Shutter up!

Reza's supermarket
Shutter up on Reza’s supermarket. That’s a great shopfront, where he has a nice layout of shisha. Inside there’s Turkish delight and all sorts of Middle Eastern stuff…and I think he’s done the shop-sign himself. Now this could be the last shopfront for a while – I’m spending more time in the car, you see.

In the car I heard all about work in virtual archeology (the Silchester project). Here, widely distributed experts (as well as members of the public) can look at the digitalized data. A quick summary is on the BBC website. Online communities, research participants and a variety of user groups have access to these kinds of data. Yet, in our area of educational research, we seem more reluctant to engage in these sorts of practices. I wonder why? Is it because it challenges established research paradigms, disrupting their linear trajectory? Online data may be published, before it is analysed – before it gets to journal publication. Is that our problem?

Or do we have a more deeply-rooted problem in engaging with new practices. I’m very interested to note that the TES feature on blogs and wikis still has only drawn 3 comments online in 1 week! Two are from yours truly and one from Helen Ryan, a blogger and aspiring PGCE candidate (give her a place, someone!).