Final Blog Assignment

My final research question is "Should cellular phones be allowed in classrooms as educational tools?" After taking a final look at all my research, I've come to the conclusion that yes, cell phones should be allowed in the classroom for educational purposes.

Microsoft Powerpoint

Although Prezi is really neat, it was really confusing to me. I like how it’s “3-D”, I think that’s a really good way to get the audience’s attention. It was really confusing, though. It was talking about a “path” and a “journey” and I had no idea what it meant. I would like to learn more about this platform in the future because I think it has potential. I really liked the Wix platform where you can make free websites. I’m thinking about using that for my presentation, but it seems like a lot of work and I’m not really technologically inclined, so I’m not sure yet. I may just stick with Microsoft Powerpoint because I’ve used it in the past and it’s not as confusing or fancy as the platforms I looked at today.



Above is just a practice page for my presentation, which I created on Microsoft Powerpoint.

I would like to use Sliderocket to make my powerpoint, so I could access it online instead of having to worry about a jumpdrive, but Sliderocket isn't available to people anymore unless they're with a company.

 

Plagiarism!

                The digital age and widespread use of the internet is making plagiarism easier than ever before. It’s physically easier because we can go on a website or blog or whatever it may be, copy the text, and paste it right into a Word document like it’s our own work. It’s also getting harder to determine what’s considered plagiarism and what isn’t because there’s so much information on the web that it’s difficult to decide what you should cite and what you don’t have to. A lot of stuff seems like common knowledge when really you should still give credit to the author.

            It feels like I plagiarize sometimes, not purposely but because sometimes it’s hard to paraphrase without using the same words as the author. If it’s really the only word that makes sense then it’s hard to not “steal” the author’s words or phrases. I’ve also heard of many people, like one of the examples in the article, accidently plagiarizing from Wikipedia because they aren’t aware it’s plagiarizing, since it’s hard to discern what’s common knowledge.

2 Helpful Sources

Research Question: How has technology changed the classroom?

Hendricks, Drew. “A Look at Recent Findings on Technology in the Classroom.” Huffington Post. Huff

          Post Tech, 14 Mar. 2013. Web. 1 Apr. 2013.

Periathiruvadi, Sita and Anne N. Rinn. "Technology in Gifted Education: A Review of Best Practices

          and Empirical Research." Journal of Research on Technology in Education 45.2 (2012): 153-169.

          Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Apr. 2013.

Try Something New...

       First, I tried using Boolean operators in my search. I used the keywords "women OR females", "affects OR roles", and then just export processing zones in the last line. I found many subject specific articles that I hadn’t found before. Before, most the articles I found just had a small section about women in EPZs, but the articles I found when I used Boolean operators were mainly about the women. I also tried using the truncation symbol with the word affect (affect*), so I could see results for affects, affecting, affected, etc… I got about the same results with that as I did without the truncation symbol. I like this new technique of using Boolean operators and I think I’ll use it more often in my research, especially for my topic for this class, because it gave me more subject specific information.

       Secondly, I tried finding statistics and government information relating to my topic. I searched in the database Statistical Universe using the keywords “women in export processing zones.” At first I only got one result, and it didn’t seem to have much to do with EPZs, so I tried broadening my keyword to just “export processing zones.” Doing this gave me 69 results, but they were all about the workers’ conditions or their Annual Reports, not about the women. For my project the only statistic I’ll probably use is the percent of women that make up EPZs. I didn’t find it on Statistical Universe but I’m sure I can find it on another site.

"First World Problems Read by Third World People"

https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?v=10151692702876258&set=vb.295429577163605&type=2&theater

This video is called "First World Problems Read by Third World People," It's by the organization Water is Life and it's trying to get people to donate money to help bring clean water to those in need. The video shows poeople from third world countries reading "problems" that first world countries often complain about, such as "I hate when my leather seats aren't heated." I think the author is trying to argue that we should help people in need because they have way bigger problems than "I hate when I tell them no pickles and they still give me pickles" or "I hate when my neighbor blocks his wifi." Having people from third world countries read the problems makes our problems look so silly compared to their's. That's how the author emotionalizes the video, by having poor kids and people read the problems while they're standing in their horrible living conditions, because that makes people feel sorry for the people and want to donate money to their cause. I think the video has a good cause behind it, but if I had to pick a rhetorical device that the author uses I would say either appeals to emotion or false cause. Overall, I think this video is more rhetorical writing (trying to persuade us to do something) than argumentative writing, though.

