Annotated Bibliography Prompt

As a first step in the Research Paper process, you have to be able to find, read, and analyze other articles about your topic. For the Annotated Bibliography, you’ll be proving that you can do precisely that.

For this assignment, you will find and read five (5) articles about your topic. You can choose a chapter in a book, but not the whole book. They can all be on-line articles, or all print articles. You can have ONE (and one only) Wikipedia/About.com/Encyclopedia article. The articles don’t necessarily have to be the articles that you will use in your final paper.

Once you have read the articles, you will format your Bibliography this way:

• Each article starts a new page, so your assignment will be at least five physical pages long.


• Each entry will start with the correctly formatted, APA style, Works Cited entry in bold on the top of the page. Go to dianahacker.com then click on Social Science-->List of Citations for correct formats.


• You will then spend one paragraph summarizing the entire article, in which you will paraphrase the main argument. Make sure this is correctly formatted for a summary/paraphrase, meaning that you indicate in every sentence that these words/ideas are not your own.


• You will then spend one paragraph saying what you think you’ll use from this article in your paper. What intrigued you? What did you find helpful/interesting? What did you agree/disagree with?


• The two paragraphs should be substantial paragraphs, about half a page each, so that you have a full page of text for each entry.

So your Bibliography will be at least 5 separate pieces of paper. On each piece of paper, you will start with a Works Cited entry in bold, then a paragraph paraphrasing argument and summarizing article, then a paragraph analyzing what about article is important to you. Next page, start over again, with Works Cited entry and two paragraphs.

This assignment gives you the opportunity to practice research, reading, analyzing, summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting. The assignment is worth 10% of your final grade.

Due Dates:
Friday, February 27: Post one full Annotated entry to your blog, complete with correct heading and two paragraphs. Title the blog post “Annotated Bibliography Entry.” I will grade it over the weekend.

Friday, March 6: Hand in paper version of full Annotated Bibliography. Post it to TurnItIn.com

Plagiarism

For the next few weeks, we're going to be talking about plagiarism, about what it is, and how to avoid it.

Today in class, I want you to read some definitions of plagiarism:
Plagiarism.org
Wikipedia (notice esp. self-plagiarism)
OWL
Exercises

Classwork/Homework then consists of:

• Find one of the articles you will be using for your paper
• Open your blog and start a new post
• Create a link to that article at the top of the post
• Cut and paste a paragraph from the article that you feel includes the main thesis of the article
• As in the exercises above, demonstrate plagiarism of that paragraph in a made up paragraph of your paper
• Then demonstrate how to properly quote and/or paraphrase that paragraph for use in your paper. (HINT: a proper quote includes an introductory phrase like "Smith argues", the quote, and then analysis of the quote.

For Friday, February 13

Post to your blog, for Friday, your thesis paragraph that we've been working on in class this week.

As a reminder:

• First sentence should take a stand about your topic
• Most of the paragraph will be dedicated to summarizing the evidence you'll be using throughout the paper to prove your point.
• Last sentence argues why your issue/topic/argument matters. Why is the world going to be a better place if we all do what you say we should?

Extra Credit

Something that I think will be very helpful to you as you do your research on the Internet is Delicious, online storage of your "Bookmarks." Currently, if you're on a computer and you want to save access to a page you think would be helpful to your paper, you have three choices:

• Save it to "Bookmarks" on the browser window (usually Internet Explorer). This only works if you only ever use one computer, because the Bookmark saves to that specific computer's browser window. If you use another computer, you lose your Bookmarks until you can get back to the computer on which you saved them.
• Cut and paste the address you want to keep and put them in a document and/or email them to yourself. This can get cumbersome unless you consolidate emails every time.
• Save the address to an online website that will give you access to your bookmarks as long as you have Internet access.

Delicious is the third option. It's an place to save your bookmarks online so that, as long as you have Internet access, you'll be able to access your bookmarks, no matter what.

Delicious also allows you to tag your bookmarks. So you can tag them with a topic or with something like "helpful" or "quote"--stuff specific to YOUR use of the pages you're saving. You can also choose to make the Bookmarks public or not.

So, go to Delicious. Sign up for an account. Use it over the next few weeks by saving at least five subject-appropriate bookmarks (WITH TAGS!) to your account.

And link to MY Delicious account. You do this by clicking on "Go to a user" in the top right corner of your page once you've logged on. Enter sarahfrantz in the box. Once you've found me (and then have access to all the bookmarks *I've* ever saved on Delicious), click on "Add to my network," again in the top right corner of the page. When you go to the "Networks" tab, I'll show up on the right hand side of the screen, and you'll show up in MY Networks tab.

This is a long-term extra-credit, obviously. But this is a powerful tool available for your use. Have fun!