Week 7:
Well I was just wondering were all the time has gone. I was just sitting around thinking this week and realized that next week was my birthday. I have been so busy lately I lost track of time. Or it could be that I just don’t believe that July is almost over and August will soon be here. It does not feel like we have almost completed 7 weeks. My goal this week was to get the majority of my assignments done before the weekend that way that I could just relax. I haven’t been swimming once this summer and I hope it does not rain this weekend so I can swim and catch up on my tan. So far I have finished most of my assignments I think, I have one more peer review to do. I would like to start polishing up my genres but I think I will do that Sunday after all of my genres have been peer reviewed. That way I can look at everyone’s suggestions I find them to be really helpful.

This weeks assignments included to continue searching the ebscohost and to get more articles if we needed them. We were to answer several questions about our professional mailing list and email that to yahoo groups. We were to put 2 more genres up. Then we were to peer review 2 more genres of each person in our group. Which I think it is neat that when I go to peer review my group Andrea, Matt, and Christy appear in that order on the bayarea home page. I just thought that was neat that I just go in order of how they appear in the blog list, which happens to be right in a row.

Well the assignments to do have definitely been shorter but the time it takes to complete these assignments are lengthy. I like to go through and do the assignments that are sent out to the yahoo groups by Monday if possible. Which this week the assignments were posted Sunday and I was able to complete one Sunday night which really helped me. Then having this assignment done I could now concentrate on my 2 genres which were power point presentation and the journal entry from the teacher. It took me several hours just to complete the PowerPoint presentation. I had to read all my materials highlight what I wanted to use and then put this information in the order that I wanted it to appear. What I found was most of my articles was 15-20+ pages long but I only needed a little paragraph of information from each source. Also, while doing PowerPoint presentation is that some articles you can get one statistic about communication disorders and another article can give you 2 more that you need. So I had to combine a lot of statistics from different sources, but I think it turned out o.k. Also, I put pictures in my slides, which took me a while to find they are just simple pictures that relate to my topic. Then after Jennifer sent an e-mail to the class about how to site references in the power point presentation I had to go back and add references in my PowerPoint. The first time that I published my power-point I did not include the references. I still need to get the 5th edition APA book I think I will buy it first thing Monday. Then the next genre that I did was my journal entry in the voice of the teacher. Which I ended up changing the order of my genres. I originally was going to do newsletter, I am poem, interview, PowerPoint, and then my webliography. Then when I sat down to write the journal entry I changed it around a little bit and decided that I was going to switch the PowerPoint presentation and the interview. Also, when I first read the criteria for the journal entries and saw that we had to do 2 that are at least 150 words, which total would be about 300 words. I did not think that I could write a journal entry that contained that many words, but actually it does not take too much to write before you have 300 words. I guess everything always looks like it is impossible but once you set out to do it is not as bad as I thought. Another assignment that we had to do was to answer questions about our professional e-mailing list. This assignment really helped me see if the mailing list that I signed up for was benefiting my topic of research. Which I think my list is a good list for my research topic. I think in the past my list has been real active but right now it seems a little quiet. But if I emailed them I am sure they would answer my questions, which is another purpose of the list. Then we had to peer review 2 genres from everyone in our group. I don’t know but for some reason I always do the peer reviews in 2 days. I did one genre from everybody in my group on Monday, and then I finished the other peer review on Wednesday. It just takes me a while to peer review everyone’s work. The hardest part of the peer review is thinking of what this person may want to address further. I really think that most of the work that I peer review in my group is really good and sometimes I can’t find anything to change. I like reading everybody’s work to see how everyone is approaching their research project. Also, I did read the useful tip on the bayarea home page about how to help ourselves review our work, which is read our work out loud. I often drive my boyfriend, my family, and Laura crazy because everything I do I always have to read it out loud. Even if I am just starting to do an assignment I will always talk out loud to make sure what I am doing sounds right. For some reason I think talking out loud helps me think better. Also, I drive my sister, and boyfriend crazy because I make them read my assignments. Sometimes I find if I do review my own work I find that I read it out loud but I will read it the way that it should sound. So when someone else reads it they are like that does not make since. But it makes since to me. I don’t know why I do that but I always do that.

I can’t believe that this week marks the last week of completing all the genres. I guess for the next couple of weeks we will just be polishing up everything and getting our project ready to submit. I cannot believe that we are almost finished with this class. It is crazy how fast time flies.

Questions: I do not have any questions right now.