We will continue working on the final project today. The assignment that is due today is the topic question that will drive your research and composition. You can spend the first few minutes of the day refining your thinking about the topic question. Is it relevant enough? Is it too obvious? Will it shed new light on something about the topic for either you or your reader? After working through these issues you should articulate the topic question as clearly as you can. Next, I'll ask you to mail your topic question to the rest of the class.

After choosing a topic question, your next major focus will be on gathering research for the project. One thing to remember initially is that the research process should help you further clarify your topic question; the things you discover about your subject may prompt you to adjust the way you phrase your question of inquiry. These adjustments to the project arrived at through discovery are a natural part of the research process. Stay flexible as you begin to browse around for resources.

Before you begin gathering resources, however, you will want to think about one other important skill: notetaking. First you will want to be sure to understand making and saving bookmarks as you browse the web.. Another useful trick is to Mail yourself (Usually, go to File, choose Mail Document) the URL of interesting sites. This allows you to jot down something about the site in the message window before you send the site address to yourself. Next you should consider saving any information that appears to be particularly useful. This will be especially true if you gather information from newsgroups, IRCs, or MOOs. Since sites can go down and materials can be replaced, you will want to save to disk anything that seems particularly valuable. Finally, you should start thinking abut tracking and documenting sources as a natural part of the research process. As you save items of note the location of URLs, you may want to append the date and any author or address information to the item so that you can easily document your sources for the project. See the citation guide for online sources for information about how to cite electronic resources.

OK, If you're comfortable with everything above, you can start looking for resources. You might begin with some of the biggies like

Have fun, good luck and as always, let me know if you have any questions.