Week 7

In my research this week I focused on finding more resources through books.  I found quite a few resources through articles but my two new resources were books that I found through the e-book search.  I was not quite sure of how to structure the assignment for this week or what the purpose of it was if we already had the sources.  Once I completed the assignment it proved to be something that will be very helpful since all of my research was available on one document.  Also while going back on previous week’s research I went through my sources to go through the CRAAP evaluation.  I have gotten more confident in my research tools and navigation but I still feel like I can use more work on evaluating the source and the author’s credibility. I will continue to use the tools I have learned throughout this course hopefully become more confident in evaluating my sources.

Week Six Blog

Academic Integrity and Plagiarism are topics that are discussed within every course taken in a person’s collegiate career.  Even with how often these topics are discussed and reiterated, it has been very helpful to have an actual week of lecture to clarify any grey area a student may have regarding these issues.  Just as an author attains credibility in their work, we are essentially gaining our own credibility as students and the work or research we are creating. Making sure our work gives credit to those who have developed the topics we are researching shows the type of student we are.

Since I have been out of school for quiet sometime now, the research tools and review on citations have been very beneficial.  I know this will play a very important part in future courses taken as well as in my professional career.  Two topics that were new to me this week were the Open Access literature and the Creative Commons licensing. Both of these are great tools to have knowledge of and will help in my future research.  The most important thing that has helped me this week is making sure I use correct citations.  I am very aware of what plagiarism is but now I am able to make sure I am citing the author the correct way.

Week Five, Assignment 2

     This week I found a couple articles that sparked my interest.  I started my search in the general database of the Leatherby Libraries. I then limited my search to only look within the Education scope. This brought me to LibGuide Education in the electronic resources.  Even with having success within the EBSCO database I decided to branch out and look into other databases.  I started a search in the Emerald Journals.  I did find an article titled, "Pre-Service Teachers' Images of Teaching".  Although this was an interesting article that followed a great number of teachers and their journey, I wanted to keep searching.
     I continued my search back where I had the most success in finding what I needed.  I searched in the ERIC(EBSCO) database.  Here is where I found the article I was most interested in.  This article was titled, "First Year Preschool and Kindergarten Teachers: Challenges of Working With Parents".  This article followed a study that was given by 14 first years teachers and the ways they tried to increase teacher/parent collaboration. This article made me realize yet another aspect of teaching that I had not thought about.  The article was interesting to me because it gave multiple aspects that would contribute to parents and teachers not building a healthy relationship.
     I feel like my research skills have improved greatly since the beginning of this course.  Although I have found a specific database that I prefer, I am less hesitant to try searching in other resources.  As my research continues I will challenge myself to look in at least one other database in hopes to expand my resources even more. 

Week 4 Blog Post

     This week’s research went very well for me.  I have found that I am navigating so much better through the online library and working my way around finding exactly what I am looking for.  I found that my go to database is through EBSCO.  I have been getting very good results while conducting my search here.  I also believe that I since I have discovered a topic that I am very interested in it has helped me narrow my search down.

     The topic I searched this week was in regards to becoming an effective first year teacher.  The keywords I used for this search were “first year teacher”.  There were tons of articles that resulted in this search.  I saved multiple titles so that I can go back and reference them in the future.  I was looking for articles that were in regards to being a successful first year teacher.  The one article that sparked my interest was titled, “A First Year Teacher’s Top Ten Mistakes”.  In the previous weeks research I had come up with many results of resources to help be successful.  I enjoyed looking into experiences the author had that she could admit were mistakes she made in her first year of teaching.  This has definitely brought insight to the other side of the spectrum and will help tremendously in my future research.