Posted on March 13th, 2008 at 10:31 am by teachergal101 and
My high school “Research Class Guru” was Mr. Princiotto. He is a loveable man whose idea of writing the research paper was to spend hours in the library, write pages of notes, transfer those notes on the almighty 3 x 5 cards, type the paper on your typewriter, and THEN complete the works cited page at the end of the hair-pulling process. Granted, this was in 1984, and a lot has changed in the 20-plus years I was Mr. Princiotto’s favorite student (well, I was one of the top three.)
This leads me to my topic, “Citations for a New Generation.” I’ve discovered today, yes today, that students in our classrooms have so many other options available to them. They should be thankful they are alive and well in 2008! The citation process is one that students have some difficulty with, but it doesn’t have to be difficult and hair-pulling.
There are a couple of sites that I recently discovered, thanks to a great workshop presented by Carla Beard. These citation sites will make it much easier for students to prepare a works cited page with ease. I highly recommend www.bibme.com and www.easybib.com for its user-friendly instructions and relevancy to the instruction that our teachers already use at UCCHS. I believe our students will love to experiment with these sites and use them to write their works cited pages for future assignments. If only we would’ve had this technology in 1984 – then Big Brother would’ve literally been watching over us – and helping us to be the research writers Mr. Princiotto always desired!