Our objectives this week included reporting on our mailing lists, doing peer reviews, and drafting our final two genres.

The content addressed this week was centered around our projects. We have gotten to the point in the semester where we are completely immersed in our MRPs. We are mainly focused on our genres for our projects. We are also looking at the genres of those in our groups. This week we again did peer reviews, as I suspect we will be doing next week as well. This week we also reported on our mailing lists. This meant giving the information about the list, how to subscribe and write to the list, and discussing the general aspects of the list. This could include topics, subscribers, community relations, and the mood of the list.

I have kept a lot of the mailings from my list. My list is mainly a discussion group for parents. I have found this very helpful since one of my voices is that of a parent of a child with Autism. I have been able to find a lot of professional information from my journal articles, but I appreciated this list because it gave me an idea of the parent’s perspective. I reviewed the mailings for the assignment, but I already had an idea of the mood and community of the list from the previous weeks. The list is really supportive when parents write in with questions, problems, whatever. I feel like I have really learned a lot.

Completing the peer reviews has been difficult for me because, for some reason, I can’t view the goodies, like power point presentations or newsletters, from my computer at home. It’s not a big deal because I can go to school and do it. But, it concerns me. I get this message that says the file cannot be viewed. Overall, I’ve really enjoyed the peer reviews. They let me see what everyone else is doing. It also makes me look at my project with a more critical eye. Most of all, when you are working in isolation as much as we are, it’s just nice to get some feedback.

Now that I have drafts of my last two genres, I feel like my project is starting to take shape. It is so hard to look at it in pieces and tell what you need to work on. You know if you need to work on the individual genre, but you can’t tell if need to work on your overall concept. It is hard to look at one of the genres and know what you need to do to make sure you are addressing your questions. You can tell somewhat, but you really need to look at the whole thing in order to be able to see the holes. Mine has a lot of holes, but I think I have a good foundation.

No questions at this time, but I’m sure I’ll think of some later.

Our tasks this week included producing drafts of our next two genres, performing peer reviews, completing another library search, completing a prompt, and continuing with our mailing lists.

The content addressed this week was similar to the previous weeks. This week we really concentrated on working on our genres instead of tackling new topics.

I have found that all the searches we have been doing have made me feel very direct and swift. When I am searching for some information, I am now very confident and know which databases to search and which key words to use. Searching is becoming relatively painless and much more productive. This week when completing my peer reviews, I tried not to think about what the research questions were. I tried to look at the genres from a blind perspective. This way I could try then to think of ways the genres could be improved to better inform the reader.

When working on my genres this week, I really tried to keep in mind what information I wanted this voice to convey. This means thinking ahead to what my other genres will convey. This project really demands constant flexibility. In my head, I change my genres and voices about twice a day. I have gone a head and done the genres that I know I want to keep the same. The ones I have left are the ones that I keep changing in my head. I guess this week I will have to
make a firm decision about the structure of my project.

I really feel like I learned a lot from the reviews. It was good to get a look at some of the other projects to get an idea of how I can improve mine. The peer reviews a little hard for me because I am always afraid that I will come across as mean. I, for some reason, have never been good at judging the work of others. The reviews, in general, were a little hard because this project isn’t going to make to much sense in pieces. I think that once we have all six genres and our preface done it will start to make some sense. This isn’t like a research paper in which you can look at a paragraph and know exactly where it fits in the body of the paper. This is a little more complex. The genres do not just convey the information, they convey the information in a voice. The voices influence each other and affect the information. This is tricky stuff.

I have no questions for this week.

Our tasks this week were few. We continued with our mailing lists, performed a library search, considered our own credibility as web publishers, and began to work on our genres.

The content we addressed this week was similar to past weeks with the exception of the information on the Power Point presentations. The link provided gave information on how to create and really customize these presentations. This site contained lots of information. It was helpful if you were new to presentations or if you had completed several presentations before. This week we also did some library searches. I found that the session at the library really helped me with this part of the assignment. This week we actually started working on our MRP. Up until now we have been doing assignments to prepare us to work on the project. This week we started on the drafts of our second genre. The genres must present our information in one of three voices could be involved with our topic.

We had already started the process of drafting a genre a few weeks ago when we started on the
webliography, which counts as one genre. But this week I realized that I wrote my webliography in my voice, and the voice of Mary is not one of the voices presented in my MRP. So this week I redid my webliography and gave some actual thought to how I wanted to present the voice and the information. This week I also intensified my research efforts. I found a lot of information in the past weeks, but this week I really focused on analyzing and sorting through the hordes of information that I found. I admit that I feel so much more comfortable with the information I find from a library search, than with the information I find on a web site. Whenever I find something on a web site that I am not sure about, I look it up in EBSCO to see if I can find any more information.

I have decided that this project is very organic in nature. It almost requires you to rethink your topic and how you are going to write it on a daily basis. I wanted to find natural outlets for my information, which turns out to be hard. When I started on my newsletter, in the voice of the parent, I realized that I still have a lot of sifting to do. I have found so much information on Autism. There is almost too much information. My newsletter is a rougher draft than I would like. I think that my approach to this project may be a bit different. Well, I don’t really know, everyone might be doing their project the same way I am. What I am doing is finding information, types of therapy, hormones, whatever, and then deciding on what would be the best voice, the most natural vehicle, for that information. This might not be the best way to do this, but I like it because I feel that it is not forced. We are creating these imaginary people and representing their voices, but they are still based on real people. I just finished a nine hour shift at work, so I am not quite sure if this is making sense. But we are creating a piece of fiction, founded in reality and based on some pretty extensive research. I feel like we really have to be careful if we our point to make it through.

Questions for this week: As we continue to work on our project, if we change things, foundation questions for example, do we need to go back and update everything previously related to foundation questions, like the discussions, or should we just leave it and make sure everything is current for our final draft? Also, I am not sure if the way I have my topics set up is ok. Most of the assignments have topics in the instructions but some don’t and I’m slightly paranoid that you won’t be able to find my postings and then I won’t get credit for them. Please let me know if I need to change anything. Thanks.