Annotated Bibliography Requirement
This is only a preliminary bibliography. That means that I expect it to change, and hope that it will. At this point, you should be gathering sources, reading through (or at least skimming) potential sources for your project. You should probably have found at least 3-4 sources, and if you haven’t yet, I suggest that you start. If you have found one or two really great sources, then a good place to find new sources is at the end of that article or book. Bibliographies are great places to find sources!!
For this bibliography, you should format it via MLA style (there are websites that can help with that), and there should be at least 5 sources, I would prefer more. For your final project, you should assume that there is at least 1 source per slide of your PowerPoint presentation. That means that for a 6-8 minute presentation, you will need (most likely) 6-8 (or possibly more) slides and thus about 6 or so sources. Each project is different, and some projects will have fewer resources available.
Quality of sources: Wikipedia and About .com are not sources. They are not always accurate, and can be biased. However, they are sometimes a good place to start, and find their sources. I have said this before, but I want to re-emphasize that you have to be careful with sources. Things like blogs cannot be trusted in the same way that a newspaper article can, or even better, a journal article. While you are reading, ask yourself: “Is there a bias?” Does the writer want me to think a certain way?” A good writer should, but at the same time, you should be aware of it. That is why having multiple sources is a good thing. Imagine if you were writing about autism and vaccines and the only sources you used were sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry. There may be valid information, but they may also be leaving information out. Likewise, if your information only came from people who believe that vaccines cause autism, you might be getting biased information. You can substitute any controversial subject and realize how important it is to be a critical reader, and to read multiple sources.
To help you find quality sources, one requirement of this assignment will be that at least 2 of your sources MUST come from two different library databases. Examples of these databases are: Lexis Nexis, Gale Database, etc. If you have questions about databases the librarians are very helpful, or email me with any questions.
In addition to this bibliography, you will also need to include your updated bibliography with your rough draft and final draft. You should footnote or end note any information or quotes that you use from your sources. (Technically, if you don’t footnote, you are plagiarizing.)
This assignment, however, is not just a bibliography, but an annotated one. An annotated bibliography is a bibliography with a small synopsis of the source. For this assignment, your bibliography should be formatted correctly, but instead of just listing each source, under each source you should include TWO (2) paragraphs as follows:
Paragraph 1: This should be a summarizing paragraph that explains the key points of this article/source.
Paragraph 2: This should be an analytical paragraph. Explain why YOU chose this particular source, whether or not it is a useful source, whether or not you sense a bias in this source (and how it is biased), and if you sense a bias, how you are going to account for the bias – you can either counterbalance it with another source that has a different bias or no apparent bias, or you can qualify the source.
Last Completed Projects
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