Week #5 Reflection

This week I began organizing all of my annotated bibliographies and started drafting my Literature Review.  I also have been in contact with Dr. Dennis and will be meeting with her via Google Hangouts this Wednesday to search for more articles pertaining to how to guide teacher/parents to communicate using technology and social media. She said that I might need to make my own interpretations if we cannot find any research. The first draft is definitely a draft that will develop overtime.

The outline I created for my literature review has already been tweaked and revised.  I also realized I need to include the barriers and benefits of technology as well as the current statistics of social media and technology. 

I was once again overwhelmed going through all of my bibliographies and organizing them into topics.  I actually had more articles about using technology to communicate than I thought. However quite a few were outdated in regards to technology such as using voice mail and email as a communication tool.  I will continue to research studies to find more relevant information that pertains to my literature review.

I also had to return to printing paper copies of my articles. I tried to save paper and time however I had to return to my old habit of printing off a hard copy. This took sometime because I had to go search the various databases in which I found the articles. I can’t help highlighting, underlining and tabbing articles. My kitchen counter has been overtaken by articles, post notes and every highlighter color ever made.    

During the process of trying to do my work I began to empathize with my students who are now required to take all their common formative assessments online. I think that as a student technology is great tool but sometimes-traditional methods are also beneficial. Thus allowing students to have a hard copy as well as a virtual copy of the test would be more beneficial. We all have different learning styles and at this point in my career I am still learning my own styles, which can vary from assignment to assignment. Writing this literature review I will once again discover what works and what doesn’t for me personally that I can apply to my future research.


When I reflect on reviewing the literature from my annotated bibliographies it requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesizing information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills. After creating my outline I hope that it will allow me to organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it.

I do feel that it is important to be up-to date on the research I use but it is also important not to forget the older studies. Some of these studies have valuable results that could be used in my future research. I quickly learned that not all research studies are created equal. Thus writing the literature review will allow me to recognize which particular studies have been the most important to the furthering of knowledge in their particular research area. For example, Joyce Epstein  seems to be the lead researcher in parental involvement and her studies have been well documented throughout the research I have been reading.

I am looking forward to writing and developing my literature review. This will obviously be an ongoing and ever changing process.  I realize that writing a literature review can be a lengthy endeavor I need to give myself plenty of time. It is important to bear in mind that my reading and writing will feed into each other. Through my literature review I look to compare the results from a wide variety of published research.