Tipping Point Reached

Finally I feel that I have reached the tipping point in this journey through time!! Two weeks ago I started a three week block of time away from work which has allowed me to concentrate on completing the review of the literature. This has taken longer than I anticipated but when I look at the volume of material I have gone through I cannot really be surprised!

Since January I have gone through over 60 textbooks collecting comments relating to time, time use and the teaching and learning process. Similarly I have gone through over 300 articles and papers that I have collected during the last 2 years and made notes of the main points. All the notes have been entered into a Word table (as previously described) and I have around 75,000 words now.

The one thing that has really helped with this is the use of dictation software. I bought Dragon Naturally Speaking a year ago but only recently got round to using it properly. The brilliant thing is that I can dictate as I read so save a lot of time in not having to stop to type. I am amazed at how accurately the software picks up words and I reckon that it gets around 90-95% of words - even complex ones. You do need to glance at the screen to check the words but this is milliseconds.

A caution I would offer to anyone thinking of doing the same thing is to buy a really good headset with a good quality mike. My original set was cheap and cheerful but the software kept rejecting the words. Having invested in a Sennheiser headset all those problems have disappeared.

The great thing now is that I can dictate the drafts rather than typing them. This will allow me to skip around my notes without stopping and starting. I am pretty clear as to what the drafts need to include and I met up with my supervisor yesterday to talk these through. He is between sabbatical trips to Singapore and Hong Kong so it was a valuable meeting. He has agreed my plans so now I can really begin. I am also feeling more confident about the sorts of conclusions that will come out of this research but more on these later.

Last week I sent in the examination entry forms and put end of July as the anticipated submission date. All being well I should have the draft finished by the end of June so with a fair wind I should be on course.

So - Back to the writing!