3rd Quarter Project info

February 28th, 2011 Leave a comment Go to comments

Introduction

Each quarter, you are required to complete a project outside of class that demonstrates your detailed understanding of a topic of your choice. Since 3rd Quarter is about heat and energy, your topic will be from that general subject area. Your project must be completed individually, will be due on Tuesday, March 29th, 2011 by 7:30am and will be worth 50 points. You will also be required to do a short summary of three other students’ projects; these summaries will be worth 10 points total.

Topics

You may choose a topic from one of the following four subject areas:
1. the use, importance and/or controversy involving energy sources and usage
2. a specific topic in food chemistry
3. a significant historical or modern use/application of a gas or gasses
4. a specific topic related to nuclear chemistry

Your specific topic must be unique for your class period – first come, first serve – and you must decide on your topic by Friday, March 4th. Your 3rd Quarter Project Exploration assignment will also be due the same day through Moodle, and it is worth 10 points. Your 3rd Quarter Project Outline assignment will be due on Tuesday, March 15th and it is worth 10 points.

Project products

For this project, in order to demonstrate your understanding of your topic, you will create a website that you will then share in a small group setting. All websites will be graded primarily for their information, but also for how well they explain your topic, how easy they are to understand and how neatly they are arranged. It is expected that you will write the text for your website in an informative, third-person voice, but you are encouraged to consider other ways of presenting your topic (such as a narrative, a semi-fictional journal entry, a conversation between two scientists, etc.). At minimum, your website must include the following:

  • a home page with your name, project title, due date, class period, summary of your project and links to all your other pages
  • at least 4 pages of content, each with:
    • a title
    • a minimum of two paragraphs of text – original writing, not copy & paste!
    • a minimum of one image or video
    • direct web links to any referenced material
    • valid in-line references, e.g. (Sidoti, 2010)
  • a links/references page with at least four references in the APA style
    • websites submitted without a links/references page will NOT be graded

Websites not meeting these criteria will lose points and, as a result, will receive a lower grade.

References/citations

All projects must include citations to original source material using the APA style guidelines. Your project must reference at least five different sources, all of which may be Internet sources. You may NOT use WikiPedia as a primary source. Using source material without referencing is plagiarism; websites submitted without references will not be graded. The APA citation style is explained and demonstrated at: http://www.liunet.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citapa.htm

Google Sites

For this project, you will use the free website design software at Google Sites. You can access Google Sites at home or at school by going to: https://sites.google.com/ (note the ‘s’ in ‘https’, which is necessary at school).

To sign up, click the link on the lower-right corner of the Google Sites page that says “Sign up for Sites”. Fill out the form using your existing email address (or create a new email account with Gmail) and then check your email account for a verification message. Once you have verified your email address and logged in, create a new site where the “Site name” is your name and project topic, and set the “Site URL” to be “rhschem#flast”, where ‘#’ is your period number and ‘flast’ is your first initial and last name (e.g., “rhschem1mgeraghty”). Leave the other settings alone, select the Theme you’d like to use (you can change it later), and click the “Create Site” button at the bottom of the web page.

Remember, your website is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, March 23rd. Once your site is submitted on the due date, you will visit a minimum of three other students’ websites and write a one paragraph summary of each. All students’ sites will be linked at: http://sites.google.com/site/rhscpchemistry/

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