"Presearch"

       “Presearch” helped me to come to the topic I’m at now: labor conditions in export processing zones. I started off wanting to research why America’s life expectancy has went down compared to other developed countries, but my “presearch” revealed that there was way too much information on that subject and too many aspects to approach. Background searching in Galileo and the UWG Library Catalogue helped me to narrow down my topic more and to see what information there was available on my topic. It also helped me find more keywords to use in my research. I still have to narrow my current topic down a lot, and Professor Walsh’s feedback on the topic selection worksheet helped with that. I’ve decided to either focus on women in export processing zones or compare China, which has benefitted from EPZs, and Namibia, which has very bad working conditions and hasn’t seen much growth from EPZs. Even those seem broad, though, so I’ll probably still have to narrow it down some more.

       I checked out Women in the Global Factory by Annette Fuentes & Barbara Ehrenreich from the library. Call number HD6223.F841983

A new kind of research!

       The research process we’re using in class is a lot different than how I usually approach research, mainly because I usually use Google for most of my research. Since I’m just a freshman, I’ve only had to write a couple papers so far that I had to have scholarly resources for, and even then I just used academic source complete. Before this class I didn’t know about all the subject specific guides and databases, and I think those will help a lot with research in the future. I also didn’t know I could narrow down my search so finely (only academic journals, only from certain times, etc…), so that will help, too. I’m also not used to having to use specific keywords in my research because the couple times I’ve used Galileo I’ve only had to use an author and the title of their book, or I just use Google, but for this research question I’m actually having to pick out keywords and refine my search.

       The online library is still confusing to me; I’m still not totally comfortable using the UWG Library Catalogue, Galileo, or the Research and Citation Guides. I think we’re doing a good job covering it all in class, though, and I’m sure it’ll get easier with practice.

A new kind of research!

       The research process we’re using in class is a lot different than how I usually approach research, mainly because I usually use Google for most of my research. Since I’m just a freshman, I’ve only had to write a couple papers so far that I had to have scholarly resources for, and even then I just used academic source complete. Before this class I didn’t know about all the subject specific guides and databases, and I think those will help a lot with research in the future. I also didn’t know I could narrow down my search so finely (only academic journals, only from certain times, etc…), so that will help, too. I’m also not used to having to use specific keywords in my research because the couple times I’ve used Galileo I’ve only had to use an author and the title of their book, or I just use Google, but for this research question I’m actually having to pick out keywords and refine my search.

       The online library is still confusing to me; I’m still not totally comfortable using the UWG Library Catalogue, Galileo, or the Research and Citation Guides. I think we’re doing a good job covering it all in class, though, and I’m sure it’ll get easier with practice.

Special Collections

         I really enjoyed the lady from Special Collections that came to talk to us in class today. She was very informative and I learned a lot (since I didn’t know anything about Special Collections to begin with!). For my research topic for this class I’m not sure if there’s anything in Special Collections that I’ll need, but for classes such as my history class I’m excited to start making use of the Special Collections. In my history class we talk a lot about the different wars that have taken place and a lot about civil rights and slavery, and I think it would be neat to see what kinds of letters, pictures, pamphlets, newspapers, and other documents Special Collections has from those periods. What’s better than a first-hand source?? That’s one really cool thing about Special Collections: it holds sources from actual people and events. Books and articles are good sources, but the things held in Special Collections sound much more interesting. Even if it’s not for a class it’s just for me in my spare time I would love to go check out the Special Collections and see what it has to offer.

Research Topic/Resources

          After doing more detailed research, I’ve narrowed down my research topic: How does education, and the lack thereof, affect life expectancy in America? I'm going to see how the life expectancy of people with little education (less than a high school diploma) compares to that of people with a high school diploma and how that compares to people with a college education.

