Wednesday, October 1, 2008

U.S. Congress Research Project

Today we began a research project that requires you to use reliable internet resources to research the background, voting record of certain members of Congress as well as the leadership structure of Congress. You will find the research questions and rubric about the project in the makeup work tray in the classroom.

The most common mistake made today that you need to avoid is that people were choosing to research a member of the Texas Congress rather than the United States Congress. Make sure your choices in research are about United States Congress at the federal level.

Some very helpful websites for completing this research project are:
http://www.texas.gov/
http://www.house.gov/
http://www.senate.gov/
http://www.votesmart.org/
http://www.opensecrets.org/

If you choose to use other websites that's fine but be careful. Some of the websites you find on the internet were written by random people and don't have any credibility, and sometimes it's hard to tell what these sites are. For example, wikipedia is a popular place to look up topics but it is not necessarily credible because anyone can go on the website and change things. Be careful when you're researching. Usually anything you find on the school district's library resources page will be good.

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