Project Update

The project that I am working on for IM204 is coming along. I would not say that it is the best that I have ever done by any means as I tend to have very limited time. However I am working to incorporate more resources in order to add support to my claims. Otherwise I am taking a hands on approach learning experience of the Greek life. For the paper I am also working to incorporate my own personal experiences as much as possible, but my experience is limited to only one fraternity thereby creating a semi-bias opinion. All in all...we'll see how it goes.

article analysis

Orme, John G., and Cheryl Buehler. "Foster Family Characteristics and Behavioral and Emotional Problems of Foster Children: A Narrative Review." Family Relations 50.1: 3-15. 2 Mar. 2009 .

b) this article talks about the differences in foster care compared to those that need it not. it talks about the different effects that the foster parents can have on the children as well as the possible behavioral effects that the children can show. it talks about how certain parents are more apt than others to be foster parents, and how it usually ends up being the people that were themselves in foster care that tended to be the better parents.

c) this article seems to be organized in a chronological order. it starts by talking about foster family's then moving onto topics such as parenting, family functioning, marital functioning, temperment, parent mental health and finally social support. in the very beginning it has an introduction and at the end it has a conclusion that sums up what the authors just finished talking about.

d) the purpose of this review is to correct any misconceptions about foster families. it shows pros and cons to the idea and is mainly to inform its readers about studies they have either done or have found on foster families.

e) the only violation of critical thinking in this article that i can tell is that it does not consider interpretations nor does it tolerate uncertainty.

project update

for my project with fraternities, this week has been somewhat successful. i have found a few good articles that i could possibly use, however i have yet to fully read them to find out if they are fully creditable. i have also begun looking over fraternity materials in order to learn more about their foundations and what they are about. i plan to continue looking for more articles and possibly more books on my topics.

google tricks

Write about ONE of the "Google Tricks" that you learned about and how you used it to find information. The information can be related to your research project, something that you needed to find out for another class, OR something else that you wanted to find out.

The one google "trick" that i learned about was actually that google had a scholarly web branch. i never did any digging around google to look for such a thing, however i must say it is a rather nice thing to know now. using this trick, i was able to find a few articles right away dealing with my topic. when i search again for more materials, this will be the first place i go for additional articles.

article review

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/176478/%22Worst-Is-Yet-to-Come%22-Americans%27-Standard-of-Living-Permanently-Changed?tickers=WMT,WFMI,FDO,^GSPC,^DJI,RTH

In this article, which I really don't agree with, they lack thinking about the effects of our economic problems on other countries and the effects it has on their "standard of living". While it does give some information on some of the issues, mainly just a couple numbers, it seems to lack a good amount of evidence to support their claims.

research challenge

The research challenge that I faced this week was that of finding time to actually sit down and continue reading my book and search for information that I would be able to use for my project. However due to work, homework, military studies and numerous every day life things, I was unable to find time to do anything but gain first hand experience learning about a frat.
I really didn't look for information for troubleshooting this issue as this issue is one that can be resolved by simply finding time and making good use of that time.

campus org update

One blog post must address what happened this week in regard to your campus organization and semester research project. (Did you have any meetings? Did you come up with any new ideas? Did you find any good resources to address your research topic?)
This week I attended a couple of social events at theta chi's house. We met up with other frats and a couple of sororaties, and discussed the low turn out of minorities. While this was due to no fault of their own, they commmented that most frats and sororaties lack the intrest of minority students. While they attribute this to the tendancy of people to go where there are people of the same cultural upbringing and heritage, just like back in when hundreds of thousands of immigrants were settling here in the US. While I don't think that I found any resources for my topic, I did gain first hand experience in finding out what Greek life is about and how welcoming they are of all people.

Discussion 6

What did you learn about the Miller Center LR&TS OPAC that you wished you had known before? I really didn't learn anything that I didn't know before. Having used the MLC numerous times beforehand, I had come to learn how to maximize usage of the OPAC. Not to mention that through grade school, we were taught how to use an OPAC on a much smaller scale.

Visit the Great River Regional Library OPAC and search for materials on your topic. What features were the same, and which were different? How many results did you get through the Great River OPAC compared to the Miller Center OPAC? Were they the type of books that you expected? Why or why not? The search engine was similar to that of MLC's however I was unable to find sources that would be beneficial to my research. The number of results depended on what phrase I searched for and the topic of the search. I believe that the books tended not to be what I was looking for as it was not in the college environment and not focused on the college life.

Search For A Book on OPAC

I'm not entirely sure as to exactly what it is that I am to blog about however I will somewhat give a brief outline of how events went in my search for a book on OPAC. Using SCSU's OPAC, or any OPAC in general is not hard at all. All that you really need to do is to enter either the subject that you are looking for, the author, or the title. The references in the OPAC are so vast that one search could turn up to many results to browse through. Your best bet in this case is to narrown your search by adding more words. The opposite is true if you have to few results. When you find the book with the title or author or even just the subject you are looking for, it will give you its call number as to where you can go to find it. For the most part the call number is easy to follow. It usually goes alphabetically followed by the specific numbers. I personally find this to be straight forward. The process I just explained to you is the same way that I was able to find by book in the basement level of the MLC here on SCSU campus.

organization proj. 1

in the last week i have meet with my organization, the fraternity of theta chi. talking with the president, vice president and others from the chapter I learned a lot about their group and what they are and do. when talking with them about a multicultural issue they said they really didn't have an issue necessarily with other cultural members, but more just members in general. out of the 10-15 members they have, they say they have about two asian members and one or two african americans. so for this particular group its not necessarily a multicultural issue as we would normally think. instead the fraternities are the different culture in this case. in my opinion, for this project i believe i should focus on not only the recruitment of minority students but correcting the stereotypes that television has imposed and recruit more members in general. my goal is to develop a way for this fraternity to increase its membership by atleast two or three new members by the end of this semester.