The Beginning of learning how to become computer literate....
Friday, June 14, 2002

The Beginning of learning how to become computer literate…….

Well one week of class is already over. So far it is not as bad as I thought it would be. I am not really good with computers so I was already thinking that I would be struggling with every assignment. However, I have really not run into too many problems yet. Other than the little problem I had when trying to sign up for Yahoo! Groups, everything else went pretty well, which I am a little surprised of because computers hate me and usually when I am doing computer projects something goes wrong. For this week I wanted to go ahead and get everything set up and try to get all of my assignments done. I am afraid that as time goes on, the class assignments will be lengthier, so I want to try to stay on top of things so I won’t get behind due to the fact that I am juggling another class.

For this week, we were introduced to how the class will be set up. We did basic things for a computer class, such as making sure we have an e-mail address, making sure that we can send e-mail, and that we understand the technology policies of the computer. Also, since this is a CD class, we needed to read the ASHA code of ethics. We were also taken to the library to learn to access EBSCOhost, familiarize ourselves with the class homepage, create a web log, understand and read about moo connections, and read and reflect on “information literacy.”

One of the first things that we did was go to the library and learn how to use EBSCOhost, which I am glad of because it has been along time since I have researched articles through EBSCOhost and I had forgotten how to do it. I also learned that there were more research places that we can go to besides Eric and Academic Search Elite. For example, the Medical and the Psychology sites. I also was amazed of how many articles you could find by using different research sites. We found some to have 100 and some with 400 and even sites with several thousand articles. So this will be very beneficial when it comes to our research project. Also, another thing that we did was learn how to use moo connection. A moo connection is what we will use to communicate as a class. I thought it was very interesting that there is such thing as moo connection because it allows us to communicate like we would in class. One thing I liked most about our classes, CD 422 and CD 468, is that we would always do a lot of work by groups. I think it was really interesting to go to moo connections and being able to get in groups. We also spent a lot of time learning how to communicate with a moo connection, which was a little confusing at first because you have to make sure that you type in the correct command or your message won’t go through. I kept pushing “s” on all the endings of my commands, causing my message not to go through. However, after a while I will get used to using all the commands. Also, one of our assignments was to read and reflect on information literacy. Reading this article really opened my eyes to how learning has changed and why it needs to change. I have noticed that my high school changed a lot from just note-taking and lecturing to more group work, individual projects, school-to-work, and a lot of writing projects for reading and math. For the change in school curriculum, I just thought it was my teachers just wanting us to do extra or different work to be mean to us. I remember that I didn’t see the purpose of writing papers on math; however, after reading the article I understand how it enhances your learning.

In general, I think this class will be extremely beneficial as it will allow me to get a better understanding of computers. As of now, I only use the computer to access information for projects and look up my favorite T.V. websites. I think this class will further expand by knowledge by being able to use most of the functions a computer offers. For example, communicating online, online journaling, and various research resources.

Question:
You mentioned that we may want to reflect more than once a week. I was wondering if we follow the same format(content, process, and premise) or can we just maybe write a couple of things that really stuck out that day and then make sure the we have one that reflects everything we did that week and include content, form, and process.