The second round starts

I was planning on waiting a day or two before I began a second round of blog reviews, but Tia asked me to review her blog, and comment on how she is using it for research.

Her first day's entry was a meditation on digital imaging, and where it is taking the photography industry. This is a good research strategy--it allows you to use writing to think through an idea, explore themes. With perseverance, this can lead to the development of research questions.

In the second entry she explores some issues related to the subject by reviewing an article in a newspaper. Again, this type of work--reviewing other published text on the subject--is an important part of the research process. It helps you get more familiar with your subject matter.

Her third entry explores the use of photoshop, Adobe's dominant software package. Another nice move, reviewing one of the tools of the digital imaging trade. She does so by reviewing a journal article which gives some tricks of the trade.

In her fourth entry, she is discussing her own experience working in a photo studio, and the impact of digital imaging on her work. This direct report of your own experience is a kind of primary research, like interviewing and conducting a survey, as opposed to secondary research, finding research in libraries or on the Internet. When you are the subject, like in Tia's case, the research could be described as auto-ethnographic in nature.

In her fifth entry, she again turns to a newspaper article describing the use of digital imaging in mammograms.

Tia's entries are detailed, and a perfect example of how you use your blog for research. She is almost up to par on the quantity of entries, and the quality is very high.

If I were to make any other suggestions for improving her blog, it would be to provide Internet links to some of the articles she chooses to discuss. Finding a few relevant pictures could also be fun!