Week 12

No class due to pupil free day

Video: The Spaghetti Harvest

Activity: Read this website. Now do some further research into it. Is there anything wrong with this site?

Discussion: How can we know whether a source is reliable or not?

Activity: Go through this list of websites, using this reliability checklist to work out how reliable they are.

• http://allaboutexplorers.com/

• http://www.improbable.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html

• http://www.thedogisland.com/

• http://www.molossia.org/countryeng.html

• http://zapatopi.net/afdb/

• http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

We are going to do some learning around how to read a scientific report now. They can be a little tricky to read at first, because they are a very formal way of writing with lots of techical language. However, as with all things, practice helps, and once you get used to them they can actually be much quicker to read than other sources due to their predictable structures.

Let's start with a video. It's aimed at University students, but the method is still effective for you now.

Video: How to Read Research Papers Effectively

Here is another method you can take a look at in this article (scroll down to the numbered list). The method in the video is really important, and everyone should use this. The article gives you some more steps for the "swoop" or "street view" steps in the video, when you're looking for more details, so you can use these two in conjunction! But if you just want to focus on one, practice the one in the video.

Also remember the method I talked about last term - it is totally fine and good practice to just read the first and last sentence of each paragraph. In a well written paper, these two sentences will tell you everything you need to know about the paragraph. This is great for the "bird's eye view" stage, or for identifying where to focus your "swoop," where you would then go on to read the paragraph in more detail.

Article: Who Interacts on the Web?

Activity: We will practice our skills at reading and breaking down studies. Work with your table group to read the study linked above. Work in a group document to summarise:

1. Introduction

2. Method & Results

3. Discussion

The intro and discussion are the longest sections, so if you have more than 3 people in your group, assign multiple people to these sections.

Then, work together to critique the study. Do you have any questions about their method? Perhaps an issue with their participants which might limit generalisability? etc.

Once done, submit to Google Classroom and I will give you some feedback.