Using Technology

In this sharing, I am going to discuss our per-assumptions that are able to mislead us to conduct our research by using the technological developments. As I have shared before, I want to tell the story about my family. Before I came to USA, my family did not have any internet connection and knowledge about it. They have been learning by practicing it. Both my mother and father are graduated only primary school and their age over 60-years-old. I did spend many hours to teach them how to call me via skype. They started to learn together, but I saw that my mother was more open and eager to learn how to use internet and computer. If she was not so eager about it, both of them were not successful to call me.

This learning process allows me to think about the excluded one who have never touch the mouse, keyboard and screen and how they become my participant in my research. In this sense, it is very important to have a ‘partnership with researchers from the remote locations in question are crucial to ensure the success of this method’(Gratton & O’Donnell, 2011). My mother helped me to set up and organize every important things that I needed to make videoconferencing with them. At the beginning, my two sisters, their families and my father and mother wanted to learn at the same time. It was similar with focus group. Sometimes, they were totally forget me on the screen. This means that they were not feeling closeness and privacy with me (Gratton & O’Donnell, 2011). As a member of my family, I am able to define our learning strategies and my questions at time as participatory action, but I felt that I did not have whole vision and sounds in the room. Although this experience is from my life, I would like to conduct videoconferencing as a form of data collection in order to understand my limitations and hesitations. I believe that it is two-sided process. In order to conduct relatively more successful research in ‘remote’ space, both sides should have knowledgeable partnership and collaboration to make it doable and manageable for the sake of intention.

In addition to this problem, I have many concerns and doubts about internet data. For example, the anonymity is the most important issue for me. There are many terminology for the fake account in the internet. We know that internet is very open place and unsecure for the data. Sometime, I feel worried and suspicious about those who are member of some web-groups. Data management is also important problem (Matthews & Cramer, 2008).

Note: This my first Mendeley usage for bibliography.

Gratton, M.-F., & O’Donnell, S. (2011). Communication technologies for focus groups with remote communities: a case study of research with First Nations in Canada. Qualitative Research. doi:10.1177/1468794110394068

Matthews, J., & Cramer, E. P. (2008). Using Technology to Enhance Qualitative Research with Hidden Populations. The Qualitative Report, 13, 301–315.