Well, it’s been a very long week for me. My goals for the week were to get as much work completed as possible, but to still enjoy my vacation in Myrtle Beach. I am happy to say that I think I accomplished this. I spent hours at the library last Tuesday, trying to get as much work completed as possible. The only library that would let me use a computer for that long was at Coastal Carolina University. This was only 30 minutes from our condo, but, of course, it took me an hour and a half to get there. I took the wrong road, which took me to the middle of nowhere. I had to travel 20 miles before I reached an exit to turn around. Wouldn’t you know it also started to pour down rain during that time. I finished everything except for my two remaining genres while at the library. I worked on my genres during the evenings while sitting on the balcony overlooking the beach. I am happy to report that I had a very relaxing week and I feel rejuvenated. I’m ready to return to Huntington to, once again, devote most of my time to completing this project. I’m actually looking forward to it. I’ve been thinking of some modifications I’d like to make to my genres. I’ll be working on that at the beginning of upcoming week. Anyway, time to tell you what I’ve been up to this past week (besides laying in the sun, swimming, and spending all of my money :-) ).

First, I sent an email to the class about my mailing list. I’m sure everyone has read by now that my mailing list, unfortunately, was not very helpful. As I stated in my email, there have only been four postings in the past four months, one of which was from a pornographic site. How this made it to the mailing list, I will never know. While this list wasn’t very helpful, I’m glad I had the chance to join one. I never even knew that such lists existed. Hopefully, this source of information will be of more use in the future. Next, I peer reviewed the genres for the ladies in my group. I have been very impressed with their work. Before this class, I have never had the opportunity to review so much of my classmates work, or have so much of my work reviewed for that matter. While at first I was a little unsure of how I would feel about this, I am now glad that we are doing it. I have received many helpful responses to my genres, and I hope that I have provided some useful advice in return. It’s also nice to have classmates tell you what they like about your work. It’s great to know that you are doing something right! You know what I mean? You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t revised my genres yet. Just to let you know, I have been planning on taking care of that in a couple of days when I return to Huntington. I just returned home (to Martinsburg) about an hour ago, after driving for nine hours, so I’m a little tired. I hope you understand. I do have every intention of making many revisions this week. After completing my peer responses, I conducted a little more searching for information about my topic. After reading many of my articles, I started to rethink my essential question. I have found that there are different ways in which Chronic Otitis Media can affect a child’s language. I’d like to be a little more specific with my question by saying, “How can Chronic Otitis Media cause a child to have a language delay?” I don’t think that I will have to make any major revisions to my genres as a result of this revision. However, it will greatly help me in developing my PowerPoint presentation, which by the way I have not yet finished. I have chosen the information that I would like to include in my presentation, but I have not had access to PowerPoint this past week. I probably won’t have this available to view until Sunday night. Don’t worry. I’ll have it posted by midnight! Anyway, I have completed my fifth genre, which is a letter from the clinician to the parent. While I did not have anything to go by, I think that I did this correctly. I was unsure of how much information to include, but I think that I did a pretty good job. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what my peers think of it!

Well, that’s about it for this week. Now that I’ve had a chance to relax and re-energize, it’s time to pull this project together. I’m hoping to get a lot accomplished next week. I’m excited about how my project is going to turn out. I hope it meets my standards. I have a tendency to set rather high standards for myself. I’m a perfectionist when it comes to this kind of stuff. However, I'm not a perfectionist about everything. For example, if any of you have ever seen my dorm room or my new apartment, you know that I am not a perfectionist when it comes to cleaning. I try to be, but when you’re as busy as I am, it’s not always easy. It takes me hours to clean, but less than an hour to mess it up again! Can any of you relate? I know some of you can, at least I hope so. I’d hate to think that I am the messiest person of the group. I’d like to think that I’m tied with at least a few of you. Anyway, I only have one question for this week. Is it ok for me to revise my essential question this late in the game?

This week has definitely been anything but easy for me. My goal at the beginning of the week was to complete all of my assignments by Friday, as well as at least one extra genre. This is because I am leaving tomorrow to go to Myrtle Beach and I didn't want to have to do too much work while I am there. However, on Tuesday, I was called home because my grandmother was put on a ventilator. I spent a lot of time this week in the ICU and didn't have much time to complete my assignments. Even when I did have the time, I had so much on my mind that I found it hard to concentrate. Luckily, I did complete my assignments for the week, but unfortunately did not finish the extra genre. I'll just have to give up some of my fun in the sun to do my work. I can live with that.

I began this week by completing yet another library search. This time, I used the fifth edition of the APA format. I’ll have to go back later and change the others that I completed last week. This didn’t take as much time as it did last week. I guess this is because I was more familiar with the task at hand. I also found the fifth edition easier to follow. Of course, I’m assuming that I did it correctly this time. I hope that I did, but I’d sure like to know for sure (hint, hint). I then attempted, once again, to find a helpful mailing list. Again, I was unsuccessful. I have searched, and searched, and searched, and I am still without a useful mailing list. I am ready to give up, but I still have plenty to talk about when the time comes to write about our experiences with the mailing lists. Trust me. Next, I completed my third genre, which are two journal entries by the parent. One of these is in response to the PowerPoint presentation that is given by the clinician at a PTA meeting. The other is the reaction to the client’s I am poem. I found this to be rather easy to complete. I just imagined that I was a parent in this situation, and wrote what I was thinking and feeling. I fell quite easily into this role. I hope that it shows. After completing this, I responded to the first two genres completed by each of my group members. I actually enjoyed this. I found many of them to be very well written. I actually think that I by evaluating their genres, I realized things that I had to improve in my own genres. I hope that I didn’t offend any of them. I tried to write my comments in a positive way. In other words, I wasn’t trying to criticize. I just offered my opinions. Anyway, moving on, I read the article about the three “R’s” of Inquiry and developed a prompt in which I responded. I actually responded to two prompts. My second prompt was related to our MRP, so I thought it might be of interest to others. While the article was lengthy, it was actually more interesting than I thought it would be. I found it difficult to find only one thing to talk about. The introduction to the article, in which it speaks of students piling up information, is so true. I sometimes have difficulty organizing my information, but I think I’m improving. Finally, I completed my fourth genre, which is a referral letter from the audiologist to the SLP. I had a difficult time with this. Because I was unable to view the format for this type of letter before leaving Huntington, I was kind of lost. I did find some helpful information on the Internet, but nothing specific. I know that I’ll have to make several changes to this. Also, it didn’t help that I had completed the whole thing when antville kicked me off. I had to do the whole thing over. You’d think I would have learned from stories of this happening to others. Wrong. Oh well, I’ll survive.

Overall, this week has been extremely exhausting. Needless to say, I desperately need this vacation. My grandmother is much better by the way. She is off of the ventilator and breathing on her own. This helps my emotional health. Now I need to do something about my physical and intellectual health. Hopefully the vacation will help. I’ll be sure to think of you all while I’m lying on the beach. Don’t worry. I’ll also be spending time in the library. Talk to you next week!

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.