At the beginning of the week, I was a little nervous about only having a week to do all of this week’s assignments. With my other class and my new job, I thought that this would be nearly impossible. However, I worked hard and finished everything. It really wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be.

The first thing that I did this week was meet with the class to learn about creating a Powerpoint presentation. It was nice to see everyone again. It helped to hear how everyone else’s projects were coming along. Powerpoint wasn’t as complicated as I had thought it would be. It was fun to choose different backgrounds and ways to switch from one slide to the next. I actually found it to be enjoyable. It was a nice break from our other assignments. After talking to Mrs. McComas, I decided to change my essential question from “How does chronic otitis media affect normal language development?” to “What are the language characteristics of a child with chronic otitis media?" This question is less vague better focuses on my interest in the subject.

The next day I began searched the different databases to find articles related to my subject. This was not an easy task for me at first. I found numerous articles and found it difficult to narrow it down to five selections. Another problem that I had was using APA format to site the bibliographic information of each article. I wasn’t sure which format to use. After reading emails from the class, I decided to use the format for on-line abstracts. However, this created another problem. This format calls for me to list the item number. Some of the abstracts listed many numbers. I couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to use the ISSN number or the AN number for the Academic Search Elite abstracts or the ISSN number or the accession number for the PsycINFO abstract. Also, one of my ERIC abstracts only gave an ERIC number. I assume this is the number I was supposed to use. The other ERIC abstract was not for an article, but for a booklet. This abstract gave an ERIC number, a contract number and a report number. Again, I used the ERIC number so I hope that this is right. I spent hours trying to figure out the APA format for these abstracts, and I’m still not sure if I did it right. For some reason, I have always had a hard time doing this. I guess we all have strengths and weaknesses. Citing bibliographic information is definitely one of my weaknesses.

Moving on, I next set out to complete two of my genres. First, I worked on my I am poem, which I decided to do in the voice of the client. I’m rather pleased with the way it turned out. The only thing that I’m worried about is if it is simple enough to be from a five year old child. By the way, thank you Mrs. McComas for your advise about changing the word “frustrated” to “mad.” This does sound like something that a child would say and feel. I’m still not sure if the word “communicate” is alright. I haven’t been around any five year olds lately so it’s hard for me to know what vocabulary is appropriate to use. I’m going to give this a little more thought. Hopefully the peer reviews that we will be doing next week will help me in this respect. I also added some things to my webliography. I included some links to web sites that contain information about my topic. While I have found many web sites discussing this topic, most of them contain roughly the same information. For now, I have three such links included in my webliography, but I may add more so that visitors to my webliography have more resources from which to choose. After completing this, I wrote about what I have learned from completing evaluations of web sites. This was a rather easy assignment, given how beneficial it was to evaluate the validity and credibility of web sites. As my results of the VARK inventory stated, I am a kinesthetic learner. In other words, I learn from hands-on experience. Evaluating the web sites myself, instead of just reading about how to evaluate web sites, helped me to better realize the value and importance of such evaluations. Finally, I read the documents about using Powerpoint. This was very helpful and taught me things that I didn’t know was possible. For example, it gave instructions for using animation in a Powerpoint presentation and for using diagrams. I would like to use something like this in my Powerpoint presentation to make it more appealing. It also gave tips about how to use colors. I never really thought about the affect of colors on a presentation. I plan to take this into account when creating my Powerpoint presentation.

Overall, this week was productive, but not overwhelming like last week. I am thrilled to have two of my genres completed, though they are not entirely complete. I’m sure I will be modifying them in the upcoming weeks. I am also glad that I have acquired some more resources from the databases. The more information I can acquire, the better I will be able to represent the three “voices” in my MRP. I don’t think I’ve ever done so much modifying for one project. However, I’m rather pleased with the way my project is coming along. I feel like I’m really accomplishing something. Hopefully, everything will come together as planned.