Knowing your question and making a plan

Welcome back!

I hope the last few days have been great for you - I haven't seen most of you in nearly a week!  Whatever you have been up to I hope it has been meaningful.  The days of your senior year are quickly ticking away.  Have you made a bucket list yet of the things you want to be sure to do before you are done?  Hang out with an old friend again?  Go back to a favorite place you haven't been to recently?  Made summer plans?

As for your work with the philosophy project, we are finished with the opening stages and are ready to fully engage the hard work that lies ahead.

First, go to Turnitin.com and read my response to your question proposal.  My goal there was to ask you some questions to help you to move ahead.  Read what I had to say to you.  You might find it to be helpful to write out your response to it.

Next, I want you to add another gadget to your blog - this time it will be a list of key terms.  I'll briefly go over how to do this.  Basically this will be a place you keep track of the different words and terms that become central to your work as you move forward.  You'll find that there are a lot of terms that come up in your investigations, many of which will be new to you.  Learn them, love them, and keep them close by.

Then, you will start the research.  I'll lead us through a brief look a this.  I'll HIGHLY recommend you determine a way to keep track of your research.  The blog is a very friendly way to do this.  You can do a variety of things: write a blog post and include links, create a new link list, or create another new key terms list.

For now your goal is to identify the few thinkers whose work you will then find and read.  What you are discovering now are summaries of their work, which should be very helpful to you.  I'll describe the next step of finding the actual texts soon.

Lastly, remember that your goal here is not necessarily to answer your question.  You might find more questions along the way, or reach a challenging point of tension, or even have a clear response.  The point is the investigation and asking and exploring your questions, living the examined life!