Thank goodness my undergraduate program prepared me well. Otherwise, this assignment may have been more challenging. Mastering the MLA format in research papers provided a natural transition to learn about the APA format. One of the learning objectives was to analyze and interpret data, which with my favorite aspect of this assignment. Admittedly, learning about the free research tools of Google Scholar and Zotero was like a low-income child opening a package of socks on Christmas morning — perhaps not that exciting but absolutely practical and helpful and necessary for survival.
I had substantial issues getting Zotero to work on my Mac and Safari browser. After spending an hour of troubleshooting, I finally negated to using the Zotero add-ins with Firefox and Word. Then it went significantly smoother. One of my classmates posted about Eric.ed.gov on the Google+ which was extremely helpful to find articles along with Google Scholar.
These tools have allowed me to identify more items to add to my “when things slow down, I’ll read this” list. Also, I am presenting at the Accessing Higher Ground conference in November 2014. I chose to learn more about Learning Management Systems as I will be presenting on the accessibility of documents as distributed through LMS. This background information helped me to provide a broader context.