225 Famous Quotations

Message no. 225[Branch from no. 220] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Sunday, February 4, 2007 6:02pm Subject: Famous Quotations!

Hi Adrienne et al. ! (et al. is academic speak for “and all”),

Adrienne this is is exactly the idea! If I can just tweak it a little, let me push for quotations in quotation marks. This is a general note for all of you: Remember to have at least three quotes in the relational summary, and put them IN QUOTES. Then give us the page number they came from. Everything we write in academia that is not our own original writing has to be in quotes!! You are providing the reader with a text map of thought and the reader always needs to know which ideas are uniquely yours (i.e. can only be found in your head) and which belong to others (i.e. can be found in their books or articles or speeches or thoughts). This means that when we provide a link to a website, if any of what we write in our relational summary is somebody else’s words (pulled from the website for example) they must also be in quotes. With websites it is hard to give a page number, and probably not necessary since we can do a “search and find” but we have to know the URL and we need to know what came from the site and what is your original contribution. So put everything you cut and paste or copy in QUOTES! Okay?

As you know, what we are working toward is relational summaries that tell us all HOW YOU RELATE TO THE TEXT AND ITS IDEAS. It is about YOU. So we use the quotes to support our own insights and observations. Remember that we all have the book (or soon will! Don’t worry Varshawn!) so the relational summaries are not summaries of what the book said. They are connections between the book and our own lives and environments.

You all are beginning to get the hang of it, so keep reading and writing.

ALSO, PLEASE COMMENT ON YOUR FELLOW STUDENTS RELATIONAL SUMMARIES, AND HELP EACH OTHER OUT. This is a safe place to grow, and what you want to do is to let your fellows know if the “mental maps” they created in their writings help you understand what they experienced and what they see in their head. All maps are attempts to communicate one persons environment to another person so that we can navigate together.

And here is the point: WRITING IS A MAP of a MENTAL ENVIRONMENT!

Hope that made sense! If not, I need to redraw my map!

T