posted
I have to do a research report on orson scott card, i was wondering if anyone can recommend good sites or books that tell me more about him, besides he lives in greenboro South Carolina.
Posts: 141 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
Hmm, I am able to find a lot of what I need on wikipedia. I have a problem with this though. I can only use 3 internet sources, and I need 10 sources. So I could reallllly use books too.
Posts: 141 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
Sounds like you have an antiquated teacher Alex. You can do really good research using only the internet. No matter, you have to put up with it. There is a bit of a loophole however, if you use an online source such as wallstreetjournal.com or fortune.com, which are also in print, you can usually pass those off as print sources that you found online.
Those wont help with your project, just the concept.
heres some source ideas as well.
1) Enders Game 2) Speaker for the Dead 3) Folk of the fringe 4) etcetera etcetera
Make sure to use at least one book from each genre, Sci-fi, fantasy, history revision, religious and whatever other genres OSC writes in.
Posts: 375 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
It isn't antiqutated to ask to use a variety of sources. The idea of assignments like these is to learn how to use a variety of types of sources to do research, and learning to use the library and read actual books is important.
I happen to be one of those antiquated teachers who asks students to use mostly non-web sources, because of the quality of sources in the areas they are supposed to be writing. There are a limited number of sites that I trust to give good information, and I will steer my students there, rather then send them blindly onto the internet.
One book you ought to look at is "A Storyteller in Zion," which you ought to be able to find in your library. Also look at Lost Boys, OSC has said that some of the story is based off of his experiences, and certainly the introduction would be helpful.
Posts: 234 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
Sarcare brings up a good point. I should add that if you are doing your research online, you should verify the quality of the source somehow.
And the internet is not "A Source" It is simply a method of accessing data. What takes time is identifying legitimate sources on the net. You can find many many unique sources online.
I still stand by what I said, but I think it applies more to college and graduate studies than to k-12 issues. You can keyword search on most college library websites (usually known as "electronic resources" and it will search academic journals and papers for you. And it is the same or better content as a book that took you 20 times as long to find in the library.
Posts: 375 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
No we did not, the topic is research project, and we are talking about research.
The difference between searches on university library's web pages and just of the internet is that you have to have subscriptions to most of the on-line journals where the information you are speaking of is. When I lived on campus I took it for granted because I could access the databases from campus, but as a grad student I can sign on remotely.
For this particular project it sounds like the op would be well served to visit the library as well as websites that Orson Scott Card maintains.
Posts: 234 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
I agree with camus. Even though Wikipedia has been found to contain about the same number of errors, both major and minor, as the common Encyclopedia Brittanica, many teachers still frown upon Wikipedia as they view it as an easily refutable and very unreliable source (it can be edited by anyone!!).
I think Wikipedia is a good place to get a start on your research, and to find links to other, more popularly respected sites, but it is not a good place to base an argument on.
Posts: 48 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by TrapperKeeper: Would work just fine for a high school paper though.
Not neccesarily, it would really depend on the teacher. That said, many Wikipedia pages have reference links on them, so it might be a good idea to check those out.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
hah, my teacher would never take wikipedia, thanks for giving me that heads up, i just remmebered that wikipedia can be edited after camus said that, whew, oh well, and my teacher is trying to prepare us for college, im in LA 342 (junior, college prep, 2nd semester, but of course you guys knew that already, being so smart, man, i even had to look up what antiquated meant, but now it makes sense to mean "very old; or aged")
Posts: 141 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
It's not always easy to find 10 books about a living individual. You could count a novel by him from each genre he's written in (but not two different types of fantasy/science fiction); there's A Storyteller in Zion noted above; these are no doubt in print somewhere (just tell your teacher you kidnapped all the writers of them, and stole their papers, which you promised to give back after you're done with this report.
posted
There have been only a few books about me; and articles about my work are as often hostile as sympathetic; even the biographical stuff (except on this site) contains numerous inadvertent errors. Not that hostile sources can't be useful (look at what some people think Card wrote and how angry their imagined version of his work made them!) - but if you're looking for accurate information ...
Try the ABOUT OSC and RESEARCH AREA spaces here on Hatrack. Since the Research Area reprints papers about me by other people, they count as separate sources (as in different articles in a collection or a magazine).
The initial bio in ABOUT OSC is very brief. Click on the link at the bottom of it, though, and you get a much longer bio.
Additional questions can be asked by going to the OSC HELP DESK.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
One bit of advice, coming from someone who has had to grade lots of papers in the past...put something amusing in there. Your teacher would appreciate it.
Find out OSC's favorite flavor of pudding...or something equally odd and mention it. Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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