Journal 7

We were just assigned a group observation project. My group decided that we are going to observe the shuttle. I went on the shuttle today coming back from my car. There were three other people on the bus with me when I observed. Two guys got their cell phones out as soon as the got on the bus. I wondered as I watched them if they were "fake" texting like I do sometimes if I'm in an awkward situation. There was also a girl who had out a binder and packet and appeared to be studying. I'm not sure what all this means or what I should take from it. Maybe my group members will take more away from their observations.

Journal 6

We just turned in our Annotated Bibliography rough drafts.. I didn't find it too challenging. However, it was a little bit difficult to find a variation of information. I felt like all the websites had the same information. My topic is early indication of autism in children, and there's only a few symptoms and signs to look for. I am hoping my group members left me some good advice on what I can improve on.
Chapter nine talks about searching for information with electronic resources. I learned that you can search not only by author and subject, but also by title, keyword, publication date, and call number. Chapter ten is about searching for information with print resources. I learned about searching for books and Interlibrary Loan, which is when if you can't find the book you need from your library, you can use interlibrary loan to borrow the book from another library.

Journal 5

Chapter 8 in The Bedford Researcher talks about planning for research. To identify relevant sources you should consider the scope and timeliness of your issue, consider the nature of the conversation you plan to join, and consider what you'll need to learn about an issue. I also learned the best search tools and methods are electronic search tools, print resources, and even observations, interviews, and surveys. I also need to figure out what sources are most relevant to my issue. Since I have autism as my topic, I think print sources would work for finding some good books on childhood autism along with website about early childhood indication of autism. When our class went to the library I learned about finding articles and journals along with other information about my topic online.

Journal 4

In chapter 6 from the Bedford Researcher, I learned about taking notes and how to avoid plagiarism. One way to do so is to quote directly and make sure your notes match the original source exactly and idenity the source and list the page number it came from. I also read about paraphrasing. Even though you are changing the words of the information you read, you still must cite the source because the information is not your own. This is an important thing to remember! Chapter 7 also talks about plagiarism and how unintentional plagiarism is still likely to have consequences. I learned some ways to avoid plagiarism. They are; take notes accurately, integrate quotations, paraphrases, and summaries into a document, and cite sources in the text and in a works cited or reference list.

Journal 3

I decided to go with autism for my topic. I am very interested in autism because I am a special education major and have a passion for helping people with disabilities. I chose autism over down syndrome because I have already done studies on down syndrome. I want to learn more about autism and I chose to focus in on the early signs/indications that a young child, around the age or two or three, would show.
I had a good discussion with group about their topics as well. Everyone seemed to have good ideas. Stephanie is also doing autism, which is cool because we are both special education majors! She is going a different route than me though, so it will be interesting to see where she goes with it.