November 3rd, 2007 by Frank LaBanca, Ed.D.
So I have not posted in a while because most of my reflection has been concentrated on actual writing. I gave Ralph my Ch 1 & Ch 3 completes and my Ch 4 as it is. It is exciting to put the ideas in an organized fashion, but more exciting to see that this blog has really framed the entire work. The ideas really have developed and matured here. I see how the coding has focused on my major ideas.
Although I don’t think I’ve found anything that I didn’t know, I think many things have been brought into focus for me. Those reminders of how research works and how the science fair works. There are some trade secrets that people have to be willing to accept. My interview with Bob really brings this to the forefront:
F: I have to tell you, just from a personal perspective, it took me until the last three or four years to realize that and internalize that myself. I know I did a lot of projects where students were doing excellent technical projects, testing mussel tissue from this marsh or that marsh and so we’re looking at the phenomenon and doing really technical work, but not really doing anything novel or innovative with it.
B: And you come away saying, “we’ve been had.” I say, “I hear you.”
F; But for me, doing this for a number of years, it was finally that realization for me that too, maybe I have to shift a little bit with my kids and get them to not just do excellent, superior, technical work, but to start coming up with new, innovative ideas.
B: I think the reason I succeeded as well as I did in my career, is that I would bring to these things, the new twist. And leading my group, over the years, what I would bring to it was not the grunt and grind, because I had people that were far brighter in terms of cranking the stuff, but were not the idea people. So you would say, here’s the way we’re going to do it, and then you’d be off and running. You need a source of the spark of the idea.
P.S. My last post was about coding of data. . . . After adults and documents another 10,000 lines of text. Total? About 22,000 lines of text coded. Wowwy caazzowwy!
