Honors 110: Announcements and Folder Assignments

Announcements

Folder Assignments

FA1: EndNote Practice

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Why:  To let you find out what will be easy and hard about EndNote early; to let you tinker before you get lectured at.

1.  Start with the EndNote Help page on the Honors 110 Website: http://honors.gmu.edu/hnrs110/f2005/001/F05_HN110Endnote.htm

2.  It will link you to the Library's EndNote Page.  Download and print out the EndNote Guide PDF.

3.  If you have your own computer, download or purchase EndNote, and install it on your own hard drive.

4.  Set aside 30 minutes to work on your computer, with EndNote installed, or on a campus computer (in the dorms, in Johnson Center Lab, in Innovation Hall Lab) to try out EndNote.  (If you have a disk/flash drive, you might bring it to the computer lab.  If you don't, don't panic.)  Bring a book, any book, with you.

5.  Start up the EndNote Program.  Click ok to "Create a New EndNote Library."

6.  Give your "library" -- which is a document kind of like a Word document, just a file that has data in it -- the name "REIDtest" (except use your last name instead of mine!).  Save it where you can find it again:  on your hard disk, on your floppy or flash disk, or on "My Computer" in the lab (it won't get saved permanently on the Lab computer, but that's ok for now!).

7.  From the References Menu, choose New Reference. 

8.  From the Reference Type drop-down menu at the top of the little Reference window, choose Book.

9.  Open your book to the very front pages to find its citation information.  Type in the basic information for a book next to the field-names:  Author, Year (of publication), Title (of book), City (of publication), Publisher.

10.  Scroll down to the Keywords field-name.  Type in three words or phrases that describe what this book is about:  hit <Return> or <Enter> to put each word or phrase on a separate line.

11.  If you can print out, go to File and Print a copy to turn in -- this is your Folder Assignment.  (It will take two pages to print.)  If you cannot print out now, you can try to email your "REIDtest" library to me (ereid1@gmu.edu) as an attachment, or save it to a disk to print out later.

If at any, any, any point you hit major difficulties, or you find that you've already spent 30 minutes, STOP.  Write up a paragraph explaining what you accomplished so far and what caused you to stop, and turn that in -- that will fulfill your Folder Assignment.

FA2: Three Research Problems

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Why:  To nudge you toward discovering a topic for your research project; to help you see how "topics" morph into "problems"; to give you a place to begin thinking about research.

• Choose (and write down) a topic, issue, question that you're considering as a possibility for your research this semester. 
• Write down at least one broader version of the topic/issue/question, and at least one narrower version.
• Write down at least two (other) questions that could be explored:  you might wish to try out questions of definition, value, or cause/effect.
• Write down at least two brief "problem scenarios" (no more than a sentence or two each):  what might be a problem embedded in this topic, for whom is it a problem, and what's one small thing that might improve the situation?
• Repeat steps 1-4 for two other topics/issues/questions.  Note:  These can be entirely different from your first one, or they can be slightly different aspects of your first issue.  If you're 90% sure that your first topic is the one you plan to use, you can choose something less serious or more experimental for the other topic(s), just to see how the problematizing process works.

FA3: Annotations

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Why:  To formally practice "critical reading" skills; to prepare to read skeptically as you begin researching.

Choose one of the essays we've read so far for class this semester, and turn in a photocopy/printout of the essay with your annotations on it.  These will include not only passages (or parts of passages) that you've underlined to say "hey," but the margin notes—actual words!—you write for yourself (at least 4-5 times per page).  You should present a range of comments including exclamations, translations, questions, reactions, and/or connections. You could also identify appeals, assertions, and/or logical fallacies.

Also turn in a couple of paragraphs in which you talk back to the essay.  You can talk back to the author about the concept as a whole, or about one or more particular phrases or examples.  If you talk back to agree with the author, be sure to give your own specific, original reasons for agreeing—don't just re-state what the author said and say "Me, too!"

FA4: Museum Preview

Complete Part 1A of the Museum Assignment.