December 11th, 2005
Final Learning Reflection
During the course of this semester I have acquired a great deal of knowledge in my CD 315 class. This knowledge covers a wide spectrum of topics including how to prepare for information literacy, how to discover, retrieve and manage this information, how to process the info and, last, how to transfer it. I would like to explain what I learned about each of these aspects.
First, I had to be sure I had a computer that I could always access and I was familiar with. Fortunately, I have a computer in my apartment that I have been using for some time, which meant I was already familiar with how to use it (December's Email).
The next thing I had to do was make familiarize myself with what exactly literacy meant now that computers and the internet is so prevalent. The article wrote about this can be located here but essentially I said a student has a wealth of information available at his finger tips now but with this he also has a greater responsibility to ensure the info he looks at is accurate and reputable because anyone can post info on the internet now, which is where critiquing a page came into play. It showed me that a page can say a great deal without ever giving any real info.
I also learned how to locate information using the web. This included joining a mailing list, which allowed me to be in touch with people from a variety of places who are interested in the same things as me and using different types of search engines to find journals, books and other works on topics that I was interested in and access them and then document them.
After I had retrieved everything I needed I had to learn how to organize it in an appropriate manner. This is when I began working on my first website. Learning to create a webpage and use it to display my work made it very easy to provide easy access for anyone (including me) to look over my work. In addition to displaying it on my own webpage, I also learned to keep a weblog to have all my drafts in one place that I could access on any computer with an internet connection. The first thing I did on my weblog was create a prospectus for my project I was required to do. I then did a draft of all my genres on this weblog. One thing I learned while doing these genres is how to design a PowerPoint Presentation. Before reading this article, I had always just listed all my infor. Now I know to use PowerPoint to tell a story, not just list notes. Each week two of my peers made comments about my genres and offered advice on how to improve them and I did the same for Jennifer and Shari. These comments are at the bottom of each weblog entry. They were always helpful and often I would make changes that had not been advised but I noticed myself after reading Jennifer and Holli’s comments. While following their advice I also employed the SCAR technique, which is a method of revising my work.
After I had completed this phase of my work I went back through and converted each of the genres into a webpage. I followed the same process I used to create my website and made sure all my links worked and the information was accurate and presented in a professional manner. I also had to add the copyright information for every page. This leads me to the topic of copyright. Two of the things I learned that really struck me was 1) the idea of Fair Use, which basically says I can use information I find as long as I am not using it make a profit and 2) the length of time a copyright lasts. I did not know that the copyright for works published after the year 1977 lasts as long as the author lives plus 70 years.
By employing all this knowledge I was able to locate information about my chosen topic, critique everything I found, use the information to create my project and document all the sources I used, and then create webpages based on this work. This end result of all my genres can be found by going to Table of Contents.