Week 10: It’s All over!!
I can’t believe tomorrow at 12:00 will mark the end of Cd 315!! It does not feel like this is our last week. It seems like it was not too long ago that we were making our own blogs and now we are making the finishing touches to our MRP. It really seems unbelievable. Time has really flown by in this class. Anyways, this summer has been a very busy and productive summer. Before June 10, I did have 3 weeks of vacation which was just me relaxing and watching as much T.V. as I could. I hardly ever watch T.V. only in the summer when I am not doing much I become a couch potato and watch T.V. all day long and take 2-hour naps. Then June 10 creeped up on me and it was time to put my nose to the grind stone and start this class and CL 200(Building your English Vocab). Which I am glad to say that I was able to jungle 2 classes at one time. I was a little worried at first because I knew that this class would take up a lot of time. Even though they say that CL200 is an easy A there was a lot of busy work to do. So for the first 5 weeks it was really homework, homework, homework. Then the day after the 5th week ended I picked up a job working at a daycare but I work in the mornings to the mid-afternoon so I still had plenty of time to do my homework for this class. I am proud that I was able to finish all my work on time with taking 2 classes and a job. Also, I can’t believe that I actually was able to finish the work that was assigned to this class. Going into this class I had butterflies in my stomach. I was so terrified of this class. I really thought I would barely be getting by in this class. I am not very good with computers and even if I was not in this major I probably would put off the required computer class to the last semester before I graduate. To me, it seems that computers hate me and everything goes wrong when I don’t want it to. All the time my computer will shut off and my work won’t get saved, or the work that was saved won’t come on my disk etc. That is why going into this class I did not procrastinate in this class. I am not a procrastinator when it comes to schoolwork. I learned in high school that if you wait to the last minute everything and anything will and can go wrong. I tried to get my work done early just in case things would go wrong I would have time to fix them. I am glad to say that I did not really struggle to bad with the computer related assignments. I had some moments when I yelled at the computer but it was nothing major just me making typos. I think I struggled the most with the html codes and signing up for mailing lists because I would misspell words. For the majority of this class I was able to complete the work without too much computer related trouble. I have learned so much about this class. I think my computer skills have gotten better, I have learned a lot of information about the internet, I have learned how to properly research on the web, and also how to put together a MRP. I also have learned more about myself because we did a lot of current discussions assignments that caused us to think more about why we chose this major, what kind of family environment did we grow up in etc. When it came time to doing the research part I was able to put together writing pieces that I have not done before. I never had written a letter to the editor, done an interview, or put together a power point presentation, and done a webliography. So basically I had never done a lot of the genres that I picked for this project. I am proud that I was able to complete these genres. I do think of myself as being creative in some ways but this class has definitely tested my creativity. This project definitely has helped me to become more creative with my schoolwork. So maybe when I go back to school I will be more creative in class like I have been in this class. Anyways, in general this class really allows you to look at information in a whole new way. Overall I have really enjoyed this class.

Tips:
1 Divide the work up in days. Don’t wait to do all the assignments at the last minute. Sometimes you may look at the assignments and think that it won’t take a long time to do and really it takes longer than you think. Sometimes the easy assignments may take the longest for you to do or cause you the most trouble to do.
2 Do all your work to word (or whatever program you have) and copy to word and then post it to your blog or yahoo groups. That way you won’t lose your work. Sometimes you may run into computer problems and when you press save it won’t work and if you don’t if you do not have a copy of your work you would have to start all over.
3 Some of the assignments require a lot of reading so you may want to print the pages out so you can read better.
4 When it comes time for research as soon as you think you can use an article off Ebsco and you can’t access from your computer go to the library as soon as you can to get this information. Sometimes they have to get the articles from other libraries or send it to you by the inter-library loan. It does not take to long but you want to go ahead and get it as quick as you can.

Week 9 : Almost Done

My Goal for this week was to complete all of week nines assignment and finish revising my genres. I have completed all of week 9 assignments and most of revising my genres. I re-did my newsletter to the editor and made it look more like a news article by posting it in columns and down loading it to my goodie pool on my web. I did add one more activity to my interview and I added a slide to my power point. I now need to go back and make and re-revise my journal entry. I think that won’t be finalized until the day before the project is due. Every time I read it I find something that needs to be changed. Also, I think I will add a couple sites to my webliography.

For week 9, we were to peer review everyone’s preface, author, and acknowledgement section. We were to post are reference page to our blog. We were to organize a page on our blog that would allow everyone to access or MRP. We were to start drafting our reflection of this project. Even though there were not that many assignments to do these assignments took a long time to complete

