So as many of you know, I’ve totally switched gears on my dissertation due to the subconscious saturation of my attention deficit disorder and, quite possibly, the stale data that I let sit for 2 years as I lolligagged throughout my late 20’s and started paying mortgages. Fortunately for me, Tommy J’s University let me pick a new topic and now that I have that, a new advisor, and a masculinized Labelle’ian attitude, I should be A-otay!
This go round, instead of researching the affordances and limitations of using threaded discussions when having discourses on sensitive and emotionally-charged subjects (ie. providing a pedagogical rationale for using discussion boards in a course on Race and Politics), I’ve decided to study the experience of inexperienced, newly-minted science teachers who facilitate AP-level environmental science courses online! (Much more fascinating, isn’t it! [/sarcasm]). This topic definitely correlates to my interest in the field - remember I’m all about the integration of technology in education (cut me a check Blackboard!) - but I will admit, I really enjoyed my previous, longitudinal, ethnographic, qualitative, full-of-thick-description-and-umpteen case-studies, 10-years-to-complete-at-the-pace-I-was-going, study. :) Dr. C and my committee members have promised to put the fire to my feet, encouraging me to write smarter, not harder and emphasizing that the best dissertation is a completed one! 
But now back to the AP online science stuff, there’s really some interesting data to analyze and interpret. The grant project I’ve been affiliated with, for the past 5 years, had one single mission: provide underserved gifted students access to quality online science curricula! If there’s anything thats poppin’ for the underserved folk - you know I’m down! We used my favorite open-source tool Moodle as our technology platform… and those of you who dont know about it by now betta ax sumbody!
I’ll be reporting back as I try to find more motivation to write page 2 of this diss. Yay for new attitudes!
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