Research Roadblock

Okay, so i have been researching blogs in the classroom for a while now. I took a bit of a break over Christmas and January, I won't lie. I've been getting back into the thick of things, and I've been reading blogs and looking at student blogs that i have been invited to look at from many of the wonderful people here.

I'm running into a problem in my data collection phase. My essential point is that I'm trying to find the pros and cons of using blogs in a classroom setting... and data wise, I was trying to look at some examples of student work to really make some of the pros shine, and i've been also looking through posts here to make the cons come out as well. I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible, but this is to get the policy in my school district to change to allow us to use blogs, so yeah.

What I'm running into is... how do I collect data to show some of these things? And what data do i grab? One of the things I was going to do was to set up a nice "interview" that could be done through e-mail, since i know many of you don't live anywhere near me. And if i needed to ask a few more questions, i could always e-mail back. I wanted to grab some student work from some of the blogs, and well.. that is where the major roadblock is. Ethical considerations and all.... which also leads into one of the major cons of using blogs... who has access to the student work, and how can they use it..... As well as, if a grab some student samples from teh blogs i have been invited to look at.. how do i get consent and things like that... and even the bigger question..... what the heck should i GRAB!!!!!

Any and all help would be awesome! Because being stuck here really isn't good. I know in my research paper, i could quote many different books about the pros and con's of blogging, but it's not the same as seeing the student work and showing how it has evolved. I'm almost thinking about grabbing some of my blog posts from when i first started, and some of them now to show how i evolved just using a blog.

Cheers,

Lucas Fox.