[nabs-l] Final projects, papers, research hints

Tue Apr 9 18:41:09 UTC 2013

Another good resource which we use in high school is ABC Clio. This
database includes information on a wide variety of subjects:
religions, history, science, English, social issues, and many more.
I'm not sure if ABC-Clio would be useful to college students, but you
could give it a try. The URL is www.abc-clio.com. Hope this helps!

Chris Nusbaum

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 9, 2013, at 2:29 PM, Kaiti Shelton <crazy4clarinet104 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Plos1 is a good database for those who may need to do psych research,
> or who may benefit from citing a study in another paper as a research
> source.
>
> If your university has a writing center, use it.  I didn't until my
> religion professor gave my class the deal that if we went to the
> writing center we could have an extra day to work on our papers,
> (which is really valuable because he only gives us 3 or 4 days to do
> them).  He told us up front that the papers that are worked on with a
> Write Place tutor usually do better, and this is true; I usually get
> B's on my papers without writing help, and all mine this semester have
> been at least A minuses.  I have a tutor there who I can consistently
> see, which is nice because he's a senior English major, knows his
> stuff, and can also give me feedback on how I'm improving from paper
> to paper and give me suggestions to use on my own.
>
> Third, don't forget about other sources you can use to get
> information.  Quite a few times I've just gone onto google, typed in
> my search terms, and found books on the topic.  Then once I have the
> file I can either read it all and take notes of quotes and page
> numbers for my citations as I go, or use the find command to search
> for specific topics.  For example, I did a report on braille literacy
> a few years ago, so I downloaded a book from Bookshare whith a bunch
> of statistics about braille literacy and used it in my paper.
> Sometimes these resources specifically available to us aren't
> available in the college libraries, which are mainly intended for
> sighted students who may not have a need to research braille or other
> blindness related topics.  I mention this specifically, because I
> noticed a few of the projects mentioned on this list were about
> blindness topics or the topic of people with physical disabilities in
> general.
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> On 4/9/13, Mary Fernandez <trillian551 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> scholar.google.com
>> Or, just type google scholar on google and it comes right up. Scholar
>> also has different ways of filtering results. So you can choose
>> whether the search results include books, or just articles, and so on.
>> Thanks.
>> Mary
>>
>> On 4/9/13, Hope Paulos <hope.paulos at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi there! Does Google scholar have its own website, or do we just put the
>>> eword Google scholar before our search terms?
>>> Thanks!
>>> Hope
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>> On Apr 9, 2013, at 9:57 AM, Mary Fernandez <trillian551 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>> In the last two days, it has become obvious that college final
>>>> projects and exams are approaching! I am starting this thread as a way
>>>> for college students, grad students and graduates share some hints on
>>>> how to manage finals and everything they entail. Below are some ways I
>>>> learned to survive this challenging time.
>>>> 1. Everyone has a research paper due soon. There has been a lot of
>>>> chatter regarding best ways to do  research. First, your university
>>>> has a library with extremely knowledgeable librarians! In many
>>>> colleges there are librarians that specialize in particular areas,
>>>> e.g. science, literature etc. So, when you are stuck, this should be
>>>> one of the first places you explore. They will tell you about
>>>> resources that you might not even be aware of. Along with that, get
>>>> very familiar with your school libraries website. There should be
>>>> links to the databases your school subscribes to.
>>>> When starting a research paper, professors will often have different
>>>> views on how they let students choose topics. While some want sources
>>>> and thesis statements well ahead of times, others simply say turn in a
>>>> paper about something we talked in class. Regardless of the professor,
>>>> one should always start with the broader idea. For instance, if I want
>>>> to write a comp lit paper on nineteenth century British literature,
>>>> I'd probably start with doing a Google scholar search. Google Scholar
>>>> is better than just running a Google search, because the summaries
>>>> that come up are from "academic" peer reviewed sources. So you never
>>>> have to worry about whether a source will be credible or not.
>>>> Then, as you get a better idea of the options available, you start
>>>> narrowing down until you come up with a specific topic. While this is
