Independent Study

Topic: Computer Related Topic

Due Date: Friday, February 27, 2004

Written by: Your Name

Course: ICS 4M

Period: 5

This will give you information about the Independent Study that you need to do in the second term. The goal is for you to learn something new about some computer-related topic. Your task is to convince me that you have done research and learned something new. This will usually be done by means of a report, although you can negotiate with me if there is some alternate method you would like to use (students have done write-ups in the form of a tutorial or taught the class a lesson in previous years).

You may choose any topic you like as long as it meets the following criteria. The topic must have some connection to computers or computer science and it must be a topic that you are not already an expert in. You need to do research on the topic and convince me that you have consulted with all the resources available. For most topics this will mean that you should be using a variety of sources such as books, magazines and the Internet.

Unless you have made some other arrangement with me, you will be doing a report. You must use 2.54cm (1") margins. You must double-space. You must use Times New Roman 12 pt. font (see me if you do not think you have that font available). The report must be at least four full pages long and should not be more than eight pages long (unless you have something VERY interesting to say). Diagrams, pictures, drawings, and sample code do not count in the number of pages. You must submit a printout of any pages you use from the Internet along with your report. You must use footnotes for any sources that you use (you may use the style that I will illustrate later in this outline if you wish). You will note that this outline of the assignment follows the above format (with the exception of being less than four pages long and not including a printout of the web pages referenced).

The following is a list of some of the topics people have done in the past:

some part of computer hardware

some computer software or language

viruses

security

applications of computers to different aspects of life

artificial intelligence

virtual reality

animation

graphics

There are an unlimited number of different topics you could choose from. This is just to help you get started thinking about possibilities. You need to choose a topic and clear it with me by Friday, January 30, 2004.

You will receive class time to work on this so bring any books, magazines etc. that you need with you. We will be working on other things in class as well but you will be expected to do at least some of the work on the independent during class time. It is very important in this second part of the year that you make effective use of class time.

You must be very careful of plagiarism. Here is an example. This was taken from my web site (so not really plagiarism since I am plagiarising myself):

This was a direct quote from a web page and it was not attributed to the true author by a footnote. Even if it had a footnote, it would still be plagiarism since it is a direct quote. If there was some compelling reason for a direct quote (and in this example I don't think there is) it should have been handled like this:

A short quote should be surrounded by quotes. A longer quote like the one above gets indented and does not need to be surrounded by quotes. It is possible to just use ideas from the source in which case it does not need quotes but still needs a footnote.

The footnote in these examples refers to the second item in the Bibliography which would be info about my web page. To footnote a book use the same idea but also give a page reference. Suppose I was using a quote from Mr. Carter's book on p. 539. If this was the first item in my bibliography I would do the following:

Do not leave this assignment until the last minute. Get other people to proofread your report. Donut Count own thy spool-chucker two fund owl yore arrears. My wordprocessor did not flag anything in the preceding sentence. Otherwise you end up with Microsoft making a hostel takeover or unconscious people being punctuation or vice versa (coma versus comma).

The report will be marked out of 20. Ten marks are for content. This is based on how well the report was put together, the quality of the content and how well you convince me you did your research. It will be based partially on what I see you doing in class. The other ten marks are for quality of writing, how easily the report reads and following the proper report format.

Bibliography

1.	John Carter, An Introduction to Computer Science Using Java, 2003, pp. 537-547.

2.	Gerry Heffernan, Applets, http://ntci.on.ca/~compsci/dcc/notes/applet.html, North Toronto Collegiate Institute, 2001.