The goal for this week was to begin focusing our efforts in regards to our MRP. This week we fine tuned our essential and foundation questions to refine our search, developed our search and evaluation strategies to help us in our search, began collaborating to help each other, and developed a prospectus to outline our MRP.

The majority of the content addressed in this week’s assignments has been carried over from previous weeks. We worked more on our foundation questions and reviewed some more searching strategies. We also worked more on our Webliographies and continued to collaborate with our peers. One of the new things we started this week is evaluation of our resources. This week we learned three techniques for evaluating resources on the Internet. The three techniques dealt with such aspects as the author, purpose, publisher, currency, navigation, and content. This week we also created a prospectus for our MRP. A prospectus is basically a summary or review of the project that you are going to do. It’s an outline. It contains your essential and foundation questions, the point you wish to make, genres, discussion of how to integrate your genres, and your sources.

The process of evaluating resources was very new to me. Whenever I would look for information on the Internet, I would usually look for the credentials of the author and whether or not the article was associated with a respected organization or publication. After reading the different ways to review publications, I made a check list for each method and tried to be very objective. First, I read the entire article or page. Then I looked for the details to review, like the author and date. To make things easier on myself when I had to write the review for the class, I took notes while I reviewed. When preparing my prospectus, which is still being worked on, I also made a check list. I’ve been using these a lot lately. I already knew what my foundation and essential questions were. I have been thinking a lot about what voices I want to use. I have been trying to decide who are the people that are the most involved with children with Autism. I definitely think that the parents should be one of the voices. Because I am looking at my topic (types of therapy for children with autism) from the perspective of an SLP, I would that to be one of my voices. The whole reason I picked this topic is because I want to know how we can help these children. I am still deciding on my third voice. I don’t really think the child’s voice would be appropriate since I am talking about children with Autism. Only a small persentage of these children are high-functioning enough to effectively communicate their needs, let alone express their opinions about therapy. I’ve been thinking about Special Education teachers, regular education teachers, siblings, or pediatricians. I have been reading articles on types of therapy, and hopefully my research will help me find my third voice.

Working on the prospectus has really helped me get a better idea of how to develop my project - I guess that was your point. It has really helped me think about how to develop my characters (voices). What we are doing is like writing a story. We are developing a situation that mirrors life within a microcosm of our own design. The research we do will be conveyed through the genres we select. If we want our project to be compelling and accurate, we need to be able to find good sources and evaluate them properly.

Just a side-note on mooing: I know I don’t write much when we are in our big group (I do a lot more in our smaller groups). I find that when we are mooing I’ll start to write something, but before I finish someone else will have already written in with the same thing I was going to write, or someone will have changed the topic. I have trouble keeping up. Also, I don’t want to interrupt when other people are ‘talking.’ I hope that makes sense.

At this point I don’t have any questions, but I’m sure that as I work more on my prospectus I’ll develop some questions.

What types of therapy are available to help children with Autism live more independent lives?

1. What is Autism?

2. What types of therapy and programs are available for children with Autism?

3. Do these programs have any empirical data to support their approach?

4. What are the short and long term results of each program?