Wow, Mary, this has been a hectic summer. Can I just say how happy I am that I decided to take this class in summer school? I cannot imagine having this class, plus three more, plus two labs. (By the way, can you believe the price of our books? OUCH!) The work is done. I’m going to do one final proof read, turn off my computer, and not turn it back on until August 26. Ok, so I won’t wait that long, but I’ll take a couple days off from checking my e-mail and downloading music. After this summer, I wish that I had taken this class years ago. The researching skills that I learned would have been so great to be able to use in some earlier classes. I really feel like I have learned a lot. Not only about my topic, but about research and the Internet. Also, I learned how to better manage my time. It’s tough when you have to do your own schedule. I feel more confident about my computer skills. I was really worried because next semester I have an Internet course and I was really stressed about getting my assignments for that class done when I have so many other classes and labs. I know this next semester is going to be tough, but I think that if I suppress my mental breakdown, I’ll be all right. The best thing from this summer is the relationship with the rest of the group. I really feel like we were a support system for each other this summer. We were all doing something completely new and relying on each other for support and feedback. It was nice to have such a great group to bounce our ideas off of. I’m pleased with the work that I did this summer. At first I thought that I had bitten off too much. There are so many types of therapy available for kids with Autism. I decided to cover as many as I could but not worry about getting them all. We only had six genres. I think that I have been able to grow as a student and as a learner this summer. It’s been fun and I look forward to my whole week off before I start the fall semester.

Tips for the next group, well, are you sure we are the best ones for this. I really found the weekly set up on the assignments to be helpful. I was able to print the assignments and then decide which ones I wanted to do on which day. This way, I did not leave every thing for Sunday night. Never, ever leave it all, or even most of it for Sunday night. That is the best advise. If you leave it to the last minute, something will inevitably go wrong that cannot be fixed for at least two days. Also, I found that I got more work done if I went to the computer lab in the library than if I stayed at home on my computer. If I stayed at home, I had to get something to drink and make some popcorn and play with my cat and do the laundry and so on. Maybe other people aren’t as easily distracted as I am. On campus I got my work done a lot quicker because I was less likely to loaf and do other things.

The objectives for this week have included completing peer reviews, drafting our resources, working on our unifying theme, and drafting our reflection.

The content for this week was nothing new. At this point, we are really just trying to get our projects in a presentable state. We are no longer trying to tackle new topics or concepts. We are just reviewing the older material and making sure that we are doing it right.

When I was drafting my resources, I realized that I had most of the work done already. Several weeks ago we had assignments to find sources on Ebsco and cite them in APA style. This was such a time-saver this week because I used most of those sources and already had them on my blog. I just had to copy and paste them. Writing the reflection was very therapeutic. I felt like I was able to set straight in my mind what the project was all about. I was also able to express my ideas about why I chose certain genres and voices. When I wrote the reflection, I really tried to think about the project as a whole, which is sort of hard because I have written such completely individual genres. Thinking about it as a whole has really helped me think of ways to create a sense of unity in the piece.

This may sound really dumb, but writing the reflection part of my project was very reflecting. Sometimes, as I am sure you have noticed, I really have trouble thinking of things to write about in my reflections. Some assignments don’t require a lot of mental effort, or maybe I’m just not putting enough effort into them. On assignments that I haven’t invested a lot of thinking, I have trouble reflecting. When writing the reflection for this assignment, I didn’t even have to refer to those prompting questions that you gave us. I had so much to say and comment on that I needed no prompting. I think that is a really good thing, because it means that I have given the project a lot of thought, too much possibly. I still have work to do this week, but I am really looking forward to be finished with the project.

My only question this week is about what you were talking about at the café. I didn’t understand the part about putting links in the goodies. How is this done? I put the link to my next section in the piece of writing that introduced the goodie. I did this because I didn’t know how to add links.

Our objectives this week included unsubscribing from our mailing lists, performing peer reviews, and completing drafts of our preface, acknowledgments, and about the author.

The introductory sections (preface, acknowledgments, about the author) were relatively utilitarian in design. Instead of jumping right into our genres, these sections introduced why were researching this topic, how we researched it(with whose help), and who were are. I also began this week to construct my table of contents and connect my genres and other sections with links.

This was a time-consuming process because I hadn’t ever thought about what order I wanted my genres to be in. I tried to arrange them in such a way that I could transition them into one another. I think the transitions are a little forced and I want to work on them more. I tried to put my best pieces first and last. It’s something that I learned in high school English class: the reader will remember the first thing they read and the last thing they read. Somehow I doubt, you’re going to miss the stuff in the middle, but I always try to put my best pieces first and last because that makes the strongest impression.

When I was reading the transcripts for the moo, I realized that, while we do have some very detailed instructions, we didn’t get to see an example of an mrp. This could be a good thing because if we had an example we would want to use that as a template, instead of coming up with ideas on our own. It is nice that you are doing one at the same time. Since you obviously know what you are looking for in an mrp, we can look at yours, or just ask, if we have any questions.

I have written my drafts for the introductory paragraphs, but I still want to play around with the about the author section. I looked at yours and really like the idea of putting an autobiographical poem in this section. I really enjoyed writing the poem for the mrp. I’ve always liked to write poetry. I probably started when I was in grade school. My mom taught at the high school and I was there with her during the summer, helping her get her lab cleaned up (she taught chemistry and physics). The librarian was there at the same time and we ended up all helping each other. Afterwards, she let me check out this old poetry book that I found. Since then I’ve been hooked. It was a really fun exercise to write the poem from the perspective of a 12 year old boy, considering that I have never been a 12 year old boy. For the about the author section, I may also do an abbreviated webliography, since my webliography for the mrp was done from a child’s perspective.

I have been thinking a lot about how I want to tie my genres together. I had originally wanted to use the power point presentation, but I’m not sure that will work. I don’t think I can set it up to get back to a specific page in the presentation. So if I had a link on the second page of my presentation taking the reader to the newsletter, I think they would then have to go back to the beginning of the presentation, instead of being able to pick back up where they left off. The only thing that I could think of is something that I don’t know how to do. If I could set it up to open the link in a new window, it would work great. Since I don’t know how to do that, I think that I will compose an introduction to the mrp and try to transition from one genre to another. I had wanted to use the presentation so that when it refers to the parent’s reports of the child’s progress, I could link to the parent’s genres, and same thing with the peer reports.

Regardless of that, I feel so relieved to have the bulk of the writing done. It is a very nice feeling. No questions at this time. I look forward to the face to face.