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You are required to write a book report for this course. The book report is worth 100 points.  The report should be 2000 words long, typed, and in APA style (1 inch margins, double spaced, citations where appropriate, cover page, reference page).  You will be submitting your book report to www.turnitin.com where I will verify that your work has not been plagiarized. You will also turn in an identical hard copy to me on the day that it is due.

Here are some guidelines for your book report.

Buy your book early. Don't wait to find out that it will take 10 days to get to you through the mail.

Read your book.

Your next step will be to organize what you are going to say about it in your report. Writing the basic elements down in an outline format can help you to organize your thoughts. Your report should focus on the psychological factors related to stereotyping, prejudice, and/or discrimination. Don't just try to write this off the top of your head, but rather, from your focused effort in applying the principles from your readings and lecture to the book you read. You should only very briefly summarize your book (e.g., less than one page). The remainder of your paper should be focused on the relevant psychological factors inherent in the story or content of your chosen book. Questions? See me.

The Final Paper

1. Spell check your paper.

2. Have a friend read and review your paper.

3. Read your paper out loud.

4. Make any changes that your friend and you have pointed out.

5. Spell check again.

Grading:

10pts for APA style cover page

10pts for APA style reference page

10pts for APA style throughout the paper

10pts for appropriate length of paper

25pts for accurate and effective presentation of psychological principles/concepts

25pts for writing style

10pts for spelling/grammar

So how should you go about finding information to post on the blog? Well first, think about where you get your information about the world, and what kind of information you typically seek out. Are you a political junky? Do you prefer entertainment news? Do you read mostly websites? Listen to talk radio? Read magazines or newspapers? Do you watch television news programs? Or do you prefer cable tv programming? Whatever the source, even if it is a hard copy newspaper or a network television show, they will almost always have an internet component to refer to. So the next time you hear, read, or see something that you think relates to the class, find that information on the internet and post it!

Now the above strategy is a great one if you already are tapped into some news sources, but you may not hear, read or see something related to the course as often as you would like or need. So then you have to seek out some information. You can seek out information in one of three ways:

1) Increase your exposure to information about the world by starting to read, listen, or watch more and different programming/sources than you currently do.

2) Google. (www.google.com)  Learn to google effectively, and using the variety of options to make your searches better (good key words, using the image, news, or google scholar tabs).

3) Stumble Upon. (www.stumbleupon.com) Stumble is a website where you designate your interests, and when you click on the stumble button, it will pull up a website related to those interests that it thinks you'll like. If you do, click thumbs up, if it's not quite right, click thumbs down. It will become better at finding sites the more you use it.

Have a favorite source of information you want to share with others? Post it here as a comment.

Happy surfing, and posting!