Hello all,

                The topic for my paper is still going to be IT management skills and development. For this week trying to find a book/e-book was rather a simple task compared to last week. When I started my search I had a good idea what I wanted to find in a book and went from there. I used the phrases “Information Technology” and then on the other required words I used “Skills and Development” this search brought a few books that wasn’t relevant to my subject but the rest were pretty spot on. I had to sift through a few of them and then I found the book “Methods of IT project management”. This book was what I was looking for in the idea of individual skills and development for my research. Its written by two professors and seems to be creditable information. So overall I didn't have much of an issue finding books for my topic of choice. So you could say the Brandman Library for the first time in history didn't fail me.

Good evening Class and like the rest of you I wonder if we all had issues finding information specific for our topic or better yet trying to refine our topic to something we want to research. For my at least I settled on Management skills and development since I'm going towards a degree in organization leadership in hopes of one day helping lead a company.
   So onto the research, I started off with the Brandman Library in hopes I could find exactly what I was looking for first and then move that over to my Google domain search under .edu and .org. Well turns out after about 45 minutes to a hour I found something from Sage that had to do with management learning and education development which will help me in the area of understanding education and learning requirements for these positions.
   From there I went over to good old Google.com and started my search using the same criteria that took me o so long to find the right string of words, characters and odd phrases and I felt like I hit a gold mine on a website. Its called American Management Association and its a site dedicated to the development and education of management and leaders. I found what you could call a gold mine, but more like a couple hundred gold mines because the site has so much information that it will take time to pick through and find exactly what I want but on the flip side the information is solid and easy to find and use for my purpose.
   What I found worked best was to start broad like the instructions said and then find the key words to refine your search slowly into what exactly you were looking for and then go from there. I feel that my research topic is still rough but I'm hoping as I have more days to think on it I will hopefully either fall for it or change an aspect of it to better suite the project.

Dan Highfill

Good day class of LBSU 302.
   As you can tell from my Blog my name is Dan Highfill and like the rest of you I'm currently enrolled at Brandman University pursuing my degree in Information Technology and then heading towards a Master's in Organizational Leadership. I have been attending Brandman off and on for the past 6 years when I was on shore duty in the United States Navy. My current career aspirations is to advanced in my current job which is a field service engineer at Intel and then when I finish my degree in Organizational Leadership hopefully get something more in management. Beyond that I'm a father of 2 daughters, 8 year old Sophia and 4 year old Zoey  and my son Lucas who is 2.

   When it comes to the ACRL information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education and how to become a more educated in the use of information that is available to us through all the information channels is essential to not only our education but being able to make informed decisions at work and home. As the ACRL states "by helping them construct a framework for learning how to learn, colleges and universities provide the foundation for continued growth throughout their careers, as well as in their roles as informed citizens and members of communities." Its a important fact to not only our education process and research but becoming a part of society and making informed decisions with the best information available to us. I almost feel this is a course that should be taught more in high school due to the part where it says becoming informed citizens and members of communities, this is something as we go beyond high school become part of and now at the age of 29 I'm taking this course. I feel as an individual I look into information that is given to me to make the best decision possible and even going beyond that to do my own research from credited sources that aren't TMZ and Seventeen magazine. That may have been a slight poke at my wife from when I first met her but she has gotten better since meeting me.