First I went ahead and peer reviewed everyone’s preface, author and acknowledgement section. Which did not take me too long to do. I enjoyed reading everyone’s section. It really let me know what their project is about and why they chose to do it. Then I did my reference page which took me a while to do. I noticed that the APA format showed that the website was to be indented so I indented everything on my blog but I could not get it to indent it in my blog. I think I will keep playing around with that. Then after the references I made a table of contents and linked everything. Last week I had linked all of my genres to my journal entry so all I had to do this week was link my genres to the table of content page. This did take me a lot of time to do because I doubled linked every genre. I linked every genre back to the journal entry and back to the table of contents. I am still not sure if I am going link my genres by going back and making them a new topic instead of under MRP because right now I linked every genre by its comment page. I also read the e-mail about Andreas question about the drafts and I thought that was a good idea to have a draft page. I deleted all of my old drafts and added the new content to my blog but I did save the original copies of my genres to word. So I think I will put a draft page up. I think my genres now have changed a little bit from the first time they were peer reviewed. My poem has changed because after each I am line I added a line in parentheses indicating why this child is normal like the other kids. I changed my power point by adding more information to it, making the slides easier to read, and I put timings on my slides. I changed the interview a little bit by just adding references and adding one more activity. The journal entry has changed because I broke it up in days so that the information could be more believable, and I also changed a lot of the information. For my letter to the editor I added some website information to my letter and changed its format to look more like a newsletter. I also, added a site to my webliography. I really think that the peer reviews that my group members did has really helped me revise my genres. I think from every genre that I revised I added some of the suggestions that my classmates suggested.. Then the last thing that I did was the reflection. The reflection assignment took me the longest to complete. I thought for sure that it would not take me that long to do since I have been doing a lot of reflections with this class. I think it took a long time to because the project itself was very lengthy and it took a while to explain everything. I had a hard time with the content. The instructions say that for content that you might want to talk about the facts in your genres. Which I had a hard time explaining the facts with out talking about the process of the genres. So for the content I briefly discussed the facts but then in the process I explained more about the genres ex., like how I chose them and why I chose them. I had a hard time separating content from process. The process of the reflection was not that hard to do. I just explained what my genres are, who the voices are, and why I chose them. I also explained what I found hard and easy about the genres. As well as explained how this MRP project has been different than a traditional research paper. The premise was a little hard to do. I just basically explained how I thought this project allowed me to answer my question.

I am a little nervous about going into the 10 week. I am just afraid that something will go wrong and when I submit my work that something won’t work. Like you might not be able to open my links from goodiepool, or maybe a link from the table of contents or genre to genre might not work. I guess I am getting a little bit nervous just because the final product will be submitted by Friday. I know that I need to take deep breaths and breathe. Most of my work is finished but I still am beginning to feel panicking.
Question: I have no questions right now!!

Well week 8 is almost over. I just can’t believe that in 3 weeks school will start back. I don’t know what is with this week but I am extremely tired. My brain is very tired and it needs to take a rest. My goal this week was to get all the assignments done and start revising my genres by Thursday. I wanted them done by Thursday because Thursday is my birthday, and Friday I have to work from 8:00-4:00 and then right after work I am leaving to go white water rafting with my friends. So I wanted to get the majority of everything done before I left. Well I got my assignments done and I have done my first revisions to my power point, letter to the editor, journal, and I am poem, and added a site to my webliogrpahy. I still need to do my interview. I want to add one more activity. I say first revision because I will probably revise them several times before the due date of the MRP. In fact I already have revised my journal and power point at least 2 times. I keep adding and deleting things. I had a great birthday. I ended up getting off work early and my mom sister and grandma were able to meet me at the mall. So we went to the mall and ate. Which was fun because my grandma has not been to mall for about 2 years. So it was good for her to get out of the house.

This weeks assignments we were to start drafting the preface, acknowledgements, and about the author pieces that will be included in the MRP. We were to peer review the last 2 genres of our group members.

First I did the preface. Which in my preface I included why I chose the topic, and I explained all of my genres which included identifying the voice and audience of my genres. When I sat down to do the preface I had a major brain freeze. I went to answer the part of why I chose this topic and its like I knew why I did but I just could not explain it. It was like I had so many reasons why I wanted to do the project that it was hard to come up with a good explanation. I bet I changed my preface a dozen times. Finally I was able to explain clearly why I chose my topic. Then the rest of the preface was not as hard. The second part was actually very similar to my prospectus because we had to explain why we chose that voice and what do we want to accomplish with the voice. I referred back to the prospectus but added some more information. Then I did the author section, which was not that bad. I just gave information about my self to let the readers know who I am. Then I did the acknowledgements which is were I just thanked the people that helped me. Which I think a lot of people has been extremely helpful. Also this week I started revising my genres. I have most of them revised but I will probably continue to revise them. I do want to add a little bit more information to my PowerPoint and interview. I found some more information and I added that to my PowerPoint. I am still working on my journal entry. I added some more information to my letter to the editor and I decided to put my letter to the editor in columns and scan so it would look more like a real letter to the editor. I went to the library to make it a pdf file but when I scanned it I had somethings in color but when I e-mailed to myself it was all one color. That wasn’t too big of a deal. Also, when I scanned it to myself some of the website address that I had included in my letter was blurry and you could not make them out. So I am going to go back and re-scan it. I also decided to start adding links in my journal entry so that you can access my genres from my journal entries. That took a little bit of time I messed up the codes I put instead of > name so I had to go back and fix my mistake. I enjoyed doing the peer reviews. I can really see everyone in my groups projects to start coming together. I also enjoying reviewing because each one of us can have the same genre but we approach it in a very different way. I think that is very interesting.

Another thing that we did this week was meet at the moo. We were to get in groups and talk to teachers and let them know a little bit about how this MRP works. I was really nervous about this moo session.It was not that bad. I think our group started off well and then after awhile it went kind of downhill and all they wanted to talk about was coal mining. I don’t think they were that interested in the MRP. I think they liked the idea of the project but they thought it was a lot of work. Which it is a lot of work but I think the work will pay off in the long run.

Questions: I don’t have any for right now.