DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

August 31-September 18

13 hours.

In the first week of school, Mr Ashcraft talked to us about what the Independent Research class was about. He talked about the importance of finding an adviser and what that adviser would do to help you narrow down your topic. We also talked about finding a topic on our own and how to gather research so we can gain background knowledge in our topic of interest. This will help us find an adviser because if we have a background knowledge, we can communicate with adults better and impress them to the point where they want to help us. We also looked at different projects from previous students. 2 students actually presented their projects from last year and we looked online at previous students projects as well. One student with a similar interest as mine was Andrew Nesterak. His project was on how important good recording technology is to making professional recordings. I may try to build on his project.

We then talked about how to gather the research and what to do with it. Good scholarly research is well documented and builds on the knowledge of others.We did an exercise to find out what someone in either genetics or the space program did to get to a conclusion. We saw how they needed to get a wide knowledge base and how they went about working on their topic.
 
We also looked at how to work IR into our lives. We drew up a schedule for the next couple of months and sat down with Mr. Ashcraft and he talked about how to fit IR into our schedules. My schedule was very open so it was easy to find time for IR. Some other students had some trouble finding time.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.