Stephanie+Mac's+Research+Journal

__//**Term 2, Week 10 Monday - Friday [4/07/11 - 8/07/11]**//__ I'm a very indecisive person when I'm given opportunities to choose my own topics or texts to research, analyse or study because I'm a person with very few interests. After a week of thinking deeply, considering and reconsidering multiple topics that I want to research into like: 'gaming addiction'; 'how the natural features of the Earth was formed'; 'the Chinese martial arts style - Wing Chun'; 'medical problems and the human body'; and 'human evolution', I decided that I wanted to research about human evolution because I've been fairly interested in this concept ever since I was in grade 5 and I believe this topic would have a lot of information I could gather and analyse, but before I made my final decision I went on to the internet and searched for any information that could be useful for that research topic and, depending on how much information I found, judge whether I would be able to find enough information from different sources to analyse and complete my research project to the best of my ability. I've found a couple of websites that had relevant information that could give me some background knowledge to this topic and some of this information could also possibly be analysed if I chose to do this topic. These websites are:
 * [|http://australianmuseum.net.au/How-have-we-changed-since-our-species-first-appeared]
 * [|http://australianmuseum.net.au/Human-Evolution]
 * [|http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/#]

From this information gathering session, I believe that there would be enough information that is available and accessible to me, so I chose to do this topic. After acquiring a little bit of background knowledge I formulated a research question which is 'How did humans evolve into what we are today?'.

After gaining more background knowledge on human evolution, I realised that this topic would be too difficult to be able to research and complete in the time that I've been given because the topic is far too broad since human evolution occurred across hundreds of millions of years. So I refined my research question by mashing together two of my considered topics which were 'medical problems with the human body' and 'human evolution'. My research question is now refined to 'What problems does the human body have these days caused by the way the human body evolved?'.

__//**Letter to Mr. Tengdahl**//__ To Mr. Tengdahl, I am writing this letter to you to inform you about the things I'm planning to do during the 2 weeks of holidays to help me with my research.

On the first week of the holidays, I plan to use the internet to find websites about the structure of the human body caused by evolution and also about the problems humans have with their bodies. This would help me gain a lot more background information. On Saturday, after work, I will ask Dr. Ting, who is the head doctor, and Dr. Huynh, who a physiotherapist, if they have much knowledge about the health or physical problems humans have due to the way we have evolved; or just the top health or physical problems in general if they don't know about the evolution part (this could help me narrow down my research further and save me research time by eliminating minor problems). I will also ask the doctors if I will be able to talk with them again in the future if it's necessary and also for their permission to use their information and knowledge in my research by asking them to read and sign the permission form that I will be printing out for them.

On the second week of the holidays, I'm planning to use the internet to find some books about the structure of the human body caused by evolution and also about the problems humans have with their bodies and then make a list of the books that I can then take with me to the State Library near the end of the week to try and find the books that are on my list. I will go through them to pick out and photocopy useful material that I could re-read, analyse, highlight and annotate later.

I hope I will be able to get all of these things done before school starts again. Please feel free to write back with any improvements or suggestions Mr. Tengdahl.

From, Stephanie

__//**Term 2 HOLIDAYS, Week 1 Monday - Friday [11/07/11 - 15/07/11]**//__ After gaining more knowledge about this topic from the websites that I've visited, I've thought more about what in particular I want to research about in this topic and what kind of outcome I want to achieve. I plan to do a power point presentation for my outcome and I believe that my current research question would give me too little to research and talk about, so I've decided to narrow down and add something about //how to overcome the problems// to my focus question. My focus question is now **//'What are the top 3 (or 5) health or physical problems humans have today because of the way our bodies have evolved and how have humans overcome these problems?'//**

__//**Term 2 HOLIDAYS, Saturday [16/07/11]**//__ I was planning to talk to Dr. Ting, the head doctor, today after work but I found out beforehand that all of the doctors had an important meeting afterwards so I decided to ask the questions another time, so that I won't disturb the doctors. [Ethical action?]

__//**Term 2 HOLIDAYS, Week 2 Saturday [23/07/11]**//__ Today before work, I made an appointment to see doctor Ting after work. At this point I have to do more independent research to get a better idea of what I want to ask doctor Ting, so today I only asked him for his permission to speak with him in the future and use his knowledge in my research if it's necessary. I have his permission but I still need to print out the permission letter and ask doctor Ting to sign it.

__//**Term 3, Week 1 Tuesday - Friday [26/06/11 - 29/06/11]**//__ On Wednesday I spent a double lesson using the internet to find information. I used phrases like ‘top 5 human body problems’, ‘top 5 human health problems in the body’ and ‘Worst human body faults’ in Google and didn’t find much information. I thought there wasn’t much information about the topic that would be accessible to me so I was thinking about changing topics. But the next day I decided to use a new keyword to search for information. I used the phrase ‘bad **//design//** of the human body’. This was a good phrase to use because it gave me a lot more information that I wanted. I've learnt that 'design' was a keyword for me when I'm searching for information. I've now decided to stick to this research topic.

__//**Term 3, Week 4 Monday - Friday [15/08/11 - 19/08/11]**//__ On Tuesday, I had a discussion with my research project teacher, Mr. Tengdahl. I had a bunch of resources but I was confused on how to progress further with my research so I asked Mr. Tengdahl for help. He helped me to make my focus question more specific and focused on each area of the question. Since my new focus question is "//What are the top 3 (or 5) health or physical problems humans have today because of the way our bodies have evolved? How have they impacted us? and how have humans overcome these problems?',//Mr. T asked me what 'top' means in the question; e.g. The most fatal, most common, or most painful. I wanted to do the most common problems so I have now clarified that 'top' means the most common problems. He also asked me what 'problems' means in the question. What I had in my mind about what the 'problems' mean in the focus question at the start of research project when I was writing up the focus question was that they should be the problems with some design features of the human body that we have today caused by the way we evolved because of the circumstances we were in at that time.