This will be my second time doing this journal entry. I did a previous entry but unfortunately it was erased. Computer Glitches. You have to love those.
I have to say this week I set out to finish the previous weeks assignments and than try to conquer week fives assignments. I was caught up in trying to refine my essential question and foundation questions. I knew what I wanted to research but I needed to centralize my focus and that took most of my time. I felt like a hampster running on a running wheel. It was on the tip of my tongue but I just couldn't narrow it down. After completing that, everything seemed to just fall in to place.
I enjoyed doing the website evaluations, it amazed me how much detective work you should perform while looking at information on the internet. I realize any old person can say what they want to say and that you must be careful at the authenticity of information on the internet. I'm glad I was given the tools to make sure I didnt' just believe everything I have read. My first frustration came when I had to research information within the databases of Marshalls library. It took a while for me to remember the steps we had discussed on the first day of class. When I researched my keywords on ERIC I couldn't come up with anything. I included Boolean operators to make sure I covered all keywords. The only time I got a response was when I used the word "aphasia" only. I got 0 results when I included other identifiers. I eventually found some information in Academic Search Elite when I used the keyword Aphasia. I found that I had to look through an enormous amount of results to find information pertaining to exactly what I wanted to include in my project. This searching was very time consuming. I hope in the future I can figure out a better strategy for searching within those databases. I think they will be very helpful in my future classes and they are a viable source to use when researching.
I really enjoyed meeting the class for learning how to do powerpoint. It gave me an opportunity to ask questions pertaining to previous assignments and catch up on how everybodys summer was going. I'm really looking forward to doing a powerpoint display for my project. I think it will give me a great opportunitiy to show my creative side. Hopefully it will shine through.
I feel I have reached a concrete moment in this project where I have touched on information that I feel I would like to share with my class and learn something along the way myself. I realize the weeks to come are going to be quite revealing in terms of expressing my creativity and pulling everything together. I took time to view how other people in class are coming along with their research and it seems we are pulling things together pretty well.
I'm going to start tackling things a little harder this week now that I know what I am looking for. I gathered that information this week. Now, its just a matter of sifting through that information and pulling out the most important facts and representing them in my genres.