Think Tac Toe
Objective: Evaluate the credibility, accuracy, and quality of a source of information.
Learning Task: As part of you Think Tac Toe project, you will need to prepare an annotated bibliography. You will need to create an MLA annotated bibliography for at least 4 sources, including 1 book source.
What is an annotated bibliography?
An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each citation is followed by a brief (usually about 150 words) description, evaluating the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited. Many of the topics you will be researching are controversial, and it is important to filter biased opinions and form conclusions based upon scientific facts.
Critically Appraising Sources of Information:
1. What are the author's credentials – institutional affiliation, area of expertise?
2. Date of publication – is the source current or out-of-date?
3. Intended audience – elementary, technical, advanced?
4. Objective reasoning – is the information fact or opinion?
5. Support – do other sources substantiate the findings?
Example:
Manjoo, Farhad. "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Stem Cell Debate." 8 June 2005. 3 Aug. 2005 LexisNexis.
This article states the argument for embryonic stem cell research while reflecting a strong bias against the position of the Bush administration and its conservative supporters in the Republican party. The bias is immediately evident in the loaded language that the author uses in describing the event in which President Bush advocated donating left over embryos to infertile couples while surrounded by children who had been given life in this way. He calls this event a "publicity stunt," and "a publicity ploy." He later details the reasons why this is an impractical way to deal with the large number of frozen embryos that currently exist.
However, in spite of the political bias evident throughout the article, it nevertheless provides good factual information and a detailed and reasoned argument against the current government policy of restricting federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to a minimal number of stem cell lines already in existence rather than making funding available for the development of new stem cell lines that might be derived from other frozen embryos left over from invetro fertilization.
It defines key terms, tells why existing stem cell lines may not be safe for development of therapeutic applications, and summarizes the ethical arguments against the research.
The author emphasizes the political context of the debate and has the obvious intent of demonstrating how President Bush and others opposed to federal funding for embryonic stem cell research have an inconsistent and ultimately indefensible position on the issue.