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Step 2 - Brainstorming and Research

Mind Map - One submission required per group - Due ASAP

After picking a group and a topic, your next step will be to brainstorm some of the sub-topics you will cover. I'd like this to be submitted as a mind map (but you don't need to get fancy with it - colours and pictures are not required!).

Submit your mind map before getting too far into your project, since I may make suggestions about the trajectory of your presentation at this point.

Research Notes - One submission required per student

Your presentation needs to contain factual content. Even if most of your content is based on opinion or on your prior knowledge, you need to find concrete information to back up your claims. You may use one of the following two strategies to create your research notes.

Stategy 1 - The Traditional Method

One page of research notes per student should be sufficient in most cases, and each student should have 2-3 different sources. For each source you use, I'd like you to include point form notes, where most points do not exceed seven words. This can be difficult, but it is intended to be an exercise in summarizing information. Here's an example:

Topic - Internet History

Source 1: "A Brief History of the Internet" (https://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit07/internet07_02.phtml)

  • started in 1960s
  • originally for government researchers to share information
  • creation was partially due to cold war
  • orignally known as "ARPANET"
  • became Internet in 1983 due to TCP/IP
  • ...

Source 2: "A short history of the Web" (https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web/short-history-web)

  • invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989
  • developed at CERN
  • ...

Strategy 2 - AI Assisted

If you use this strategy, I'd like you to find at least five web sources. For each one, create an AI prompt similar to this:

Summarize the following website in point form, not exceeding 7 words per point when possible: <paste web link here>

Copy all the points the AI produces into a document. Then:

  • Highlight each of the points, choosing a different colour for each source.
  • At the top of your document, create a legend indicating which source each colour corresponds to.
  • Use a strikethrough font option to eliminate notes you don't think you'll use. In Google Docs, you may want to use the Alt+Shift+5 keyboard shortcut for this.
  • Organize your points in a way that will be useful for your presentation. You may want to add subheadings to help with organization

Here is an example that contains two sources (you will have at least five): https://docs.google.com/document/d/12adTk15TDhQvUDvx-LWmNDwwjm1wTKfldIRkFgiC4Wk/edit?usp=sharing