Larsen Discussion Question: Wikipedia For Research

The following is an assignment for Mr. Larsen's classes:

Please click the link below to look at an article about how college students are using Wikipedia for research. Focus especially on the Introduction, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion.


http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2830/2476

Then, click "Comment" below this blog post, and write a brief response to what you read. Answer at least one of the following questions.

• Did you use Wikipedia for your research?  Why/Why Not?
• What do you like or dislike about it?
• What is one fact or statistic from the article that was surprising to you?  Why?
• How and why do college students usually use Wikipedia?

To get credit for this assignment, you must write your NAME AND PERIOD at the end of your blog comment!

Winding Up Research, Getting Ready To Write

So, if things have been going well, you've gone from having virtually no clue about your project topic to being pretty knowledgable about many different possible causes of your conflict.  You have picked a cause, and you have tried to find out everything you can about it.  Your teacher had you start by reading reference materials such as online or print encyclopedias, textbooks, etc.  Over time, you moved away from those general types of sources to better and more specific sources such as books, articles from magazines and newspapers, video/audio recordings, and database or web page articles.  These sources provided more specific information, but also had a potential to be unreliable, outdated, or bias (taking a side).  Hopefully you have been citing every source you look at in MLA format on your Bibliography Sheet.

Now is the tough part.  You should, at this point, be looking for Primary Source Quotes.  A Primary Source Quote is something that was said or written by people that were either participants or observers of the event you are talking about.  Since you are doing a paper on the causes of your conflict, you need to make sure your Primary Sources are from that time period, and had first hand knowledge and experiences about what you are referring to.  Just because they lived during a time period, does not mean that they are experts on the subject!  For example, if someone were to ask you about September 11, 2001 because you were living then, you would not be a very good source-- you were only about 4, 5, or 6 years old!  Use the ACAPS form your teacher should have provided you (or something similar) to analyze your quotes to make sure they are accurate and trustworthy. 

When you begin the writing process in your English class, you should have enough information for the paper, including 3 Primary Source Quotes, as well as 6 other quotes, facts or statistics.  You should also have a preliminary thesis written.  As you write, you may have to adjust the way you word your thesis to fit the evidence you have, too.  Remember, every sentence in your essay should serve one purpose only:  prove that your thesis is true!

Week of March 8th

This week, you should know which cause you will be focusing on for your essay.  You've moved on from the simple reference materials such as encyclopedias, Wikipedia, etc., and are now looking at resources that are more in-depth.  These may be books, magazine or newspaper articles, videos, or websites.  When you look at these types of sources, you need to make sure that you are paying attention to the possibility that these sources may contain bias or may be unreliable.  Your teacher may have provided you with a number of different resources, such as the "Web Page Evaluation Checklist,"  that can help you determine whether or not your sources are reliable.

If a source is biased, does that mean it is useless or unreliable?  No, it simply means that you must fact check.  Try to find info in other sources that helps you varify what the biased source tells you.   Everyone has a bias, or point of view.   Sometimes, authors or reporters work very hard to try to eliminate their bias as much as possible.  Others are very open about their bias.  Most are somewhere in the middle.  This is why you need to look at many different sources, so that you can be sure that the info you find is reliable.

Having trouble?  The library is open the rest of this week after school for help.  Teachers and librarians can help you-- all you have to do is ask.

Week of March 1

You should now be progressing in your research.  If you are doing about an hour of research a night, you should have finished the first week with several pages worth of notes, or about a dozen or more notecards.  Remember, you must cite each source in MLA format before you take notes.  Keep the notes from each source separate from other sources.  It is less important to have a large number of sources, and more important to find a large amount of research information.

In terms of what you are finding, you should be forming a list of possible causes, and starting to determine this week which cause you will focus on in your paper.  You should be moving away from using reference materials such as encyclopedias, and instead start to look up some of the keywords you generated last week in better sources such as books, magazines, newspapers, or websites.  You are still going to want to be careful about which sources you trust at this point-- you don't have enough info yet to be really sure that what you find is trustworthy! 

By the end of this week, you should be in a place where you have determined which cause is the main cause you will talk about in your essay, and will then spend next week finding out as much as you can about that cause as possible.

Beginning Your Research

OK, so by now you've been given your research topic and begun the research process.  What next? 

This week you should be focusing on identifying what you need to know more about.  In other words, you have to learn just enough about your topic to know which questions to ask. 

Start with encyclopedias or other simple reference resources, such as Wikipedia or Encarta online, or one of the sets of encyclopedias that we have in the KW library.  In general, encyclopedias are written without bias (having an opinion or point of view about the subject).  This means that you can generally trust what you find in these resources, because they report the facts without analysis or interpretation.  (Remember, though, that even encyclopedias can get facts wrong, become outdated, etc.)

Use these resources to develop a list of keywords or phrases.  What are the events, places, people, groups, or ideas that you come across when you read about the events that led up to your conflict?  If a word or phrase is used more than once, it is probably important.  If there is a map, chart, or picture, write down what info they are trying to show.  Ignore anything that happened after the date that your conflict started-- you only care about the causes!

Once you have looked at a couple of reference books and gathered some keywords, the next step is to create thoughtful questions using those terms.  Answering these questions will be the goal of your more in-depth research.  For example, let's say your topic was the causes of the American Revolution, and you knew little to nothing about it.  You might have read about George Washington several times, but not really know whether he might have caused the war.  You wrote his name down as you made your list of keywords.  Now create a question about him, such as:  "What did George Washington do before the American Revolution?  How might he have helped cause the war?"  Then, instead of typing, "Causes of the American Revolution" in Google and hoping you will stumble across a good website, you can look for more information about a specific person related to the war. 

As you search out more about each specific keyword, you will also find out more about what caused your conflict.  Each new resource will also add to your list of more keywords and more questions to research.  Your amount of knowledge will build over time, and you will start to make connections.

Ultimately, by using the keywords approach, you will go from looking at a broad range of information to more and more specific facts.  When you have found lots of specific facts, you can then put them together ultimately to create the big idea-- your thesis statement.  

MLA Citations

Having trouble with your Freshman Project, especially citing the sources you find in MLA format?  Try using http://www.easybib.com/!  It is a great resource that not only helps you cite your sources, but you can also copy and paste the citations into a Microsoft Word document.  PLEASE NOTE:  This website isn't perfect.  It will not alphabetize or format your bibliography page, and some citations will be missing periods or punctuation.  Use common sense when you use this resource!

Want to get the original source for MLA, with lots of hints about not only citing sources, but also writing good essays, too?  Then you should look into purchasing the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th Edition.  This is a book that will be very useful for you throughout High School and College.  You can find it on Amazon.com or other booksellers.  For the link to the MLA Handbook webpage, click here.

Welcome to the Freshman Project! I'm excited to see this group of Freshmen stretch themselves and do things they didn't think they could! Go get em! -Roche