Aims & Objectives:
- To choose and create a fifth genre for my final research project
- To research further into my topic of dysfluency
- To provide useful feedback to my classmates about their projects
- To pull together all of the information from the mailing list I have been observing and reflect on my observations
Declarative Knowledge:
This week, I learned how to make a podcast by using my own telephone at home. I also learned that I can subscribe to a podcast and post it to almost any website for others to listen to. I also learned that an interview transcript can be completed by simply tape recording an interview session and then transcribing it into writing. I did some more research throughout the library this week, and I found quite a few books that provide a lot of useful information pertaining to my research topic. I realize, though, that not all books are credible sources, and a lot of them are not primary sources. I did some research on the authors of some of the books I found, and I found that these authors have other publications about stuttering. I decided to add these to some of my tentative resources for my project; however, I only used them for general information about stuttering and did not quote them directly. Most of these books included the same information, which also leads me to believe that the authors are credible. I compared the information in the books to the information I have gathered from scholarly journal articles, which also provide most of the same information. I researched another type of digital literacy this week, which was reproduction literacy. I learned that reproduction litaracy is basically to create new information out of existing information, which is what I am doing now for my project.
Procedural Knowledge:
This week, my classmates and I met with the teacher in a computer lab and discussed effective ways of creating a powerpoint presentation. Ms. McComas also taught us how to create a podcast, and we each created one in class. This was just for practice so that we would have an easier time creating a podcast for one of our genres later on. I registered at www.gcast.com, called the number provided by using my cellphone, and I recorded a podcast. It took me a few tries to get it to save correctly. The third podcast I tried to record saved directly to my site, so I copied the link and sent it to my teacher. I chose to save this genre for a later time so I can play with it a bit more and become more familiar on how to post it to my weblog. I decided to do an interview transcript as my genre for the week. I gathered my thoughts as to what I wanted to include in the interview and did some extra research to provide accurate information about the child’s stuttering disorder. I included references, using APA format, in the interview transcript. Once I finished writing the genre, I posted it as a page to my weblog and sent an email to the class list which included the link to my genre. For the next assignment, I responded to two of my group mates’ fourth genres via the comment feature in their weblogs. In the response, I included the voice and audience of the genre, as well as what the author is saying in the genre. I also pointed out the strengths of their genres and gave my opinion on what needs to be addressed. For the next assigment, I used my researching skills to find information about reproduction literacy and the skills needed to survive in a digital society. I reflected on what I learned from the research assignment, providing appropriate links to the sources I used, and posted it to my weblog. I logged on to my email account and skimmed through some of the previous emails I have received from the mailing list I subsribed to about stuttering. I thought about the mailing list as a community and wrote about it in my personal weblog using some of the probe questions my teacher provided to guide my thinking. Finally, I visited my group mates’ weblogs and responded to their work via the comment feature on their weblogs.
Conditional Knowledge:
I chose to do my interview transcript differently than I had originally intended. I originally wanted to have the clinician interviewing the parent of a girl who stutters, but I thought that it would be important to interview the girl herself. Considering that the young girl is 13-years old, she is old enough to speak for herself. Of course, she would have trouble speaking because of her dysfluency, but she needs the opportunity to be heard -especially by the clinician. I didn’t want to exclude the original idea of interviewing the girl’s mother, so I decided to interview them both. I felt that this could provide a lot information about how they both feel and about the actual characteristics of stuttering in the child’s eyes as well as in a family member’s eyes. From what I know about 13-year old girls, they generally have an “attitude” and are “feisty,” especially when speaking to adults. I wanted the girl to sound a little frustrated, but curious, in her interview because these are generally characteristics of a teenage girl’s personality. I didn’t want to include a lot of information about brain functioning in this genre because I plan to include that information in the next two genres -a powerpoint presentation and a podcast. I am trying to spread the information out among my genres in order to create a whole piece of work. In the interview transcript, I included many of the characteristics of stuttering such as the emotional aspects, speech characteristics, and secondary characteristics (like blinking of the eyes or hand movements). I also included information about the child’s family life and communication in social situations. I also added another genre to my project prospectus this week, which is a letter to a parent. I have been thinking of how I will integrate my genres into a cohesive whole, and I thought that just telling a story of one client will not be enough; therefore, I thought of a genre in which I could somehow put all of the important aspects of my project together. I think this one will work for me!
