Sunday, October 19, 2014

October 18, 2014

Another day of sleeping in. It was glorious. And not really sleeping in considering the time I went to bed, but it is still nice not waking up when it is still dark outside.

I finished writing my first newspaper article today. I still need to write the second one. I keep getting distracted by the design of the newspaper, which is a mistake because we are really going to be graded on the contents of the newspaper, not the design. I just like making stuff look good. And doing that is way more interesting than writing an article. I also read my partner's first article and realized I am going to have to re-write parts of it. I told her we were going with getting rid of USA Today and she wrote a Letter to the Editor article, directed at the library director, explaining why he should get rid of USA Today. In my article that decision has already been made, which would make her article late to the party. I guess I wasn't clear enough in my email to her. But it shouldn't be too hard to edit that.

Tonight I made an executive decision for my other group project. Hopefully one approved by the professor because I emailed him about it but haven't heard back yet. I was having no luck finding articles about how technology has impacted how K-12 students conduct research. Every keyword combination I came up with for the databases just returned articles about conducting research on K-12 students, not how those students conducted research. Those types of studies have to exist but other than the Pew study I wasn't finding squat. In my searches today I came across the idea of problem-based research. From what I have read, the basic idea is to break students into groups, give them a problem to solve, and then they figure out what they already know, what they need to know, and then how to go about finding the information to solve the problem. Or something like that. The group project has to be over some aspect of the research process and the problem-based learning seems to cover several aspects, like identifying a problem and coming up with a solution. I emailed my group members and they are both on board so hopefully the professor is too, because I spent at least a few hours tonight finding articles.

Tomorrow I would like to wake up relatively early, sleep be damned, so I have more time to work on stuff. I need ignore the design of my newspaper and knock out my second article. And hopefully edit my partners. I might even try to write a third article but that might be wishful thinking. I would like to get all the articles done this weekend so I can worry about the design of it throughout the week and be ready for next weekend. I would also like to take a closer look at the PowerPoint my partner made and start to figure out who is going to do what in the presentation. If I'm feeling super productive I could start reading the articles I found tonight and start writing the annotated bibliographies for them. And using their bibliographies to find other articles. I'm pretty sure that is wishful thinking though.


My sister's significant other is in town so sometime tomorrow we are going to move the chairs and desk I got from my grandma, from the old house to the new house. I think I finally decided on the desks/tables I'm going to get for my computer and I need to order those. Maybe after I finish writing this. I haven't figured out book storage yet. It would be cool to have a huge bookshelf against one of the walls in the second room but that would be expensive. I'll come up with something eventually. Maybe over winter break when I have more time to think about it.

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