Published... almost

The email any graduate student hopes to get sooner then later came to me yesterday. It states that my article was accepted for publication. Having talked about the difficulties with publications and the length of the process I think I had the right attitude from the beginning. I submitted an article to the best of my abilities and thought it would be great if it got accepted but if it did not, I would just try to send it elsewhere. When I received the first email to request re-submission after re-vising, I was somewhat conflicted: should I try or should I send it elsewhere? See the article was based on one part of my thesis and even though it is vital to the field of PE, it was focused on the used of a technological tool (wiki) so the reviewers reflected that it may perhaps be more suited for an educational technology journal. Yet, I disagreed and replied to the best of my abilities. I mentioned that wiki could perhaps provide a way to connect the theory to the practice in PE or in this case, the teaching of games. In PE, we are always fighting for our right to exist, everywhere you go, PE is yet to be seen as a valued academic subject and this is reflected at every level of education, including higher education. I believe in a more holistic way of teaching PE where we value the connection between practice and theory or in this case, movement and the knowledge behind the movement. In the case of teaching games, playing and the theory behind teaching games effectively. Bringing it all together on a wiki may have many values. Wikis are collaborative in nature and as student collaborate, they build on each others' work. In my article I mention that wikis are not only useful in PE but they can actually assist in learning how to work collaboratively online. Nowadays, every student must learn how to work with the Internet as well as how to work in groups online. So I do believe that adding it to the journal in PE is extremely important. This being said, the global TGFU wiki is currently being spearheaded by a group of teacher candidates using the wiki for an assignment, just like the one I researched for my thesis.
My hope is that the "experts" in teaching PE, games, TGFU will join in the collaboration with the students. I can only imagine the rich nature of networking! How education can be sweet! Bitterness I experience as well but it is these reflective moments that keeps you going in Education. I start to value research more and more and that is a good thing but I also notice that I am quite on my own in this process. I look forward to continuing my research on wikis through action research within my courses. I also look forward to the conferences I will present the research. SO far I know I will be heading to Tampa, FL in March/April for AAHPERD where I will do an experiential session on "creating a class wiki" of 2 hours as well present the research in a poster. Now, I will think on presenting at CAHPERD,... perhaps I could do the experiential wiki sessions as well. Why not? One in Canada and one in the US, in the hope to catch at least 40 different teachers who may want to adopt the wiki in their classroom.
As I dream on, my mind today has been mostly on the weekend, ok, my mind has been on the weekend for the past two weeks. The Traveler 100 miler is on Sat and I am excited for the runners who will complete it. I am also happy to be part of it as a pacer so I am excited to say the least. Must now sleep so I can handle a weekend of movement! Oh boy! It doesn't have to be much to make me happy as long as I am moving!
Move on!