>>>> not by far, the only method of doing this type of research, it has
>>>> always served me well, because the worst thing to find out the week
>>>> before your paper is due is that there isn't enough literature out
>>>> there.
>>>>
>>>> Finally, some databases that I like for social science research are:
>>>> JSTOR (which has older studies), and PsychInfo, (which is a sub
>>>> database of EBSCO).
>>>> Remember to talk to your librarian and get familiar with the library
>>>> website, since sometimes they are nice enough to allow you to search
>>>> database by subject. So, if you need articles on history, it will show
>>>> you the databases which are history specific.
>>>> 2. Tutoring and study help. There have been some questions about
>>>> searching for guidance and direction with specific papers and with
>>>> specific books.
>>>> All colleges have some sort of tutoring program. Many have a
>>>> writing/composition specific department. You get paired with a student
>>>> who has taken the class, and who can help you understand the material.
>>>> For big papers I always took it to the writing center at my college,
>>>> since when you live with a paper for so long, there are little
>>>> mistakes that you don't catch. If you need help understanding a
>>>> specific book, and getting ideas as to how to read more effectively,
>>>> go to your tutor!
>>>> 3. Presentations.
>>>> Ok, so my favorite Microsoft program has made an appearance,
>>>> PowerPoint. I will confess, all I know how to do in PowerPoint is read
>>>> slide shows. Seriously, that's it. But I am a college graduate, and
>>>> even made research posters which are based on PowerPoint before you
>>>> can print them. Here is the way I did it.
>>>> First, you do your research. Once you have the basis of your
>>>> presentation, you start making your presentation. Remember that
>>>> Powerpoints are visual aids, they are not supposed to be your full
>>>> presentation. They aren't supposed to have long texts on everything
>>>> you want to say. They simply underline what you think is important,
>>>> and if you have time you can even make them pretty.
>>>> For my presentations, I would do a Word documents, in which I'd do a
>>>> list, with the slide number and the content I wanted in that slide.
>>>> For instance,
>>>> Slide 1
>>>> Mary Fernandez
>>>> The Life of T.S. Elliott.
>>>> Slide 2
>>>> Picture of Elliott as a young man
>>>> Slide 3.
>>>> Thomas Sterns Elliott was born in such and such date.
>>>> You get the idea. Once I had my slide content perfected I'd do one of
>>>> two    \ things. I'd either go to my Library's IT center, whose sole
>>>> purpose was to aid students with any technological presentations, and
>>>> digital learning. And I'd show them my slides, and would tell them
>>>> exactly how I wanted the powerpoint to look. All they did was point
>>>> and click, and copy and paste. For pictures, we'd go on Google images,
>>>> and I'd tell them, the exact idea of what I wanted. They'd tell me the
>>>> options and then I'd choose which one I wanted.
>>>> The second method was to buy one of my roommates lunch in exchange for
>>>> their powerpoint skills. You can also do this with readers. However,
>>>> if you are choosing to do this, please be considerate of your friends'
>>>> time, and be aware they are incredibly loaded with work too.
>>>> Finally, on presentation day, I'd have my personal notes, as well as
>>>> my original outline of what was on each slide, so I always knew what
>>>> my peers were looking at.
>>>> I encourage everyone to learn to use Powerpoint, I will soon! But this
>>>> is a work around until this summer when you will all be Powerpoint
>>>> experts.
>>>> Sorry this went on for so long. Hope it helps!
>>>> Sincerely,
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Mary Fernandez
>>>> "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will
>>>> forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them
>>>> feel."
>>>> —
>>>> Maya Angelou
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> nabs-l mailing list
>>>> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> nabs-l:
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/hope.paulos%40gmail.com
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> nabs-l mailing list
>>> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> nabs-l:
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/trillian551%40gmail.com
>>
>>
>> --
>> Mary Fernandez
>> "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will
>> forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them
>> feel."
>> —
>> Maya Angelou
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> nabs-l mailing list
>> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> nabs-l:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/crazy4clarinet104%40gmail.com
>
>
> --
> Kaiti
>
> _______________________________________________
> nabs-l mailing list
> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nabs-l:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/dotkid.nusbaum%40gmail.com