Sample research paper

Research paper on cell phones and driving

Class WILL meet

on Thursday May 1

Class cancelled for Monday 4/28

I hope this reaches a few of you–timing was not good in terms of being able to get info posted on AccessBCC. My mother had an emergency operation Thursday, despite protests of the rest of my family, to have her colon removed, She’s not doing so well and we’re in big confrontation with her doctors to try to regain control of her care. Thankfully, my brother is a doctor, which has helped tremendously. Anyway, we have an Ethics Board meeting at RI Hospital sometime today and, esp. since I am her health care proxy, I need to be available. I will do everything I can to be back to campus tomorrow. In the meantime, try to get together some thoughts about where you stand on this issue of urbanization and whether it’s a good thing.

Arguing about urbanization

In preparation for your last paper, please read the following two articles:

• David Owen’s “Green Manhattan”
  (The link isn’t working right now: google “green manhattan” to find pdf–I’ll try to fix when I get a chance.
• Mike Davis’s “Slum Ecology”

For next Monday (4/28) construct a chart using those two sources and the last two chapters of Ghost Map that gives reasons pro and con for the argument that urbanization has been a positive development for civilization.

Research assignment, parts 1 and 2

I thought I’d better post this just for clarification (and those of you who missed class this week). You should have already picked an ad (or other visual/text artifact) for your annotation assignment. Make a list of the types of research info your image suggests. (An ad for bottled water, for example, might stimulate research into the safety of bottled water, environmental impact, sales figures, how these companies convince people to buy something that’s free, innovations in bottle design, and so forth.)

Then use google (or metacrawler or dogpile or another search engine of your choice) to find at least five good sources of information. Remember to pay attention to who has posted the information: how can you make sure they know what they’re talking about? (Can you determine their educational background or experience? Or is this a government organization or some other organization that has credibility? Is the site trying to sell something, or does it give unbiased information? Look for a date–is the information recent enough for your purposes?) Post your five (or more) websites or articles on your own blog, by typing the name of the web page, then using the hyperlink button on the toolbar (looks like two chains linked together) to copy the URL (so that what you see on the blog is the name of the article, in blue, which you can click to get to the source you found).

After you have posted your own sources, find the blog of a classmate who has also completed that part of the assignment (and whose sources have not yet been evaluated). Look at all of the sources he/she has posted and, as a comment to his/her post, write a paragraph that evaluates those sources in terms of authority, bias, and currency.

If you have any questions, please post them as comments blow this post, so that all of your clasmates can see the answer. Have a good weekend!

Internet sources for annotation

How Fuel Cells Work

Wiki for Annotation assignment

In class Monday we’re looking at samples of Annotations that have appeared in Harper’s. What I’d like you to concentrate on is what sorts of research questions (and answers) the authors came up with. Because each of you won’t have a chance to look at all the examples, I thought it would be helpful to collect up your observations on a wiki: identify what the artifact is, describe it briefly, and bullet point or list the types of info included in the annotations. (And wikis are useful things for other sorts of collaborative work, so I just knew you’d all like to play around with them.) I’ll show you in class how to post things on the wiki (it’s even easier than a blog in a way cause you don’t need to sign in!) Here’s the link to the wiki I set up.

After people get their info posted, look over it as a help in brainstorming what kinds of info you might look for about your artifact.

MLA citation info

Here’s a link to the handout on MLA citations from BCC’s Writng Lab. Be sure to check out the Lab’s website for lots of other good info.

Profile essay assignment

Here’s the profile essay assignment (I’m still working to get it listed in blogroll):

Profile essay

Links for profile essay

Here are a few links I’ve found that may help get you started on profile essay: Writing Profiles and Essay Assignment: Profile. I’m in the process of writing up yr assignment (which is a little different than the ones described) and will try to get that posted tonight as well. You also might be interested in looking at this New York Times article by Peter Kilborn (referenced in one of the links above) that profiles a family: The Five Bedroom, Six Figure Rootless Life