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Google Blogs Alert for: “4R x T”

Google Web Alert for: “4R x T”

Create a Squidoo lens for your research topic.  Bookmarks the lens in your Delicious account and subscribe to its RSS feed on your Protopage.  The lens must include a minimum of twenty items with links and four sections, including an introduction to the topic, a presentation of pro and con arguments, books, and websites.

For help in creating the lens, use the Squidoo Answer Deck or watch these videos.

When you have completed the assignment, e-mail the instructor at the address in the syllabus that you have completed the assignment.

You may earn up to 50 points for this extra credit assignment.

Post two times  in your blog (research journal), using the numbers, letters, and phrases in bold as the titles of your respective posts:

RJA #13a: Field Research Report–Provide a detailed report on your field research. If you conducted an interview, include your questions and the answers. (You don’t need to include the name of the person you interviewed if he or she is concerned about privacy.)  If you conducted a survey, include the questions and the data you collected.

RJA #13b: Annotated Bibliography, Part 1–Following the instructions for the annotated bibliography, create annotated MLA-style entries for four of the sources you will be using for your argumentative paper.  Make sure that your bibliographic information is in proper MLA style.

Use the department and course number (ENG 1020 or ENG 122) and other appropriate tags (”Labels” on Blogger) for each of the posts.

Following the instructions and examples on pages 155-63 in your textbook and in “Annotated Bibliographies,” create an MLA-style annotated bibliography including all of the sources you use for your argumentative paper except your own experience, observation, experiment, or survey/questionnaire results.

James Rollins intertwines the Oracle of Delphi, the Punjab region of India, Gypsies, Chernobyl, intuition, and autism in The Last Oracle (New York:  Harper Collins-WilliamMorrow, 2008).  I’m amazed at how he ties these disparate threads together in an entertaining and exciting yarn.

In the “Author’s Note to Readers:  Truth or Fiction,” Rollins lists some of his sources that might be worth reading (431-34):

• Temple Grandin, Thinking in Pictures
• Daniel Tammet, Born on a Blue Monday *

The only book in the Sigma Series that I haven’t read is The Doomsday Key.  It came out in June of this year, and I’m number 32 of 34 holds at the library.

* The real title appears to be Born on a Blue Day.

I learned about The Templars’ Secret Island (New York:  Barnes & Noble, 2002) from watching “Holy Grail in America.”  In this book Erling Haagensen and Henry Lincoln try to tie together medieval churches on the Danish island Bornholm, the Knights Templar, the Holy Sepulchre, the Temple of Solomon, and the Ark of the Covenant.

They hypothesize that “Bornholm was laid out [by the Knights Templar] with absolute precision as a teaching aid. . . . Here would the student come to learn, and to learn not merely the mathematics and the gemoetry.  Here also could be taught the underlying symbolism” (132).  In other words, the student would learn the secret knowledge the Knights Templar uncovered and retrieved from Jerusalem.

While their hypothesis is intriguing, I think their extrapolation of geometric figures from the positions of the churches on Bornholm is based on too few points and requires more evidence.

They do list some interesting books in their “Bibliography”:

• Louis Charpentier, Les Mysteres de la Cathedrale de Chartres (Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral)
• Laurence Gardner, Bloodline of the Holy Grail
• Henry Lincoln, The Holy Place
• Henry Lincoln, Key to the Sacred Pattern

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Google Web Alert for: “4R x T”

My ENG 1020 students at Metro had an option for earning extra credit by creating a Zakta guide for their research topic and embedding the guides in their research journals (blog).  Several of them took advantage of the opportunity.  Here are links to their guides:

• Human Genetic Manipulation
• Early Childhood Education
• Deforestation
• Housing Boom and Bust 2
• Charles Darwin
• Commercialization of Space
• Cloning
• Causes of 1929 Stock Market Crash
• Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky: Theories in Developmental Education
• Examples of Good and Bad Auto Tune
• Dam Removal