Week 4

As the weeks go by and we cover more information on how to perform research, it begins to get easier to find the proper and reliable resources. This week's assignments taught me a different way to perform my research and how to know if it's a scholarly article or journal. I also learned what to look for that will help in determining it's reliability such as the References that were used and the ISSN. I had learned in the past to look for Resources listed in the articles or Journals, but never the ISSN.

Finding my article was a challenge as it has been in the previous weeks, which I expected since performing research will always be a challenge because we have to read and compare different findings in order to pinpoint the one that we find to be the best fit for our assignment. I do expect a challenge to always be there. 

Since my research has been about the advantages and disadvantages on online/distance education K-12, and n the past couple of week I have been doing my research on the advantages of online education; this week helped me find from students and teachers point of views. My article covered the dropout rates and reasons of online high school courses, along with other topics such as Motivation, Educational Technology, and the Online Educators. These topics cover scheduling and time constraints, academic rigor and motivation, technology problems, problems with online medium and lack of teacher immediacy, and parental influences. 

This week is has helped me compare and contrast my topic of online education. I think that it has given me a deeper knowledge on how to perform my research and find scholarly resources that talk specifically about the downfall of online education.

Recording the steps that I take when I perform my research has gotten easier and really helps me keep track of my process of how I got there, and I can go back and review it if I forgot a step on how I found my article or journal. 

Week 3, Research Strategies

Hi y'all! Well, here we are on week 3 of our assignment of learning how to do research for reliable sources to use on our papers. As I have already taken a class before that taught me how to do research, it has made this class a little easier. What has really starting to work best for me is our textbook "Research Strategies". I have found a lot of information in there that I wasn't aware of when searching for stuff online, such as using parenthesis, and/or, and about keywords and databases.
Also, I have never heard of the CRAAP method. During this assignment (which took me a little longer), I used different ways of searching my topic of Online Education K-12, and I skimmed through many books, and at times got really frustrated and had to walk away and take a break. So much information, thousands of books, journals, articles, etc...

I did all of my research using Leatherby Library, this is my favorite way of researching topics because you have the option of using filters to narrow down your searches, as opposed to using Google. I started by logged into my Library account and the first thing I did before starting my topic search was to set my filter for "e-books" only. This helped narrow my search down in a big way, I went from thousands to hundreds. I searched for my topic using different keywords, I initially started by searching "homeschool K-12". Skimmed through a few books and found nothing that really contained the information I wanted to know about homeschooling through the use of technology. I changed my keywords to "distance education k-12", skimmed through a few books, got frustrated some more, took a couple of days break before going back to my search. I decided to use what I learned from our textbooks and used and/or in my searches, so I searched "homeschool and/or distance education k-12", the books that I found were really the same from when I searched for those topics separately.

I to rethink a better way for searching for homeschool K-12 that involved children using computer exclusively, rather than textbooks and activity books. After some head scratching I thought to search for "online education K-12". I found a few books that sounded interesting but didn't really satisfied my need for information. Until, I found  What Works in K-12 Online Learning by Blomeyer, R. L., & Cavanaugh, C., what I really liked about the book is that it started by giving the reader the fundamentals and principals for a successful online learning experience. This book was written with the views of educators and students that shared their experiences and what worked best for them. It also covered different school subjects and how to be successful in them such as math and social science (it even included Physical Education).

What made me end up sticking with this book what to verify that it met the CRAAP criteria, this was a little challenging for me because I had to go back to my CRAAP sheet and back to the books and look for certain information that would make me feel comfortable knowing that this book was appropriate for my research and reliable.

I hope that my experiences can help others who might at time, like myself, struggle doing research. Researching for reliable resources is very challenging and I have personally learned, that you don't stop learning. Even though the book I found was K-12, I felt that this could apply to me (us) as well. After all, we are online learners! 

Week 2, Performing research for my topic

The topic I chose for this week is "Online/Distance Education K-12". I choose this topic because I am a parent and the thought of homeschooling my children has crossed my mind. This led me to compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of of this topic, and even though this topic is research for my class; it has helped me with information needed to have a better understanding of homeschool and what works best for our family.

For my research I began by using Google. In the past I would normally read different website on Google in regards to whichever research I'm performing at the time but, since I have taken a class in my last semester that taught us how to find reliable sources I no longer resort to Google.
I choose to use our school's Library, mostly because I became accustomed to use EBSCoHost and I find it easy to find reliable, scholarly resources that have been peer reviewed by professionals in the same field. I tried to use resources that were .edu, .org, .gov and .pdf files. I looked for articles and journals where the authors used endnotes citations for their sources.

I have learned the importance of research and of using reliable sources and distinguishing between crowd sources such as Wikipedia. I am majoring in Psychology and in my field it is important to have information and research from professionals in my field, and information that is unbiased.

Week 1, Introduction Blog

Hello Everyone and welcome to my blog! Here's a short introduction to who I am and a short background to why I choose to Study in the field of Psychology.
My name is Maria Feagin,  I'm a daughter to an Italian-American Father and Mexican Mother. I was born in Palm Springs, California and moved to Mexico at the age of 5 where attended school all the way to high school. I moved back to California at the age of 19, and I have lived in different cities since then. I now live in the city of Hemet with my husband and 3 boys ages 11, 4 and 9 weeks old. I choose to major in Psychology because I feel that it has been my calling, I enjoy helping people and listening to others in help in anyways I can. My biggest motivation are my children, my 11 year old was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 4 and additionally ODD at the age of 9. It is a big struggle for parents who have children with these diagnosis, and we re faced with many challenges everyday.

It is very important in for the field of Psychology to rely on research and find the research that is reliable. In my previous semester in college I took ENGL 98 which is a combination of two English classes in one (a faster route to ENGL 101). My instructor was very picky about the research we performed for our essays, so he spent the semester teaching us how to perform proper research and how to differentiate between unreliable, reliable, peer-reviewed and scholarly research.
I remember feeling frustrated at the fact that he continued to drill this into us, but today I can appreciate the fact that he felt it was very important and understand why.

I'm excited that in LBSU 302 we will be blogging, before Fall of 2013 I had never blogged and was nervous when I took History of Still Photography, our instructor required us to blog every week. So, this puts me to ease because I now feel comfortable with blogging and it is a way for us to document our weeks as we go on into our Fall 2 session.

I look forward to "virtually meeting" all my classmates and get to know you all and you all get to know me. Like I said in my intro, I love helping others, so if anyone needs help and I know how to I will, if I don't know how to I can surely find out :)