This blog serves as a media-rich container for my TELIC dissertation. In fact, one could consider it to "be" the dissertation. This blog contains all necessary information: my abstract, my methodology, my strugglings, notes, sketches, screencasts, storifies and ultimately my findings on Twitter and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of teachers. In that way, this blog serves two purposes: the articulation of my findings in the research, and it gives evidence of the research process during my dissertation. By using the videologs & thinglink approach, I argue that technology can be used to make the process of learning more transparent to others. In a written thesis this is harder to demonstrate.
While making this blog, I realised that creatively building online content in the 21st century can be a substitution for the written thesis form, and blogging is a valuable means of providing evidence of my learning, even for the process of writing a dissertation. It took me a while and some courage to overcome the idea of having to write an extensive document as a dissertation. Not that I didn't want to do that, au contraire, writing kind of felt like the "easy option" and the way I ought to do so. Thanks to Richard Pountney who challenged me to think outside the box, and to follow my creative dreams I gave this new idea of blogging-my-dissertation some serious thought, and concluded that it can indeed be used for my dissertation.