The objectives of this week’s assignments were to educate us further on use of the Internet to facilitate our use of it and to reflect on several prompts to prepare us for our research project.

We addressed a lot of content when we were reading the information on the use of the Internet. Much of the content helped to bring us all up to the same speed on the use of e-mail. It addressed how to make e-mail more meaningful and useful. We also learned a lot about bookmarks. Several of the reading assignments also focused on some misinformation associated with the Internet, such as hoaxes, viruses, and chain mail. The prompts in this week’s assignments encouraged us to reflect on the reasons why we want to be SLP’s, attitudes towards education in our families, our ideas for continuing education, and areas of interest for research.

The process of completing the reading assignments was very interesting and informative. I
really enjoyed reading about the hoaxes. I never realized there were so many. I use Internet Explorer instead of Netscape so I had to make some modifications when I was doing the book mark assignment. I basically read what we needed to accomplish and then tried to figure it out on my system. I was surprisingly easy. I was really able to organize my favorite’s tabs.

Reflecting for the prompts was harder than I thought. I have not completed all the prompts yet. For the ones I have completed, I made notes and tried to have a few points for each question within the prompt. I found it really hard to organize my thoughts about issues that are so personal.

I have always felt rather insecure about using the Internet. My job has helped me overcome this a lot. I have completed over 100 hours of training for my job with Amazon.com. A lot of what I do at work is helping people use the Internet (our site mainly, but you’d be surprised what people call and ask for help with). I also write e-mail responses to customer inquiries. At my job, you have to be very careful with your tone and the words you use. I have been really surprised that so far I am not having trouble with the technical assignments for this class. I am just waiting for that really hard one to show up in a couple of weeks.

I have been having trouble with some of the prompt. Some of the prompts addressed areas that are very personal for me. I admit that I find it really hard to write about these things knowing that they are so accessible to everyone. I really felt myself holding back when I wrote them. I tend to be a really private person. I don’t talk much in class. I tend not to voice opinions. I just get embarrassed sometimes over things that I shouldn’t. I need to be more forthcoming, I realize this.

My question for this week is after we submit our prompts, can we change them? Also, I know on the discussion pages there are places to respond to each other’s answers. Should we be responding? If we do respond, should we go to their blog and post our response there instead?