1. TABLE OF CONTENTS
2. CAREERS, PERHAPS?
If we look at old ideas in new ways, the writing and research process can be fun and productive. For instance ... Trouble thinking of a topic, huh? Sometimes the most interesting way to gather ideas is to see what other people are researching and think about how we might research that topic ourselves, and what our theme or preliminary point might be. This is significantly different from the concept of "plagiarism" -- which you either have covered or soon will cover in your class -- in that we are not looking to borrow ideas but only themes or general concepts. Our reactions might be so different as to be unrecognizable to the person who inspires us. In fact, if two people found out that someone was researching "Bats," one might be inspired to to write about vampire mythology, while another explored the wood vs. aluminum controversy in college baseball. If two other students learned of someone's research on the history of the organization Planned Parenthood, depending on their personal views about birth control, abortion, and other areas, the "ideas" they borrow would be entirely different. So where to borrow these ideas? The Search Engine MetaCrawler is one place to go for an interesting technological spin on flipping through magazines and trolling library stacks. Visit MetaCrawler and select the feature MetaSpy ... you can also go there directly. According to the site's own promotional copy, "Ever wonder what the rest of the world is searching for? Catch a glimpse of some of the searches being performed on MetaCrawler, at this very moment! The MetaSpy page will automatically refresh every 15 seconds." Essentially, you are spying on what the world is asking Metacrawler to look for ... with a change in the list of topics every 15 seconds! Sit for five minutes and you will see more than 200 topics flash past you; what are the repeated themes? What are the research queries that jump out at you, either because you believe you would be interested, or because you might think "who in the world could possibly be interested in that?" Here is a sample of a list of topics automatically generated by MetaSpy recently ... the topics themselves flashed off the screen 15 seconds later to be replaced by an equally eclectic selection. What are your reactions?
Sunni Black The Tegnet Rail volvo v70 lease tony ryan EV override sears catalogue synthpop mp3 audio sound sanders wiman ab american dietetic association Smoking Grooves buddhist gainesville adriamycin knife throwing "wave file" NOTE: Not only will you see these lists of research queries, each one is a direct link to the results provided by MetaCrawler. You should check with your instructor and the institution's rules about viewing or downloading images of an adult nature; you may find yourself with such images on your screen quite by accident, but the method by which the image appeared on your computer may not matter to the school's administration. 3. FIVE QUESTIONS ... "Maid To Order"
Professor of Rhetoric and Writing University of Arkansas at Little Rock bmmaid@ualr.edu One of the most innovative teachers of writing in the nation, Dr. Maid has been teaching a variety of writing courses on computers since the mid-1980's. His work with Jennifer Jordan-Henley of Roane State Community College has led to the creation of a "virtual writing center" where graduate students in Arkansas tutor community college students in Tennessee. He also teaches courses where students create World Wide Web sites and study the rhetoric of hypertext. Here, Dr. Maid addresses questions relating to both teachers and students of writing the research paper. What do you think of his answers?
Longman: How is the concept "research paper class" changed by the advent of
the internet as a communications medium?
Longman: What's the most creative paper (or Web site) topic a student has ever
come up with for a class you've taught?
Longman: What's one Web site you visit every day?
Longman: A graduate assistant asks you to help her design her first
intro-level composition class, with a focus on the research paper. What
do you suggest she put on the syllabus? (Other than Lester's Writing
Research Papers, of course!)
Longman: Finish this sentence: "Electronic mail is ..."
