Stem cell funding debate

Here is the PBS Newshour report on stem cell funding: Obama Lifts Restrictions on Funding Human Stem Cell Research

The topic of the debate will be "Should federal money be used to fund research on embryonic stem cells?"

Unit 3 - Ethics - Topic 1: Embryonic Stem Cells

HERE is the link to the National Institutes of Health website that we will be using for background reading.

Here are the 2 videos we watched:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1506726820/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/stem-cells-update.html

Presentation skills

Each student will prepare a 10 minute Powerpoint presentation on the project topic. Presentations will be in class on December 10,11,13,17,18,20.

Here is the Powerpoint about presentation skills.

Plagiarism checker

HERE is the plagiarism checker we looked at in class, where you can upload your essay to check whether you have inadvertently plagiarised or forgotten to reference something. It's not foolproof but it's quite useful anyway.

Referencing & the APA style

You'll need these resources for today's class:

Paraphrasing Guide
Plagiarism Quiz
When to Cite Quiz

Here's a copy of the packet in case you lose it: Referencing and APA style packet
(HERE is the original version with more information about how to format different types of sources) .

HERE is a useful link about the APA style, including the formatting you should use for your report (line spacing, font size etc)

Fall project

You can re-download the project guidelines HERE and extra copies of the website evaluation checklist HERE.

Unit 1 - Google Search Literacy

Over the next few weeks we'll be working through Google's "search education" lessons to understand better how Google works and how to use it most effectively for research projects. Below are shortcuts to the activities we're working on in class, in case you want to go over them again at home.

Lesson 1 - Picking the right search terms

Google-a-day activity #40

Lesson 2 - Understanding search results
Google-a-day activity #47
Google-a-day activity (math)

Lesson 3 - Narrowing a search to get the best results

Lesson 4 - Evaluating credibility of sources, Worksheet - "how do I identify credible sources?"
We'll also be looking at this page [please note that one of the links is outdated - for the "authority" activity the correct link is HERE]