Blog 20 Original Research

I have never done any original research, I haven't needed to before. But I do know that original research is very different thatn library research.  Original research is doing the research for yourself, asking questions of others, gathering data and putting it together, and having it be original, not a repeated procedure that has been done many times before.  Library research guides original research by helping people not repeat studies that have already been done, and it can give people a sense of direction in where they should go to do their research. 

The pros of doing library research compared to original research is timing.  It can be very time consuming to do original research in order to get accurate results.  It can also be uncomfortable to do original research, having to ask strangers questions and get into their personal lives possibly.  The cons of library research is you may not be able to find specifically what you are looking for if your research subject is very detailed.

For original research, there are many critical skills that need to be used.  Such as interpretation, self regulation, anaylsis, and evaluation.  The most important to me is analysis.  Since you are gathering the information, the way it's displayed will determine how it's percieved by others.

For library research, the most important critical skill is evaluation.  Since most of it is in text, the way you may read it can come across differently for people. 

Blog 19 Checking In

I can remember my biggest problem with this semester long research project was finding the motivation to just sit down and do it.  I would do little bits and parts slowly, but I never did a large chunk each time, not until the very end and that was because of the deadline.  My biggest problem with any research is that I procrastinate and wait until the last minute to get things done. 

Blog 18 Statistics

I enjoyed looking up information for this blog the most, simply because I never realized how common Down Syndrome is.  I first looked at a government document that dealt with Down Syndrome,

CDC, (2211). Down syndrome cases at birth increase. Retrieved from CDC website: http://www.cdc.gov/Features/dsDownSyndrome/

At the bottom, it states they recieved their information from Pediatrics in 2009.  I believe they have this listed because it makes them look like they have more credit, and that they are more reliable.

It was the same for the scholarly journal, but instead of being a footnote as it was in the government document, in the scholarly journal, they mentioned how they were able to use the records and how they were not breaking any laws by having that information released. 

Baird, P. (1987). Life expentancy in down syndrome. The journal of pediatrics, 110(6), 849-854. Retrieved from

Blog 17 Intellectual Property

To me, intellectual property means owning what you yourself came up with.  Such as if I have an original thought, I own that thought. 

I looked to Wikipedia as my expert about this topic, and the definition I found through them was, "
Intellectual property (IP) is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized under the corresponding fields of law.^[1] Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property rights include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets in some jurisdictions."

Through that definition, some examples of intellectual property is copyrights, trademarks, and patents.  The concept of intellectual property can change though when it's manipulated such as how something may be phrased.  The original writter may have said it a certain way, but if I put that into my own words, it's no longer theirs, instead, it's slightly different and mine.

Blog 8 Popluar magazine vs. scholarly journal

When I first started doing this, I struggled to find a magazine article that covered Down Syndrome, espeically a popular magazine.  I had to dig through google quite a bit to try and find something, but eventually did!  I choose an artcile from Times magazine, the APA citation is

Rochman, B. (2012, February 17). Why down syndrome is on the decline. Family Matters, Retrieved from http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/17/why-down-syndrome-is-on-the-decline/

I then found a scholarly journal about Down syndrome, and the APA citation for that is

Chapman, R. S. (1997), Language development in children and adolescents with Down syndrome. Ment. Retard. Dev. Disabil. Res. Rev., 3: 307–312. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1098-2779(1997)3:4<307::AID-MRDD5>3.0.CO;2-K

The main difference between the two is their language, and I don't mean if they use English or not.  In the popular magazie, the author writes in a way that everyone can understand, and the author takes on a viewpoint in the article.  In the scholarly journal, the author is writting in a very scientific way, so it's possible that not everyone would understand what they are talking about.  They always write very matter of factly, so it's not as personal to read.

Urvashi Vaid

The only information I knew about the presentation before going to it was the email that was sent out to us explainaing the oppurtunity we had to see the presenation. So I knew Urvashi Vaid was going to talk about LGBT, but I thought it was only going to be about same-sex marriage and the debate that is all around it.  From the presenation I learned that on average homosexuals are lower in income then those who are heterosexual. I always made the assumption that those who were homosexual were smarter and were living in a comfortable lifestyle when it came to finances anyways.  The information was presented very well and it was interesting so it was easy to stay engaged.  Clearly Urvashi Vaid has the authority to present on this topic because she has been involved with the LGBT community for 30 years and is a well known laywer for the LGBT population.

Google

During the google excerise, I didn't know how to access google scholar before it.   I also didn't know about the plus and minus you can add in your search instead of the word and or to not include  the search from searching for other things.  This will help me in this class when searching for my semester long research project about Down Syndrome, and to look for different articles for the alternative viewpoints paper, and possibly to find better articles to use.  This will help in other classes when I'm trying to get background information on certain things, I will know how to better find results that will be useful for me.  In a real life situation, I will also know if the information I find will be as reliable versus when I did a more broad search and didn't use the special tools.