Bri's Research Project

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Final Progress Report

I have finished my publication. I have all the info I need in my slides. I need to put notes in my slides, and pictures in my slides, and then I will be done with my powerpoint. I am almost done with my paper. All I need to do is to do the edits that Rich suggested. I want to get as much of this done over the weekend as I can, but I NEED to get everything done by Wednesday.

Overall I have had a lot of fun in this class. I think this class about research combined with Stephen's class about learning were a good combo and I feel I have learned a lot.

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Journal Entry

Collaboration is good but also difficult. It can be beneficial because you get the viewpoints and ideas of multiple people on a project. however, you also then have to deal with the interpersonal aspect of having multiple people working on a project at the same time. People do not always get along and this can cause problems.

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For my research project I am right on track for where I need to be. I have finished my first draft and publication. I need to submit my paper to Rich so that he can edit it, and then start on my presentation. I am hoping to start on it this weekend.

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Journal Entry 8

The thing that surpised me most in my research and writing of this paper is 1) just how competitive companies have been about cameras in smartphones (not including the current "how many cameras can we fit in this phone" debate) and 2) the IBM Simon. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought the first smartphone went on sale in 1994. 2006? Yeah, that's believable. 1994? I would have called BS.

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Progress report 8

This week I am going to try and get few people to read and give feedback on my paper. I am on schedule. After I get and implement the feedback, I will submit my draft to Rich so he can look it over. Next week I will be writing my "almost final" draft, and starting work on my publication and/or presentation.

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Journal Entry 7

When I started this project I assumed that there would be a lot of materials about the history of smartphones and how they have changed how humans behave/how other fields operate. Because I had A) watched the evolution of smartphones from iPhone to current day in real time, and B) done so much research in the past, a lot of my opinions on the subject were the same as what I found in papers and articles. It was quite fun to read the papers and articles written by skeptics and people who did not like the new technology though.

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Progress Report 7

Where should you be in your research journey (refer back to the modified plan you provided in week 6)? Are you there?

What issues did you hit, and what is your plan to overcome them?

What did you do to make progress this week? Is it more, or less, than you expected to do (use last week's items to guide this)

What do you expect to do next week?

So far I am still on track with my project plan. As long as I finish my rough draft this week (which I expect to do) I should be good. So far the biggest issue I have hit is having to find time to sit down and work on the paper. I have gotten about 3/5 of the way through the paper so far. Next week I am hoping to start making edits to my draft.

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Progress Report 6

Where should you be in your research journey (refer back to the plan you formulated in week 3; note any adjustments you've had to make to your plan given your research progress and findings)? Are you there?

What issues did you hit, and what is your plan to overcome them?

What did you do to make progress this week? Is it more, or less, than you expected to do (use last week's items to guide this)

What do you expect to do next week?

At this point in my research journey I should be creating my outline. I did that last week. This week I have started writing the rough draft for the essay. My biggest issue has been finding the time to sit down and work on the rough draft. It has been a busy week and I am hoping I will have some time on the weekend to work on the rough draft.

Next week I will continue working on the rough draft, and probably go back and make changes to the draft/making sure it is compliant with whatever format I end up using. Right now I am leaning MLA.

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Journal Entry 5

I have had to cite sources in just about every paper I have written since Junior High. Up until I started my music degree I had to use MLA. During music school I had to use APA. Personally, I prefer MLA format as I have used it more and it is almost habit for me to use it at this point. I tend to use easybib for citing sources. Once the citation is generated, I copy it into the last page of my paper. I alphabetize the sources once I am finalizing the format of the paper. Because I use a generator to cite my sources I find it pretty easy. I could do it by hand, but the generator saves a lot of time.

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Progress Report 5

First things first, here is the creative commons picture

It's not exactly a new smartphone, but it is a smartphone.

Now on to the rest of the progress report. I am on track with my plan. I have written an outline for my paper and next week I will start writing my rough draft. I also have figured out which sources I will be using. Now that I think about it, I am ahead of schedule.

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Journal Entry 4

For my paper I have looked at a wide variety of sources. I have looked at technical papers, scholarly papers, newspaper articles, opinion pieces, and press releases. Each of these has their own strengths and weaknesses. The newspaper articles were easiest to find, and often gave me the information closest to my topic, though they have the downside of not being as credible as a scholarly paper. On the flip side, scholarly papers are more credible, but also much harder to find. Most papers I found had to do with smartphone overuse, or social media, not smartphones themselves. Opinion articles were easy to find, but I had to be careful with them because it is very easy to become biased using such an article as a source. Press releases are similar to opinion articles, as companies do not want to advertise their flaws.

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Progress Report 4

Right now I am reading through the sources I have found. I have read through all of my academic sources, and am now reading through my non academic sources (ie newspaper articles and tech journal articles).

So far the only issue that I have had was a difficulty finding academic sources. 1 of the sources that I found had too many grammatical errors that I did not feel comfortable using it.

This week I want to continue reading through the rest of the sources I found, and start deciding what sources to use. Next week I want to finish deciding on sources and start working on the outline of my paper.

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Journal Entry 3

For me the most challenging part of selecting a topic was finding sources that worked for my topic. As I have written in the past, when you search 'smartphone' in academic search engines you get a lot of articles about technology addiction and smartphone use/overuse. Once I was able to find applicable sources, nailing down exactly what I wanted my topic to be was easy.

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Progress Report #3

I do not know if I have officially written this down, but I am doing a literature survey for this project. I am expecting to spend the next 1 - 2 weeks selecting and starting to read my sources. The following week will be spent evaluating and figuring out what sources I want to use in my project. The next 2 weeks will be spent creating an outline, and then a rough draft. Finally 1 last week editing the draft, and creating the presentation and publication formats. I am including an extra week in this plan for when I inevitably need extra time at some point in this project.

So far I have a (very long) list of potential sources that I need to start reading. My goal for the week is to find a few more sources and start reading them.

I haven't really ran into any issues this week. Last week I had trouble finding academic sources, but Rich suggested that I check ACM and I was able to find academic sources there.

Next week I hope to be reading the rest of my sources and selecting which ones I want to use.

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Journal Entry 2

While exploring and scanning, list the keywords you used to prompt your research—explain why you chose those words.

When I first started researching, I used the word 'smartphone' which got me a lot of results. However, they were not useful results. Turns out that there are a lot of papers about teenage smartphone addicts, and the effects of social media on teenagers. While interesting, this was not very useful. I tried adding the word history, but it did not produce any more useful results.

Then I learned about the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and went to their website. Like before the word smartphone did not give me many useful results, but 'ios' 'android' and 'smartphone history' did.

Outside of the realm of academic papers, I have found a number of useful results by looking through the sources of the 'Smartphone' wikipedia aricle.

It was after looking through the article that I thought to search "IBM Simon" in the SCM digital library. There were only 6 papers, but one was useful.

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Progress Report 2

I have decided that the topic I have previously written about (The history of the cellphone) will be my topic. Specifically, I am interested in how the technology used in the evolution of the cellphone has effected other technologies, like computers and monitors and so on. I will start my research by looking at Wikipedia (the bottom of the article has wonderful sources), the Wayback machine (to hopefully find the original advertisements, tech review websites (to find the original reviews of older devices), and ProQuest and/or similar sites. I will be conducting a literature search.

I need to start doing my research, I should start on that soon (this afternoon, probably). It has not been very long since my last progress report. I am hoping do get started on my research, but it has only been a few days.

Next week I want to have at least 3 sources selected for my project.