In school the other day, I was asked to take a topic that I could research for the next couple of days that I would not lose interest about. The research project had nothing to do with our history class, and at first I had no idea why she wanted us doing research. Let me tell you now. It was hard doing research on something whose website is blocked at school.
Our class had recently had our unit assessment on ancient civilizations, and our teacher had us do another assignment. The homework after the day of the test was to create a list of interests. The interests I put down consisted of baking, skateboarding, video-editing, FaceBooking, YouTubing, and many other broad topics. The teacher made us narrow the list down again the next day to one final topic. At this point, I realized we were going to do research, but that was all I knew. My topic for research was YouTube.
Over the course of the week, the teacher had laptops in the classroom, and it was the class of the day I actually felt happy walking in to. It was fun to be able to relax and just sit on a laptop for 45 minutes and do research about YouTube. The only downside is, our school is extremely strict with what websites we are allowed on and every time someone tries to get onto YouTube at school, the filters filter out YouTube as "adult content." Really? Like no kid has seen YouTube before? Of course that the administrators might be afraid us students will be goofing off and search up something mildly inappropriate like smosh or search up something stupidly funny like Nyan Cat (which I actually found enjoyable). If students these days were trusted by teachers, then maybe we would be allowed on YouTube or another adult website under permission. Let me just say that it is hard doing research on a topic whose website is blocked at school.
Luckily, there were actually a lot of other sites that helped me do my research and I was able to gather a lot of information about YouTube. My notes are shown below.
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| Note page one |
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| Note page two |
...I was glad I chose YouTube as my topic. It kept me interested and as you might be able to tell, most people do not know all of this. Did you know that Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim created YouTube in 2005? Did you know that they were all former PayPal employees? Did you know the idea for YouTube was thought of in a garage in Pennsylvania? It was very interesting what I found out. Without my teacher forcing me to research YouTube, I wouldn't be able to say what I know today. At the bottom of the first note page I also made a giant list of viral videos...
Research:
All Your Base, PB&J Time, Dancing Baby,
Star Wars Kid, Badger (x3), Numa Numa,
Charlie The Unicorn, Charlie Bit My Finger,Leave Britney Alone, The Mysterious Ticking Noise, Rick Roll, and Keyboard Cat.
What really interested me was when Google became affiliated with YouTube. Apparently, Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars in stocks! That put me in shock for a couple of minutes. After that, I explained how YouTube got its name, listed some YouTube partners, and stated what a partner was.
Research:
YouTube: You: Your Videos. Tube: Broadcasting Area.
Partners: smosh, nigahiga (hopefully won't be suspended for writing that), fred, mysteryguitarman, shanedawson, etc.
Partner: Someone whose videos are very popular and apply to join the partnership program where the partner's videos earn revenue because Google places ads next to their videos. Google, the ad owner, and the partner gain money via Google AdSense.
I think the main idea for my teacher making the class do research (other than avoid reading history) was to prepare us to get ready to do some actual hardcore graded research projects...
So my question to my readers...
Have you ever actually LIKED doing research and have you remembered anything from the research you did?
Happy Halloween everyone! Too bad it's on a Monday this year... :/
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