December 8, 2006
To Any & All Viewers of my Multi-Genre Project:
In life, we are asked to do a number of different things; some we understand completely, and others are less implicit. However, along that journey of tasks wanted to complete and others that are avoided, we gather things along the way that we might not have thought of otherwise, or we are thankful for in the completion. One of these is completing the Communication Disorders 315 Computer Networking class of required course material.
The CD 315 course is a writing-intensive, cohesive unit of material that is accomplished by completing an immense amount of work that requires constant searching of information, creative and thoughtful consideration, and constant feedback to and from others involved. The amount of work that is completed in this course begins as a very tedious task; intimidating in its entirety. There are a number of things that are learned throughout the completion such as Conceptual and Technical skills that are objectives of the course material at hand. Conceptual skills refer to the knowledge that is built through assessing, analyzing, and evaluating pieces of information that make us more competent in various areas of study. Technical outcomes are those that require participation, development, and collaboration.
When referring to the immense amount of conceptual outcomes we have mastered throughout the semester, it is actually mind boggling. Completing a task that seems like busy work actually, is not. I have gained comprehension of the “principles and methods of assessing relevant, pertinent, and credible information pertaining to a research question” by developing one myself. Anything in the field of Speech Language Pathology is in its own way research. When beginning anything (such as immense research on a topic) we must first understand what it is that we want/need to know to realize what we are in deed looking for. By developing essential and foundation questions, we are able to complete this task. To me, it is developing a plan of action. What are you going to do, and how are you going to do it. We have learned how to prepare a plan to pursue, get the information to do so, and understand if the research is worth our time or unusable.
To answer the question if research is credible, we must understand how to analyze various websites for this reason. This is essential when completing any research that you want to appear professional and give the impression to others as meaningful. By answering these queries, the viewer will be able to develop their own thoughts of if they should use the site or not. Throughout this course, we have learned to answer each of these questions. When developing a project or process such as we have throughout the semester, this is definitely very essential to your effort, just as important and valuating the actual information; can you use it and how? Is this information (the knowledge you are going to use) relevant to your project and is it truly the best that you can find? By learning how to analyze the information (think critically and thoughtfully about what it is trying to portray) the best for your purpose? You must evaluate this information, judge it very intensively to understand if it truly is, and you will stick by the integrity of the work.
To begin tackling and achieving technical goals, students were required to prepare for and participate in class discussions and activities. By creating a membership with Tappedin.org, we were able to accomplish this. TappedIn.org is an online classroom site that enables the users to log on and enter various “rooms” within the dashboard connecting to the instructor, classmates, and group members (in a private setting) to achieve various goals that were determined by the assignments allotted. While completing this online is an electronic version of classroom discussions, we also did this a small number of times on a personal basis by meeting in Smith Hall 108 (everyone’s favorite). When in our tappedin.org environments, we chatted with our groups about topics such as copyright dates, ideas for our projects, and offered feedback to each other on how to improve our work. Members of the class were required to prepare for this by ensuring we would take full advantage of the class meeting time and attain the highest amount of feedback from others as possible (you also wanted to look intelligent to your other group members, and this requires knowing some about the topic). To ensure that we were all valid participants, we were assigned a staffed member of the group by being given a title such as recorder or group leader. By completing these jobs to the best of your ability, either by making sure the session was going smoothly and staying on task, or sending a transcript to the rest of the group, you were vital to the gathering. This taught us that we are very helpful to each other if we contribute accordingly we can realize many ideas, thoughts, and feedback tools through each other and by thinking critically ourselves.
By completing an online class, you are required to gain a sense of interdependency and it is vital that you complete all work on your own, without too many restrictive, specific deadlines. My classmates and I had to develop planning skills and time management practices throughout the semester to ensure that all work was completed in a timely manner and do the best of our ability; even a large amount of work in a short amount of time. We accomplished this by being assigned documents to be completed online. It was our responsibility to log onto the class website to validate if we had class that week, check to see what we needed to complete before the next due date, and understand fully the way it was to be prepared.
