The semester's almost over! The semester's almost over! Sorry....couldn't contain the joy. :) Every week, I try to find new things to say about how the time has flown and this is all I could come up with for this week.

Because our genres are finished, we were assigned to come up with the other accompanying parts of publications, like "About the Author" pages and "Acknowledgement" pages. My goal was to get those done this evening (Sunday) because I knew they wouldn't take very long at all. And I was right! They were very easy to do. Also, we had to peer review reference lists for others in the class. My goal was to get that done early, when I had an APA reference manual on hand or another document that had correct versions of citations in it.

This week, I had to think objectively about myself , which was fun. It was neat because I was actually doing stuff that people do when they publish real books and publications that other people will read. Also, I utilized the blogs from people who finished them last summer. I read the same pages from Mrs. McComas' blog and it helped, too, but I didn't have enough poetic inspiration to do as nice of a job as she did. I guess, too, with this week, I had to be super picky with reviewing Geneva's and Cindy's references lists, which I'm not used to. I had to do a lot of shuffling around and try to find out if they had used the right formats and stuff. Also, this week, I had to think critically about my MRP. I hadn't really thought before about someone else visitng my blog for the first time and what they would need to know to understand my position and purposes in doing this MRP.

So, I would say that this week, I really had a hard time with the process of reviewing others' references because I wasn't even sure if mine were right. And at one point, I thought, "Why does it really matter? Is Mrs. McComas really going to go through these reference lists with a magnifying glass to make sure that every element is where it's supposed to be, and if it's italicized or underlined and all of that?" When I realized that the answer to those questions were probably "Yes," I decided not to give up, but to make them as accurate as possible, because that's how we're supposed to. I understand that it's important for readers to understand where information came from and that we should be consistent with the formatting, but I think what drove me to really try to get details right about the citations and stuff was the thought that Mrs. McComas probably not only wants us to realize those things that I mentioned earlier, but also to get used to scouring information to figure out how to follow directions and follow them accurately....which is something that can be applied in all areas of life.

Whew. How about that wisdom? I feel like Dr. Phil! :)

Big thanks to Mrs. McComas for answering the endless emails and questions that have come as a result of my lack of confidence in this project! Thanks, Jennifer, for graciously putting up with my nagging stupid little questions all semester long. Thank you, too, to my classmates who struggled through this semester with me and answered questions any time you could!

This Multigenre Research Project is a major part of a computer and information literacy course in the Communication Disorders department of Marshall University. This project was intended to show many different aspects of one particular issue through the voices of other key players who may be involved in certain scenarios. It was designed to be an alternative to a traditional research paper.

The main topic of my project is deaf literacy. My specific question was, "How do deaf children who have never heard before learn how to read, spell and write?" A few years ago, in a sign language class, I wondered about this question and asked some of my professors. No one could come up with a concrete answer and most had never thought about the issue in depth. This curiosity followed me and so it was not difficult to decide what I wanted to know more about.

In choosing the types of genres, I didn't really pick any certain ones for any reasons. I honestly chose ones from the list of options and started with the easiest ones to write! It wasn't until after I came up with the idea of my unifying genre that I changed a few things to make it fit with the flow of the email exchange. With that genre, I decided to come up with as many different ways to lead the parent into possible sources of information as possible without being too unrealistic. Essentially, I started from the top down and constructed as many genres as I could and then worked in the foundation around them to make it all work together.

I hope that you enjoy reading through this work, but as you do, remember it is just that; work. This piece was not intended to lead anyone to hard and fast answers about deaf literacy, but to use my own ideas along with other pieces of information to come up with a creative project.