Sample Quizlet Note Cards

The text at the top of the note card refer to the author of the article. If there is no author, use the title of the piece.

Notetaking

Please go to the following website and sign up for a free account. Please make your username your full name. For example, my username is Mister Clark. Do not use a nickname that I will not recognize!

• www.quizlet.com

Once registered, click on the following link to sign up for my class:

• http://quizlet.com/join/g72TQjZzM

Simply title your set of note cards "Research Paper - topic 1, topic 2, topic 3."
For each notecard, type the name of the author of the source (or the title of the article or website if no author is listed) in the left box and the note itself in the right box. It is my experience that direct quotes are most helpful. Use quotation marks for each direct quote to help you avoid accidental plagiarism.

Please upload 15 notecards to my class, "ENG III Clark," by midnight Wednesday, March 27th. Note cards submitted late will result in a loss of points.

Danke, Amanda.

Works Cited: Let the Tedium Commence

This Friday, March 22nd, you will all need to submit a typed and properly formatted Works Cited page. Today (3/18) and tomorrow (3/19) I will do my best to guide you through the formatting process.

To get you started, here are two helpful links:

• The OWL at Purdue University

This site is comprehensive and best of all, free. Never pay for MLA help. Never.

• Easybib.com

Easybib will guide you through the citation process, and, like the OWL, it is also free.

Refining Searches and Research

On Monday and Tuesday Mrs. Bouchard and I observed that many of you were having trouble finding information on some of the topics using the databases (Facts on File, Ebsco, etc.). Twiggy was particularly problematic.

This issue can be remedied with a refined Google search.

The research process depends heavily upon finding legitimate scholarly sources, and when used properly, Google can help greatly with this process. Here is a simple trick. When searching for something on Google, simply follow the search terms with the following:

site:.edu

This simple command will limit Google's search results to university and college-hosted sites only.

*     *     *

At this point all of you are researching people, events, substances, or ideas that revolutionized an aspect of America life in the 1960's. If someone or something is revolutionary, it has undergone and caused some sort of dramatic change. As you peruse your sources and begin the note-taking process, you need to zero in on change.

For the sake of an example, let's imagine that you are researching my musical hero, Bob Dylan. In your paper, it would be necessary to analyze how Dylan himself changed and how he transformed popular music and art in the 1960's.

This is what Bob Dylan looked like in 1962:

And this is what he looked like in 1966:

In four short years he transformed from a Dust Bowl-esque, acoustic-guitar-wielding folky into an electric guitar playing, polka-dotted besotted, psychedelic rocker.

Bob went from writing protest sings inspired by the civil rights movement to abstract, impressionistic, nasally sung rock and roll tunes.

Your analysis of Bob's career would need to focus on this change.

Hope this helps.

Peace and love,
Clark

Research Calendar

Greetings!

I have decided to begin reusing an old blog from my student teacher days to disseminate information regarding the upcoming research paper focusing on the 1960's and revolution.

"There was music in the cafes at night, and revolution in the air."

My man Bobby D. knows what's up--the 60's was a period of great change in the United States.

Your task for today, Tuesday, March 12th, is pretty easy. Now, if you remember yesterday, you researched 10 topics from a comprehensive list of 40. You then narrowed your list of 10 down to the 3 you found most interesting. Today, you will be responsible for finding legitimate sources. 

Wikipedia cannot be used.

I repeat: you cannot cite Wikipedia in an MLA formatted research paper. "Why?" you may ask. Well, it's simple. Despite the efforts of diligent fact checkers, Wikipedia is open source, and its less than scholarly editors may insert false or unsubstantiated info into a page. Case in point: here is what The Rolling Stones page on Wikipedia looked like yesterday (3/11/13):

Despite their rather infamous recreational activities, The Rollings Stones have never gone by "The Rolling Stoners."

Anyways, where ought an ambitious Oakcrest student go to find legitimate scholarly sources?

The Oakcrest library is a good place to begin.

Scroll down to the bottom lefthand side of the main Oakcrest library page, and click on the "Facts on File" link. This is a good database for simple historical materials. "Ebsco" is another good database to use.

You need to find and print 3 scholarly sources for each of your 3 topics. This means that you need to find a total of 9, legit, scholarly sources by the end of the period. You can do it.

Peace and love,

Clark