Week Three Reading Response

3.  What is an ethnography?  I have been wondering that ever since the assignment was introduced.  I can break down the word so I would assume it means something about ethnicity and geography.  I was close; according to the reading it means writing about the nations.  I learned that this will be a very difficult assignment for me to complete.  It is very important that we present all the information gathered equally, and without bias.  I am very opinionated at times and I feel it will be difficult to present information I dont agree with.  Perhaps the way to look at this is that I am presenting a study and not an opinion.  This led into another idea that I learned, and feel will be important in completing the assignment, and that is being reflective of the findings.  This is more than just getting answers to survey questions.  to really benefit form the study you must reflect on the responses and try to determine what is really being communicated.  This will also help in organizing how the information should be presented.

2.  After reading and discussing the direction of the ethnography with my team I began to realize that I can actually impact the answers to my questions.  In other words, I can skew the results of the questions by asking the question in such a way that the response is what I want it to be, or close to it.  I also began to realize that I have even more power than that because I can ask the people I choose which again would skew the results of the study.  How do you decide what information is valuable and what isnt?  There are so many directions an ethnography can take, but how do you choose the information that is going to benefit others?

1.  Because this is so new to me, I had never heard of something like this until this class, I would love to see other ethnography's to see how they are done.  What would be really cool is to see an older ethnography of the school I'm doing so I can see the similarities and differences.  I wonder how you can find that information?  Im sure if its been don its on the net.