 
          On GIL-Find, I didn’t really find too many books that seemed relevant to my research. The most helpful sounding one I found is The New Worklife Expectancy Tables: By Gender, Level of Educational Attainment, and Level of Work Disability by Anthony Gamboa. I think looking at the educational attainment section would be a good source of info for my research. The book is at Georgia State University, though, so I’d have to request it first. But besides this book, the other books I found didn't seem to focus much on the educational aspect of life expectancy. I tried key words such as “life expectancy,” “education,” and “effects of education on life expectancy,” but I didn’t get much. Most of the books focused on the health related aspects of life expectancy.

 
          For primary sources of information I could probably use records from places such as the United States Census Bureau.

Research Project Info Sources

For my research project I am trying to find out how education, and the lack thereof, affects life expectancy in the U.S. This is an ongoing topic and the statistics are ever changing, so I think I’m going to have to look to more popular sources, such as newspaper sites, news station sites, or some kind of professional magazine that talks about this issue, I’ve already found some good articles from The New York Times and CNN. I’m also going to try to find some relevant scholarly/academic sources, such as an academic journal, to use for my research. The only problem with that is I’m not really sure what I would look up for that, because keywords such as education and life expectancy bring up way to much information. I may be able to find some information in books, and although the statistics probably won’t be up to date the affects that education has in life expectancy will probably be similar.
I'm really not sure what fields deal with this topic. From what I have found during research it seems like economists and the healthcare field discuss this topic often. Economists seem to be the most worried about life expectancy because is affects the labor force which in turn affects the economy.

Research Topics

Hi everyone!

For my research project I think I want to research either the correspondence principle of truth or why America has a shorter life expectancy than other wealthy countries.

In my critical thinking class we just started discussing the correspondence principle of truth and I find it fascinating so far. We haven't gotten into much detail about it yet in class, but I think it would be cool to dive deeper into the subject.

A couple days ago I read an article in The New York Times that said America has a shorter life expectancy than all other wealthy countries, and I was shocked. Considering our country is so advanced, I never thought I would hear that. I want to dig deeper into the matter and figure out what are the causes of this.

I'm not sure yet which of these topics, if either, I'm going to decide on but as of now these are what I'm thinking about!

 

Car Shopping!

Last May I rear ended someone, and my car got messed up pretty badly. I'd already been planning on buying myself a newer, more reliable car, so I decided then would be the perfect time. So I set out on my car hunt. I looked at tons of different dealerships and at so many different kinds of cars. Some were brand new and some were slightly used, some had this some had that, etc.. There were plenty that I liked, but I had no idea which car was best! I looked on websites like consumerreports.org and autobytel.com to help me make my decision. Consumerreports helped me get background information on the different cars I was looking at, from fuel efficiency, to interior, to other customer reviews. Autobytel told me the top 10 most fuel efficient cars, because that was a big factor for me. Although in the end I didn’t end up getting what was on their list, it still helped me narrow down what I wanted and to make a final decision!

 

What I Like About the Library!

 

         My favorite part of the library would have to be having so many resources at my fingertips. I can search for what I need on the computer or using Galileo or in one of the thousands of books. I think it’s very convenient that I can search a specific subject and get results just for that subject, so I don’t have to sift through a ton of stuff. I really like the fact that if the UWG library doesn’t have the book I need I can look at other libraries and request it. I also like that there’s a librarian on duty at all times to answer my questions. My least favorite part of the library is looking for books. It’s so overwhelming for me. I’ve never really been taught how to find a book, so in UWG’s huge library it’s extremely hard for me. Galileo is also still a little confusing for me.

All About Me!

        Hi everyone!! My name is Sarah Clanton. I'm 19 and a freshman here at West GA. My major is undecided, but I know I want to pursue dental hygiene or dentistry. Today's LIBR1101 class surprised me a little because I didn't expect that we would be doing as much work in the class as it sounds like. I've never blogged before, but it sounds like it should be pretty fun.