Friday, April 21, 2006

Assignment 1 - Interent Research

Greetings All,

For monday each of you will need to analyze 3 internet sources related to your topics. You should look for sites with human interaction about your topic (not just informational sites). Explore the site for artifacts (discourse, contacts, information, experts, etc.) related to both the research topic and the kinds of people involved with your topic. Sites that you might find useful include: event/conference websites, portals, universities, not-for-profit organizations (.org), government institutions, blogs, social networks, etc.

For each site, identify at least one person (by name and email address) who is relevant to your topic and who you believe would reply to your email. It is often the case that the higher the person's position/title, the less likely they will reply to random emails. This is not always the case but you should factor this into your plan.

Deliverables:

1) Individual blog post: post the three sites you selected and provide a short description of how the sites and/or individuals would be useful to your research goals.

2) Group presentation: consider all of the sites collected by the members of your group and choose three to present to the class. In your presentation, discuss both the affordances and limitations of Internet research with regard to your research goals.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Research Abstracts

Greetings all,

As mentioned last week, your blog post for next Wednesday is a preliminary research abstract. It should be a maximum of 300 words and you should work together with your group to produce the abstract. It should be general enough to include your individual projects yet specific enough that it addresses some problem or situation in Amsterdam.

The abstracts should include 1) a short description of the topic (this can also be a problem statement), 2) the relevance/importance of the research, and 3) the planned research method(s). This is due (on your blogs) before class on Wednesday.

Research Groups:

1) Dutch hip hop: Building Youth Communities
Melissa Andrada
Lacy Cooper

2) Dutch Healthcare
Belinda Luk
Shilpa Coorg
Erika Reinitz

3) Jewish Identity
Chris Blair
Lisa Muhlum

4) Urban Planning in Amsterdam
Lindsey Britt
Colin O'Rourke
Tim Prouty

5) Prostitution, Drugs, and Crime: For Better or for Worse?
Shane Richards
Kathy Wei

6) Islam, Information, and Media
Demi Antzoulatos
Engy Fahmy
Rebecca Martin

7) Virtual Third Place
Aarron Kemp
Kathleen Walsh