Rich Parker
January 6, 2004
SLM 521
Jona French
Citing Internet Sources
The decision of what internet web source I might steer my students to for citation examples is, actually, something of a “given”. I would lean toward “Write Source” for a very simple reason: at Quince Orchard High School in Montgomery County, we have classrooms full of Writer’s Inc. as our style manual. Writer’s Inc., of course, is the product the folks at Write Source. Even had this not been the style to which my students should already be somewhat accustomed, I would still lean in this direction. The layout of the pages at Write Source is much more “accessible”. Information at the Lafayette College (while a close “second”) is a bit too crowded; as is the layout at Indiana University. I know my students too well. If the answers aren’t easy to see, they are not going to make a great deal of effort to search it out. The information at the two university websites may be fine for students at the university level, but my high school sophomores would get lost in the small print. Classroom Connect is attractive, but this site does not seem to cover as many possibilities, does not seem to cover as many of the multifarious varieties of websites, as do the other three.
Should I ever become a media specialist in the public schools, I would actually opt for a different approach. Our media team at Quince Orchard has posted on our media center web page (http://qohs.org/vmc/biblio.html) a very attractive and very complete index to bibliographical style. The format is a modified version of the Write Source style with the added information at the end of each electronic entry indicating the central search engine through which most of our students do their research. The final line of the entry (assuming the student has done his research in or through our media center’s search engines) reads “Available: http//www.qohs.org/offsite.cgi”). I would, as a media specialist, set up a similar guide on-line to makes things as easy and as clear for the students in my building as possible. If I’m able I’ll send, as a separate email, a copy of this document.
Here are the citations – according to Write Source – for the four sites listed in the assignment:
Salwen, Peter. The Quotable Mark Twain. 4 Feb. 2004
<http://salwen.com/mtquotes.html.>
United States. Central Intelligence Agency. “Afghanistan”. The World Factbook.
18 Dec. 2003. 4 Feb. 2004
<http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications.factbook/geos/af.html.>
“2003 Winston Cup Series Drivers”. 4 Feb. 2004
<http://nascar.com/DRIVERS/winston/Kharvick00/index.html.>
McKenzie, Jamie. “Building Good New Ideas”. From Now On: The Educational
Technology Journal. June 2001. Vol. 10. No. 9. 4 Feb. 2004