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Research - Reflect and Connect


Keep track of your responses to your reading and make connections.

Find, print, read, and annotate a Wikipedia article, a current news item, or a blog post that is related to your research question. Annotate every paragraph with questions, opinions, reactions.

You can do this on paper, or you can copy the article, news item or blog post into a Google Document, or use Crocodoc. Check for articles in our Youth Voices folder on Cocodoc. Also add articles you find into a folder there as well.

After annotating use one of the following:


Create a first draft in Google Docs. Get a response from a couple of peers and a teacher, then spell check and proofread one more time. Finally post your response as a Discussion on Youth Voices.


For this task, choose one of the following places--OR use a source your teacher gives you, perhaps on Crocodoc or Gooru--to begin your research:

Image for issue at Youth Voices

For good reasons,
a lot of people
question the credibility
(Can't anybody write
something there?) and
the reliability (How
do we know anything
there is
true or balanced?) of
Wikipedia. Yet it is
sometimes a good place
to start a research
project, to find out what
people are saying about
a particular topic, and to
find other sources.
Further, if we support or
question any claim from
a Wikipedia article with
other sources, we are
learning good lessons in
checking our facts from
any one source
against other sources.

Image for issue at Youth Voices

A good way to start a
research project is in
the here and now. Find
a news article that
appeared within the
past 30 days. If you use
Google News, you'll be
looking in about 4,500
news sites. Sure, news
comes and goes, but a
newspaper is a good
place to start your
research, to see how
your question or topic
is showing up in the
news these days. You'll
also find leads to other
more in-depth,
well-developed sources
that you can use to
continue your research.

Image for issue at Youth Voices

Blogs help you reach
beyond the mainstream
media to a wider and
deeper perspective on
a broad range of less
common topics. Sure,
there are questions
about credibility
(Anybody can create a
blog.) and reliability
(How do we know
anything is true in a
blog?), but blogs can be
a great way to start
collecting together
different perspectives on
almost any issue or
question that you
might want to learn
more about. Bloggers
often point to other more
reliable and credible
sources that you can
use as you continue
your research.


When you have finished your annotations, and you have written and posted your response as a Discussion on Youth Voices, click the Post Comment button here (on P2PU), and add links to your Youth Voices Discussion Post or Comment and to your annotations that you have done on Docs or in Crocodoc. You can find the link to a Google Document under the Share button, and remember to make it Public. Do this before you click Yes, I'm done .

Task Discussion


  • michelle said:

    on Sept. 20, 2012, 10:22 a.m.
  • Chante said:

    How can I become self-disciplined?

    Self-discipline=> The act of disciplining or power to discipline one's own feelings, desires, etc., especially with the intention of improving oneself
    self-disciplined  adj

    Everyday I find myself wondering how would my life change if I was self-disciplined.
    I’m talking body discipline, no procrastination, organization. Wouldn't life be much easier? I know nobody is perfect, but is it a bad thing to try to be? For the past three months I’ve been trying to reinvent my brain, and if I can’t get it to be perfect I can at least try to get it to be strictly disciplined.Then I will fully feel like I achieved my true self in life. This may be hard work at first, but once I get myself use to this new way of living I think it should come easy to me.

    Body discipline is a step towards perfection.

    Body=>a. The entire material or physical structure of an organism, especially of a human or animal.
    b. The physical part of a person.
    c. A corpse or carcass.

    Discipline=> Training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement.
    2. Controlled behavior resulting from disciplinary training; self-control.

    All these questions pop inside my head how can I start, how should I start, what should I do, How can I do it? I think my life will be much easier to manage, and handle with self discipline... I will always spend the same amount of time on a task throughout my day. I will never be late which would cut my anxiety, because I find myself having anxiety attacks when I feel like I’m running late.. Which I think is the Worst feeling in the world. I feel incomplete without this accomplishment in my life. I already pushed myself towards becoming a good mom, and still making a little time for myself, but no matter what you do you still feel like you could do more.. There is never a limit on how much of a good mom you could be and there is so much going on in my life that I would never want to forget to check on what’s going on in my son's life, and being there for him. This is another reason why I think body discipline would be a good thing for me to do . It will not only benefit me but it will benefit my so as well which is another big plus for me.. With self discipline in my life ,my life will never spiral out of control...I will be getting everything I need to be done facing reality with open arms, and still have time to be the the best mom, and make time for my fantasies..  The hardest part for me to accomplish my goal of self- discipline is to start.... Because once you find a start you can just keep going, but the question is how should I start?

    How should I start?

    Everything needs a beginning and I finally think I found mine!! I decided to first plan out all my time on a time management planner I found online, and see what I spend my time doing. This way I can see where I spend most my time, I can also find ways to adjust the things that can be adjusted so I won’t be in a rush or be late. Then I can fit things into my schedule that I really want to do, but feel like I don’t have time to do it. After that I can test it out and see how it works for me, and if it doesn’t work I will just keep adjusting until I find one that works out perfectly. Then i can have time for me, time for my son, school time, and work time. I believe we could do anything we want to do we just have to fit it into our schedule and make time for it. But honestly who makes time to make a schedule? We just make plans and keep moving, and these are the reasons I think people are so stressed.

    What if life could be stress free, fustratiotion free, less procrastinating and more doing.
    Get self disciplined!!!!

    on Sept. 19, 2012, 12:04 p.m.
  • ashleynicole said:

    on Sept. 19, 2012, 11:33 a.m.
  • Brendad said:

    on Sept. 19, 2012, 11:31 a.m.
  • ashleynicole said:

    annotations 

    http://personal.crocodoc.com/3MsyhZ1

    post on youth voices 

    http://youthvoices.net/discussion/gun-violence-2

    on Sept. 13, 2012, 2:03 p.m.
  • karina said:

    on Sept. 12, 2012, 11:59 a.m.
  • Evelyn S said:

    on Sept. 11, 2012, 6:26 p.m.
  • AngeloG said:

    on Sept. 11, 2012, 4:28 p.m.
  • KrittLee said:

    on Sept. 11, 2012, 1:06 p.m.
  • Aaron said:

    on Sept. 11, 2012, 11:48 a.m.
  • britneypa said:

    on Sept. 10, 2012, 12:10 p.m.
  • Anthonyf said:

    Graffiti: Art or a Crime? | In Arifa Akbar's and Paul Vallery's news article, “Graffiti: Street Art - Or Crime,” the authors talk about how people view graffiti with different points of view. It also talks about people who got...

    on Sept. 7, 2012, 1:12 p.m.