This week has been a very busy week for me. Fortunately I have had all day today (sat.) to myself to catch up on homework. I feel like I have accomplished a lot today. Basically I did all of week four and fives assignments. I learned a great deal about evaluating internet sites and finding out if the information is valid and credible. The project prospectus enabled me to begin to see where this MRP is going and I am beginning to get Ideas about what I want to accomplish and how I want to accomplish it. I still have a lot of kinks, well big huge knots, to work out of my ideas though. Hopefully by this time next week I will be more specific about my ideas and figure out exactly how I want to do things for the project. I am still worried about completing this project but I am also beginning to get excited about my work. I not only hope to provide information to others, I also hope to learn some more about dysphagia myself. Really, we have not learned much about swallowing in class. I always thought it was very interesting but this project is going to give me different views of dysphagia, hopefully helping me decide I maybe do want to work with clients how have swallowing disorders. Then if I do go that path, this could very possibly make me a better clinician. This is all very exciting to me.

Research and Foundation questions:

Essential: What are some possible causes of dysphagia and what are some techniques to help these clients.

Foundation:
1.How can I gain a better understanding of the swallowing process?
2.How can I diagnose dysphagia?
3.At what point in the swallow is the problem occurring and with what thickness of food?
4.How can I make swallowing easier or better for clients?
5.How can I help the family through this situation and how can they help the client?

Tentative Point:
Provide general information about dysphagia, what it is and the possible causes. Ways that dysphagia can be treated and the involvement of the speech pathologist and the clients family/caretakers in the care of the client.

Planned Genres:
1.webliography
2.powerpoint
3.poem
4.interview transcript
5.email exchange
6.observation report

I plan on using the poem for the clients voice, maybe talking about his/her feeling about their problems and the emotions they have in response to them. In this case the audience would be themselves, maybe the clinician and/or family members. The interview transcript might be from either the clinician or representative of the clients cause speaking to an interviewer to help society understand the problems associated with dysphagia.( I am at a loss for words on this idea, I am visualizing something but I just don’t have it to the words point yet). Observation report would be from the clinicians point of view, the audience will be other collaborating professional.

Tentative Sources:
So far I have many internet resources. Some are personal and school websites others are journals published online. I really do not have any specific sites yet other that the ones listed on my webliography and the ones that I did evaluations on.

Essential Question: What are some possible causes of dysphagia and what are some techniques to help to help these clients?

1. How can I gain a better understanding of the swallowing process?
2.How can I diagnose dysphagia?
3.At what point in the swallow is the problem occurring and with what thickness of foods?
4.How can I make swallowing easier or better for clients?
5.How can I help the family through this situation and how can they help the client