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Throughout this semester in my CD 315 course, I have gained a lot of knowledge.  The knowledge that I have acquired deals with preparing for information literacy, information discovery, retreival, and management, processing information, and transferring information.  The assignments that I completed throughout the semester helped me to gain this knowledge.

The assignments at the beginning of the semester were aimed at helping me get ready for information literacy.  To start off with, I was assigned to read some articles regarding information literacy in our society.  The first actual assignment that required me to turn something in was wo write about my computer setup.  From doing this, I was able to see that I would be able to use my computer to complete all the tasks for this required for this course.

Another important piece of knowledge I gained during the semester was how to locate information.  At first I just typed my name into several different search engines to see what information would come back.  I then took my search to a more practical level and began my first research of information on autism.  I learned that the more broad seach terms I use, the more "hits" I will receive back from Internet searches.  Another way that I learned to retrieve information was by joining an autism mailing list.  This was another source to get useful information for my project. 

One of the most important things I learned this semester was how to evaluate an Internet site for credibility.  One assignment I did was to the BetterDogFood site.  There were many things I had to look for to determine if the site was credible or not.  After doing this one, I had to pick a site that I could use for my MRP and determine if this site was credible.  I had to look for things such as authorship, content, and copyright information.  You can access this assignment by clicking here.   After determining what sources were credible, I was able to come up with my own list of references that I could use to complete my MRP.  I also learned that there are different databases through the Marshall Univeristy library site that I can use to find information from numerous books and scholarly journals.

Once I had all my information, I needed a place where I could display all of it and put it together in a useful and helpful way.  This is where the MRP came into play.  The first thing I did to begin my MRP was to publish my homepage.  Next I had to make a place where I could begin drafting all of my genres.  To do so, I created my own weblog here on Tabulas.  You can see my personal weblog by clicking here.  Here you can also view my project prospectus, which is how I organized how I was going to put all of my information together.  Under each genre on my weblog, you can also click on "comments" and read the feedback that my peers, Holli and Chris, gave to me.

As the semester began to come to a close, the task still remained of transferring all of my information and genres from my weblog over to separate webpages.  On each page I had to include copyright information which I learned about by reading this article.  I learned that for anything published after 1977 has a copyright that lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.  So, in the end all of the beginning assignments were the ones that led to the completion of my final MRP, which can be viewed by clicking here.  Enjoy!

Please click the following link to view my Powerpoint presentation.

http://mupfc.marshall.edu/~nutter22/autism.ppt

Click on the page to move to the next slide.

Bellini, S. (2004).  Social skill deficits and anxiety in high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorders.  Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 19, 78-87.  Retrieved October 3, 2005, from the ERIC database.

Hart, K. I., Fujiki, M., Brinton, B., & Hart, C. H. (2004).  The relationship between social behavior and severity of language impairment.  Journal of Speech, Language, & Hearing Research, 47, 647-663.  Retrieved November 3, 2005, from the Academic Search Premier database.

Sarah,

Hey, Sis!  How have you been doing?  I have not talked to you for awhile on the phone now.  I miss seeing you everyday.  It has been tough on me since you have moved away.  I enjoyed our long talks when you would come to visit us.  And I especially miss getting your advice everyday about Lucas.  He still has his good days and his bad days.  He misses you too.  He has always loved his Aunt Sarah.  I know he especially misses your chocolate chip cookies that are out of this world!  Well you are probably wondering why I am writing you this letter and not just calling you up on the phone.  Lucas is out with Jeff right now running a few errands, so I have some free time since neither one of my boys are here.  I thought I would have a little “me time” and fill you on some things that have been going on around here.

I cannot remember if I have told you the incident at Wal-Mart with Lucas.  This happened awhile ago, so I may have told you.  Anyways, to make a long story short, Lucas did not want to leave when it was time to go home.  I threw a fit and started kicking and screaming.  I did not know what to.  I finally got him calmed down enough to get out of the store.  When I got home I wrote an e-mail about the situation to a woman I have met who also has a son with autism.  We write each other often to give advice and to just have someone to talk to who understands.  She gave me some good advice on how prevent that from happening again.

Lucas is now seeing a speech-language pathologist twice a week for some therapy.  Her name is Shari Nutter.  She helps Lucas with making his social skills better.  Lucas absolutely loves her.  She has helped him accomplish so much in just the short amount of time he as been seeing her.  Can you believe it, but Shari actually got Lucas to write a poem about how he feels when he is at school.  She helped him write it, but I was so proud of him!  The therapist has also helped me out some.  She told me that I could ease some of my emotions by keeping a journal.  I have only written in it a few times, but it really helps to get everything out that I am feeling.  I just write about little things that happen throughout the day. 

When we first went to the therapist, she was so helpful to us.  She gave Jeff and me so much information because she wanted us to be as best educated on Lucas’ disorder as we could.  Before we left our first session with her she gave us a few pamphlets on autism.  I have enclosed a pamphlet with this letter.  It gives just some basic information on the disorder.  I thought you may like to take a look at it.  At our next session with her, she showed us this great PowerPoint slideshow.  This was just a different way for her to give us more information.  The presentation focused more on peer interaction skills.  This was important to us because she is trying work on improving these skills with Lucas.  I really like Shari.  She seems very interested in Lucas and genuinely concerned with helping him.  She even gave us this really neat website to visit.  It gave us some information on her interests and information about speech-language pathology in general, which I thought was pretty cool. 

Well, I am expecting Jeff and Lucas home anytime now.  I had better wrap this thing up.  When are you planning on coming back to visit?  I hope it is soon.  I miss my little sis.  Well you can write back if you want to just give me a call.  I know you do not have much free time either.  Well like I have said already, I miss you a lot and cannot wait to see you again.  Hope to hear from you soon!

Lots of Love,

Jane              

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