Contributor to Research

In preparing for our academic research on alien sightings, were have come in contact with a very useful tool that we plan to use throughout our research.

 This software is called Zotero. 

Zotero is free and is an open-source software system that manages bibliographic data.  I seriously recommend this software for any type of research! Upon arrival at a academic site such as academic journal on a database, an icon can be pressed and the citation information from that journal is saved to Zotero.. Zotero pulls out all the information needed for a citation from the site and categorizes it in the software.  Not only does it obtain the information for you on the website, it can easily be added to any document.  When typing the research paper, in text citation can be added with just a click of a button.  Zotero can be synced with Microsoft Word and creates an add in tab.  The tab can add in text ciation which are pulled from the Zotero software as well as a full bibliography page at the end of the research paper.  Zotero is a wonderful program if you are diving in to a research project were many citation are necessary.  In this instance we plan on using Zotero to hold our reference that further explain alien sightings.  The software is also unique in that it allows you to create folders with other Zotero users.  This is essential as we three group members work on our research.  We are able to work independently but drop our source in the same folder, keeping them organized.  This also allows other group member to read sources that other group members have found.

If you yourself are interested in this wonderful software visit: www.zotero.org and download it now.

We will be posting soon to update you on source that we find and sources that we find will be managed using our Zotero software!

Enjoy!
-Kaitlyn 

Aliens in an Academic Light

     This blog is going to document the research process of a group of students as we research alien sightings in an academic setting. We starting by taking 15 minutes to create a mind map of everything we could relate to aliens. This mind map was rather large but from it we created three research questions we wanted to focus our project on. The three questions are:

1. What gives credibility to alien sightings, and how can you find validity in unproven phenomena? 
2. Where are the highest concentration of sightings within the US, and does the high concentration areas correlate with any foreseeable variable?
3. How have alien sightings have influenced popular media, including news, movies, and books.

     These questions also revolve around the larger theme of alien sightings in the US. We also conducted a preliminary search for sources to make sure we could find reliable academic sources to help answer our question. We did this through OhioLink, an inter-library loan program our school uses. From this basic search we found a mass of books that will help us along the way. We also laid out our plan for the blog we would be writing along the way with information about how the project was going, and troubles we were having and in the end what the research told us and how we answered our original three questions. We laid all this out in our research proposal for our professor to review. We're excited to start the project and share our journey along the way.
                                                                                                                            -Kelsey