Class Activity: Draft an electronic mail message to Dr. Maid responding to his answers. Are there specific comments with which you disagree? Do not actually send the mail to Dr. Maid unless your instructor contacts him and receives written permssion for the class to do so! For Discussion: Since you're not actually sending the mail, how is your tone or content changed? Would you need to rewrite any of your e-mail if your instructor suddenly announced that you were sending the mail to Dr. Maid? 4. THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
Think e-mail is a static, text-only environment? Think again! Creative artists have painstakingly created thousands of images using only standard keyboard characters. This is called "ASCII Art." Not all e-mail programs are created equally, however. If an ASCII scene looks to you like a mix-mash of alphabet soup, then your mailer program has certain defaults set that don't allow ASCII Art to be viewed properly.There are several ways to "decode it" however ... see if you can figure it out, or ask your local computer gurus for help. For Discussion: Does ASCII Art have any meaningful purpose in electronic communication? In the research process? I mean, really, isn't this just something created by a bunch of net-heads with way too much free time? What relationship does ASCII Art have to the use of emoticons ... if any? See Also: 5. ELSEWEB
6. CLASSROOM SPOTLIGHT ... "Dead Man Researching"
Dr. Susanmarie Harrington Department of English Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis Spring 1998 http://www.iupui.edu/~sharrin/132/home.htm Susan-Marie Harrington is heading south, at least temporarily, leaving Indianapolis for Lubbock and a visiting professorship at Texas Tech University -- but she takes with her a unique brand of teaching the research process. Among the many instructors nationwide who rely on Dr. Lester's Writing Research Papers as an integral part of their syllabi (Harrington notes that "All the Comp II instructors ... at IUPUI have used Lester for years") she may be the first to turn Sister Helen Prejean's moving memoir Dead Man Walking -- later made into a feature film starring Susan Sarandon -- into the basis for a research writing class. Harrington developed this curriculum, she is quick to point out, "in the company of a fine band of experienced composition teachers, who also utilized other books for thematic focus," including Jonathan Kozol's Illiterate America and Mike Rose's Possible Lives. According to Harrington, the course was "designed to introduce student writers to some of the basic skills they need to be successful in college writing: research and argumentation." The course itself was divided into two parts; in the first, the students read Prejean's Dead Man Walking, an account of her work with death row inmates in Louisiana's Angola Prison. The students also read a small set of articles Harrington selected that dealt "with the highly arguable question of what should be the role of organized religions in social justice issues." "As we read Dead Man Walking and these articles together," says Harrington, "we were able to take note of the myriad other issues that are raised in the text -- many of them directly related to the death penalty, but many others related to issues involving cities, crime, punishment, and countless other topics." The class used this common core of readings as a foundation for the study of argument -- how they are structured, and how individuals can read and analyze arguments more effectively. In the second part of the course, the students "branched out into a research question of their own making, though one related to the reading and discussing did in the first part of the course." In this latter section, the emphasis is on the students' own argumentative strategies, and on their own individualized research. Harringtonn is careful to define her term in claiming, "I use the term argument here to refer to a process of inquiry, in which the task is to discover what can be known, evaluate it, and offer a judgment about a complex matter through reason." The mix of a popular culture reference -- an award-winning book, which many students recognized from its success as a film -- with reading a current-historical account, and writing about complex social issues makes the research process an interesting and dynamic one for the entire semester. And calling it the research "process" is no coincidence ... you won't hear her calling it her class a "research paper" course. "If I could change only one thing about Lester's terrific book it would be the title," Harrington claims. "[We] should delete all references to 'the research paper' and replace them with something more accurate. The 'research paper' as a genre simply doesn't exist." Harrington continues, "Students are doing research when they sift through their memories to elaborate on details of a narrative they write. Students are doing research when they conduct interviews for a paper. Students are doing research when they are reading the newspaper and find an article and bring it in to class. Students are doing research whenever they are engaged in the process of finding new information." "When we use the phrase 'research paper' to describe a genre, we are doing students a disservice. We can meaningfully discuss a research report or lab report in science as a genre, but what is a 'research paper'? It's whatever thousands of teachers say it is, and it sounds boring as all heck. The literature reviews and critical analyses that my students write are researched papers, as are the researched arguments they write at the end of the semester." "All that said, what's important to emphasize about researched writing is curiousity. The best research is done when the writer is motivated to find answers to pressing questions. If students have nothing they want to find out, their research will be lifeless. Good questions are the key to a good research experience." In addition to teaching research and argumentation, Harrington teaches other writing and linguistics courses, including the History of English. As such, one of her favorite web activities is going to HEL ... The History of the English Language Web site, that is. She calls the site "a wonderful set of electronic resources relating to the history of our language."
For Discussion: What other books, movies or current pop culture hits might be good "jump starts" for an entire semester of research writing? Imagine using a movie such as Saving Private Ryan or a television series like Dawson's Creek as the basis for your research class ... what topics might that class center on? Class Activity (provided by Dr. Harrington): [We would] check out Helen Prejean in current newspaper indexes to see what she had been featured for since [the book] came out. Since the execution of Karla Faye Tucker was happening [at the time the class was being taught], this was a timely exercise. We were able to practice note-taking, summarizing, and electronic referencing, using [Dr. Lester's book] to help do the works cited entries!
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Newsletter concept and design by Mick Doherty and Sandye Thompson. All content and arrangement for v 1.1 by Mick Doherty. Readers are invited to submit material for this newsletter to the Editor as listed above; classes may apply to edit and compile an issue of this newsletter once per academic year; such applications must be received one full month before the projected date of publication. © 1998 by Mick Doherty for Addison Wesley Longman. All rights reserved worldwide. Material in this newsletter may be excerpted and quoted without permission when appropriate citation information is provided. Published via e-mail.
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