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=Welcome to Ancient Civilizations research and Wikis!=

Getting Started
During this research unit you will be learning three important skills.

First, you will be shown how to conduct research to learn about ancient civilizations. You will be expected to find, read and absorb enough facts to answer specific questions about your chosen civilization. You will also be expected to extract meaning from what you have gathered. For example, "What was most respected in your civilization, brains, brawn, honor, being a team player or being a leader? Your facts must support your opinions.

Next, you will use Wikispaces, a wonderful tool (very like Facebook), where you will write up your notes and share with your teacher and classmates what you are finding/learning while you are finding/learning it. The process of knowing how to conduct research is often MORE IMPORTANT than the final product you create.

Finally, you will become familiar with Photostory, a program that incorporates pictures, music and your voice to create a video telling the story about your civilization.

Planning
Before you can tell a story about anything, you need to build the story -- What is important to your audience?, Do they have ANY background knowledge?, What will grab their attention, what is boring and better left out?, What will you talk about? This story (report) is going to be nonfiction (true), so all your facts must be real (verifiable). You must be able to prove what you say with a source.

You have been given a list of questions to answer (next page). You will look for current, authentic, reliable facts in the following places:
 * Destiny** - online catalog for print and electronic books (on library web page)
 * Ebooks** - electronic books (on library web page)
 * ICONN Discovering Collection** - database of electronic books, magazines, articles, and papers (link on library web page)
 * No Wikipedia or Google hits allowed (we will discuss why later)