I have changed almost everything in my origninal Project Perspectus, so I thought it would be nice to give you an idea of what is tentatively in my MRP now. I say tentative because I find something that I want to change everyday. I forgot how much I changed everything until I was cruising my blog and saw my project perspecus.
Here are the new genres:
Webliography: student perspective
Poem: Child's perspective
Newsletter: Parent Perspective
Powerpoint: Fast Forword representative perspective
LessonPlan: Clinician perspective
letter to Parent: Clinician perspective

This week has been a very productive one for me. I spent a lot of my time working on new genres and polishing up old ones. I still have a lot of revisions to make, but I feel like I have made lots of progress. I haven’t felt as stressed out about school this week either, which is always a good thing. Unfortunately, I am still spending 15 hours a week in my anatomy class, but I’m managing to make it through each class. We had our second lecture test on Thursday and it was HORRIBLE! I don’t think that I did very well because it was so difficult. Ordinarily, I would be freaking out but I’m not. I decided not to worry about it because everyone in the class that I talked to about the test is feeling the same way that I am. The way I see it, she can’t fail everyone. On a more positive note, I made a 100% on the last lab exam. I have to attend 6 more classes and take 4 more tests before I can stop worrying about the anatomy class. The end of this class is vastly approaching us as well.

Our goal for CD assignments this week was to continue working on our genres, continue reviewing some of our peer’s work, continue researching our topic, continue reading mail from our mailing list, and to send an email to the class that explained the nature of our professional email community.

The first assignment that I attempted this week was the email community task. In order to complete this assignment, I had to have knowledge and experience with my professional mailing list. I also had to read all messages sent to the list so that I could have a good idea about the mailing community that I was involved with. I composed an email explaining the name of the professional list that I subscribed to, the steps involved to become part of the list, the address where email messages were sent to, and the nature of the email community. After I created the email, I sent it to the class list. I thought this was the easiest assignment for the week because I already had all the information that I needed to complete it. I continuously read the incoming messages from my mailing list so the only thing that I had to do was to think about the nature of the email community and write about it. I also had to look back at my previous assignments to remind myself how I subscribed to the list.

Next, I started working on my peer reviews. I’m glad that I did this assignment early because it gave me ideas about how to improve my own work. For example, when I looked at Lekei’s newsletter I decided to change my own. She made her newsletter on word and submitted it as a goodie. I thought this looked really good so I formatted my newsletter and submitted it into a goodie file as well. I believe that this minor change made a major difference in the quality of my newsletter. Due to the nature of this class (Everything Online.), peer reviews are difficult to complete. You really have to be careful about wording your advice because they can’t see your face or hear your tone. I guess this is one of those situations where we begin to really appreciate various aspects of language. I also noticed how much we take little thing, such as body and facial gestures, for granted. Although the peer reviews are somewhat difficult to create, they are very helpful to receive. They are also helpful because it gives us a chance to develop new ideas and points of view that stem from looking at the work of our peers.

The last assignments that I began for the week was my genre assignments. Thankfully, I got finished with the other, smaller assignments early so I had all week to work on my new and old genres. This is where I made so much progress this week. I worked on genres all week long. I keep changing my mind about what I wanted to include in my MRP. As I mentioned earlier, the first thing that I changed was my newsletter format. I wanted my newsletter to actually look like one. After playing around with the newsletter, I finally got satisfied with the way it looked so I saved it to a disk, took it to Marshall and converted it to a pdf file, and then submitted it to my blog under the goodies category. After I converted my newsletter to a pdf file I noticed some changes that still needed to be made so I went home and corrected them. I haven’t had a chance to change it on my blog yet, but I will on Tuesday night, after I go back to Marshall. Next, I decided to change my PowerPoint presentation. I had difficulty completing it with a parental perspective last week and I know it was week. I tried to think of a way to improve it, but couldn’t think of anything really good so I decided to change the perspective completely. I decided to go from parental perspective to one of a Fast Forword representative. This PowerPoint presentation is much more ordinary than the view of a parent, but I feel like it works so much better. Because I made the PowerPoint from the view of Fast Forword, I had to do away with the brochure from Fast Forword so I decided to add a 3-day lesson plan genre. I figured that we went over the format of an SLP lesson plan last spring so I should know how to do one properly. The next new genre that I worked on this week was a letter to a parent. I wrote this letter in the viewpoint of an SLP who is explaining the child’s progress. We discussed letters to parents in my education class last spring and my teacher said that letters to parents should be informal, so that is how I did it. I didn’t want the parent to fill confused or inferior when reading my letter. I made it as casual and comforting as I could while still including the progress that the child was making. Work on the genres I just mentioned is about all that I did this week. I didn’t change anything from earlier genres, but I intend to. Hopefully, I will get to that sometime this week.

