Moving Our Annotated Bibliography Online

Hi everyone,

As I mentioned earlier, I'd like to build a collaborative annotated bibliography on gaming research. I've looked at a few technologies--especially wikis--but have settled on an old school technology, Blogger, because of how easy it makes it to tag (label) posts.

 We are actually following the calendar I laid out last week. According to that calendar, you should have already read and annotated 3 research articles, and have a fourth one completed by Friday. I know that many of you have fallen behind. That's ok--there's still time for you to catch up. I expect annotations to reflect 30 minutes of writing time. That's on top of the 30 minutes (or more) it might take you to read the article. I realize that this is time consuming. But there is no way to grow as a writer without investing your time into reading, drafting, and revising.

To review, a research annotation should have at least three paragraphs. It can have more. I expect annotations to reflect 30 minutes of writing time. That's on top of the 30 minutes (or more) it might take you to read the article.
  • Paragraph One: the first paragraph covers the purpose, findings, and recommendations of the article
  • Paragraph Two: the second paragraph details the methods, including how many subjects were in the study, how subjects were found, the location of the study (if relevant), the length of the study, how data was analyzed/synthesized, and any other significant details
  • Paragraph Three: the third paragraph does some thinking by connecting the article to other research (this thinking can compare or contrast). This is the hardest part, since unlike the other paragraphs you are called upon to invent material rather than simply summarize it. This is also the part that helps you begin to write the research paper.
If you've been keeping up with the homework, then you should have already completed several research annotations in Google Docs. We are going to migrate that material here. I'm going to do a sample annotation for the class and then give you time to work in Blogger in class.

 Think of the third paragraph as a space where you begin to make connections that will help develop your paper.

Instructions for Posting

I imagine most of you will be copying and pasting from Google Docs into Blogger. Because of how Blogger mucks up its html, I want you to try and clean up your code as much as you can. So, when you copy and paste your annotation into Blogger, the first thing you should do is to select all your text (CTRL + A) and hit the plain text button. Then, reformat single spaces between paragraphs.

The most important element of this project concerns applying labels to an annotation before you publish. These labels (like hashtags) will make this usable and searchable. I plan on growing this site every time I teach 225, so we are laying the groundwork for a sustainable project.

Let's look at my sample post for a precise model of how to title and begin a post.

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