When developing a detailed, comprehensive document such as a Multi-Genre project, you are required to make decisions and solve problems by thinking critically and practically. This was fulfilled by making our own choices of what documents we wanted to create (genres), how we wanted to generate them (voice & audience), and in what order we saw them best to be viewed (table of contents). Originally, this was initiated by creating a Project Prospectus document. This text is formed by making decisions about what questions should be developed to most effectively produce a document that is beneficial to yourself and your reader. The student then must think critically about what genres will be most effectual in answering these questions in entirety so that it is easy to understand and will inevitably produce a result that answers the essential question clearly. When developing these genres, the writer must be creative to make it interesting to the reader and in turn, make sense, accomplishing the task of offering credible information to others. The developer must also be practical in ensuring all information is covered leaving no question unanswered so the project is complete.
By using the world wide web, we are able to cohesively collaborate information together such various types of literacies as photo-visual literacy, digital literacy, and branching literacy. When researching these different types of studies online, we have gained a sense of navigating through the online world in a need of finding, understanding, and developing knowledge of various things. Through online research, we have also been able to realize various ways of using the internet to be creative and produce rich, interactive information (genres) by finding the information ourselves and converting it into self-expressive pieces of work. Overall, we have learned how to use the internet to find information, piece it together, and transform it into our own work by searching the internet and thinking creatively to formulate new pieces of work.
When learning new things, it is useless without the ability to share your understanding with others orally and through writing. Throughout the course of the semester, we gained perspective into how to communicate with others using the discourse of the class. Through emailing each other, leaving group mates comments (courtesy of our weblogs) , and meeting on TappedIn.org to have meetings we have learned to communicate with each other effectively. This has helped us by enabling ourselves and groups to learn through each other and not only through ourselves. Communication with others is essential for work in this course.
Another helpful asset our class gained in this course is using TappedIn.org to participate in online conversations in classroom and group chat rooms. I learned how to communicate with others through online forums. They are each convenient in their own way; TappedIn.org is such in a way as it emails you the transcripts after your conversations are completed. We learned to talk online synchronously and asynchronously through emails, TappedIn.org and through the comment features of our weblogs.
Through CD 315, my classmates and myself learned how to effectively create a researchable question. We did this by first figuring out what we would like to learn about (project topic), the details we would like to introduce, and the most valuable way to do this. This was accomplished by formulating an essential questions, backed up by foundation questions. By critically thinking about what we wanted to know and considering the best way to formulate it into an answerable question, we learned an abundance about how to put together a researchable statement. To answer it, we also had to gain information to help answer the questions. We did a profusion of research such as finding articles, book, and journals that provided evidence of various views of the topic. By doing a large amount of research online, in the library, and through databases, we accomplished the understanding of how to find information through research tactics.
Throughout the semester, I learned how to critically analyze and evaluate websites online by doing just that. In the course, we were assigned to find a site through an address and evaluate various portions of it such as it’s credibility and currency that would make it useful to others. By completing this assignment, I know understand why it is so important that websites show credibility to outside viewers for their own perceptive. By completing analysis of our own sites, it also showed me how hard it is to include all information viewers would need to view and why.
In this course, I learned how to publish work online, which is not hard and anyone could do it, (kind of scary, huh?). Throughout the semester, I created and maintained my own weblog that was then published and viewable to everyone who had online access. I learned this by researching areas on the site (wordpress.com) and practicing to publish works on the site. I now feel more competent in this area as I never knew how to do this before.
The best thing I have realized and experienced throughout this semester is becoming more competent and self-confident with using the internet and controlling my own electronic space through my interactions. Before this course, I would have never thought I could have ever made a weblog, posted to it daily, became completely independent in the course load, and learn so much about internet site any other way. I am truly happy and proud that I have taken CD 315. Other than these objectives, I have learned more than I could ever think possible. Thanks to everyone in my class and Mrs. McComas who has helped me become more competent in every area of Communication Disorders Computer Networking.
Whitney Hicks, Student
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