I had another busy week! I had two tests and a quiz in my Anatomy class that took up most of my time for the week. I haven’t got either of the tests back but I think I did pretty well. Neither test was as difficult as I had anticipated. (Oh yeah, I got all the pts. on the quiz.) Unfortunately I spent all week studying which left me responsible for completing all the CD assignments this weekend. Along with CD, I had to work and I wanted to attend my county’s annual Relay for Life. Thankfully I did all of it and now I am exhausted. I started my CD work as soon as I got home from night class on Thursday. I worked consistently until I went to bed. The next morning I continued to work on CD. I completed a few assignments before I left for Relay for Life. I stayed all night at Relay for Life all night and I had a really good time. I left there only to go straight to work at 4:00 in the morning. When I got off work on Sat. afternoon I worked on a few more CD assignments before I passed out. I also had to go to work at 4 on Sunday so I didn’t get to complete all of the assignments until Sunday afternoon. I can’t wait to finish this journal because I really need a nap. It’s a good thing that I have always worked best under pressure and facing a deadline.

Our mission this week was to get caught up on assignments and do some library research. Getting caught up on assignments was the area that got me. If I had stayed on top of the assignments then I would have had an easy week! This week I managed to do some library research about my research topic, revise my essential and foundation questions, evaluate several resources, finish two genres, complete a project prospectus, and read some mail from my professional mailing list. I’ll start with the first assignment that I completed.

The first assignment that I attempted this week was the evaluation of resource assignments. In order to complete the first evaluation I went to the 315 homepage, clicked on assignments, and brought up the readings that accompanied the first evaluation. There were several articles listed to read that explained how to tell if a web resource is valid. I read all of the articles then decided to try my luck at the evaluation. By a small swift of the hand and a click I was on the evaluation form that we were suppose to use when evaluating the first article. I printed out the evaluation sheet and began to critique our resource. This article was about sign language with elephants. The article was only relatively interesting because the topic wasn’t my cup of tea. But interest was why I was looking at the article. I was there to evaluate how valid the information was based on how the website was set up. I read the evaluation sheet several times before deciding that the website was not a very valid source of information. After my conclusions about the website were drawn, I emailed my thoughts to the class website. The next two assignments were very similar to the last one. We were given different methods for the evaluation and got to choose our own site but the overall instructions were the same. After choosing the sites and evaluating them using each evaluation standard, I emailed my ideas about the assignment and the evaluation to the class. I mentioned this in my email to the class, but I think that this assignment is the most useful one that we have had to complete. I will definitely use the things that I learned from this assignment whenever I go to collect resources. I have learned how to narrow down all the clutter on the Internet by neglecting information that doesn’t provide information about the site. I have always known that anyone is able to put something up on the ‘net but I didn’t know how to decipher the “good” information from the bad. Now I do and I know it will save me a lot of time and energy.

The next assignment that I completed this week was the research assignment. This week we were asked to use Marshall’s on-line library to gather information about our project topic. This assignment wasn’t that difficult because someone had already explained the instructions of how to use the on-line library at the beginning of the semester. First, I clicked onto Marshall’s library, logged onto EBSCO, and began researching. The biggest problem that I encountered with this task was finding information that would really benefit me. After a while of looking at a huge variety of articles, I found several that would be very helpful to me. Then, I sent library information about five of the articles that I found to the class.

I think that the next thing that I did for the week was revise my essential question. The class met on Tuesday to discuss PowerPoint, and while we were there Mrs. McComas spoke individually with each person about their essential and foundation questions. I explained some of the problems that I was having and Mrs. McComas made some suggestions. I had previously known that it would be in my best interest to change questions and Mrs. McComas assured me that it was okay to change things when you encounter problems. I did all of this very early in the week but I did not put my new questions up until much later.

The next assignment that I completed was my poetry genre. This was a very tedious job. It took me forever. I decided to write my poem through the eyes of a child who has the disorder that I am researching. I really wanted to write a poem that sounded like a child wrote it so I decided to use rhyming. I did this because I do not know if I would have used other forms of poetry when I was younger. After hours of thinking I read the poem to my mom and dad and asked them if it sounded like it was coming from a child’s point of view. They said it did so I trusted their opinion and placed the poem genre on my weblog.

The last thing on my list of assignments for the week (or 2 weeks in my case) was to create my project prospectus. This assignment also required some thought. I had to think of all of the genres that I was going to use in my project. Before this assignment, I hadn’t begun to consider the genres that I was going to use. After a lot of thought and consideration, I choose my genres, completed my project prospectus, and posted it on the web.

The only thing that I haven’t discussed that was on my agenda for the week is my professional mailing list. All we were expected to do for this assignment was to get caught up on reading mail from the professional list. This was assignment was the easiest one of all because I didn’t left my email list get backed up before I started reading them. Thankfully, I read them as they come in. I don’t know if my mailing list is appropriate for the class but I really enjoy reading the emails. The list mainly consists of parents of children who have CAPD and some professionals. Usually a parent will write in about their concerns or to ask for advice and the other parents or professionals will respond to the email. I really like reading what the parents have to say.

Although I have had a very busy week, it has been productive. At the beginning of the week I was dreading getting everything turned in. Now, I am glad that all of the assignments were due. This way I have everything completed and I can start the new week fresh. If all of the assignments were not due by midnight tonight I know that I wouldn’t have completed them all and my panic attack would have been postponed. Even though I have been stressed, I really enjoyed several of the assignments. I really liked doing my poem genre. It was fun to try to look through the eyes of a child again. I know that sounds like I may have some problems, but it was really neat and I liked it. I also liked learning new things about web resource evaluation. I am not going to lie, I didn’t enjoy the assignment, but I enjoyed learning from it. I would have never learned about evaluating websites without the assignment so I guess it wasn’t that bad. I have been really stressed out about school this week which makes getting everything finished seem wonderful. I just have this class and Ant., but at times it seems more overwhelming than the fall or spring semesters. I think the reason why I think this summer semester is worse is because I have to sit in a classroom for 5hrs.-3 nights a week. My attention span really isn’t long enough to take a class that long. After 3hrs. the teacher really starts to lose me. Thankfully, the teacher of my Ant. Class has a wonderful personality. She is very funny and makes the 5hr. class feel like just 5hrs. instead of longer.