week #6 Reflection

This week my second draft of my literature review was due. I had a very very rough first draft.  This particular topic is becoming quite a challenge to me due to the limited research on using social media to increase parental communication.

The prior week I just compiled notes and research. I didn’t really begin the true writing process; however, I was fully prepared to devote every second of my time to writing the second draft of my literature review. Unfortunately, a wrench was thrown into my plans in the form of massive lake effect snowstorm. I live in Hamburg, New york, which is south of Buffalo. We got blasted with 80 inches of snow in two-day period. I was snowed in from Monday night, November 17^th to Sunday November 23^rd confined to my house eating the remnants of food in my pantry.  This made for a great opportunity to dive into the literature review, in between shoveling of course.   

I have been in contact with Dr. Dennis through email and met by appointment through Google hangouts. We went through the various library databases in search of (parent/adult/teacher/Educator/…training) She is also struggling to find research on my topic.  She is in contact with her colleagues trying to find articles, research and information as well as possible key search terms. 

As I write my second draft I feel as though I am constantly rearranging, adding, deleting and questioning myself. I am also fixing my APA errors as I construct draft two. This is a process once again that will be ongoing.  I look forward to my classmate and Dr. Weavers feedback and recommendations.

I once again used my outline to guide me through the writing process. I hope using the outline will assist me in keeping a coherent flow throughout my literature review. I am considering making a mind map to come up with some additional search/key terms, which I may have overlooked. I feel like I am researching more now that I did during the annotated bibliographies. I keep finding articles that steer me in different directions and hope I will find relevant research on social media and professional development.

It is imperative to take breaks after writing, reading, and researching.  After a few hours of work it was clear my writing would turn into incoherent thoughts. I found that a lot of the research I compiled never made it into my literature review.  This really frustrated me because I thought a majority of the information was very informative however it did not align with my topics.

I need to keep well-organized notes, and use keywords to refer back to the literature. I have compiled various pages of notes in Googledocs. However, there is no organization to it.  After reflecting on the past two weeks I found that it is usually better to research one very specific idea thoroughly than to attempt to tackle a big theme (or many ideas) and not be able to treat it (or them) in depth.  I am far from being done and I still have a lot of work to do!