I am starting to worry about my essential question a little bit. I do not feel like any of my genres are answering my essential question. I don’t even feel like my genres are addressing my essential question so I am thinking about changing it. I am also starting to worry about the little time that we have left in this semester. There are a lot of things on the MRP directions page that I haven’t even started on. For example, I haven’t begun the reflections for these assignments and I think that they will take forever because each assignment for this class has been very time consuming. I guess that will be part of our assignments for next week. Oh, I also think that I am going to change my “pulling together” assignment. Initially, I said that I was going to do a story, but now, I think that I want to do another webliography. I want to do a webliography and include a link for all of the genres that I have done. I think it will work much better. I can do a webliography that tells a story that includes all the different assignments. Also, I really liked doing the webliography and would like to do one again. I thought that I would try to do a real web page, but I’m not sure about where to put the web page. I also don’t know if I would be able to figure out how to do a web page since I have never done one before. I will have to work on correcting genres and completing assignments next week as much as I did this one if I am ever going to get everything finished. With two anatomy tests, I don’t know how I am going to do it. Also, I was seriously thinking about leaving for Kings Island tonight (Actually, as soon as I get this journal done, maybe.) so that I will be able to enjoy a little bit of my summer break. Really, I haven’t done anything at all this summer and would like to do something fun. Monday is the only day out of my week that I don’t have to work or go to school so tonight’s the night to go if I am going to. Still haven’t decided for sure. Usually, I work on CD stuff so I don’t know if it is a good idea to go. I also have an Anatomy test on Tuesday that I need to study for on Monday. I don’t know what I am going to do. I know that I am just about finished with this journal because I don’t have anything else to say, but I haven’t made my mind up about the trip so I want to keep writing until I make my mind up. But, I am not going to do that. I will email or talk to everyone on MOO and let you know what I finally decided.

Dear Mr./Mrs. Ackers,

My name is Valerie Jude; I am a speech pathologist and I have been working with Megan, for about a month. This is my first year in the Parker County School System, but I have been giving speech therapy to children for about five years now. I first started at the elementary school in Parker Co.; I was recently reassigned to work at Parker Co. Middle School, which is why I am just starting to work with your daughter. I graduated from Marshall University in 1997 with a Master’s Degree in Communication Disorders.

I am writing to inform you about the progress that Megan has been making. I know that you and Megan have been through a lot with her previous misdiagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder. The truth is that Megan has lost a lot of precious therapy time, due to her misdiagnosis, but we have been working diligently on things to help her with her true disorder, Central Auditory Processing Disorder. Megan works very hard and has made tremendous progress under my care. She has already accomplished a lot in the past two weeks that I have been working with her. She has already achieved two goals that I set for her. First, Megan began to follow two-step directions that were given to her at a regular conversational speed, then, she began to repeat two-step directions. In order for her to complete both of these tasks in two short weeks, she had to practice and work very hard. Now, Megan and I are working to do both, follow and repeat two-step directions, at the same time. This task is much more difficult to complete, but she is working very hard during our time together. After Megan accomplishes this goal, I am going to add background noise into the goal. Ultimately, I want Megan to be able to tune out background noise and complete the task. Once Megan is able to do tune out or ignore surrounding noises in her enviroment, she will be much more successful in her regular classes.

I want you to know what a delight Megan is to work with. She is always very polite and friendly. Occasionally, she loses interest and focus during our session, but this happens with all children with Central Auditory Processing Disorder. Her problems with focus and attention is why I am working with her, and I hope that Megan and I make progress in those areas very soon. I want you to feel free to stop by my classroom at any time. You are also invited to attend one of my sessions with Megan, so that you may follow her development.

If you have any questions or concerns or would like to visit with me, feel free. The contact information is as follows.

Mailing address: Parker Middle School
Attn: V. Jude
HC-43 Box 111
Parker, KY 40356

E-mail: vj@parkermiddle.edu

Phone: (502) 555-2222

I want to thank you for the opportunity to work with your daughter. I really look forward to get to know you and Megan better. I hope that it will be a great year for everyone!

Sincerely,
Valerie Jude

Speech Pathologist

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