Final Blog Post

My research question is: Did the events of Adolf Hitler’s childhood psychologically affect his ability to make rational decisions pertaining to the German people during World War II?

My argument: I do believe that Adolf Hitler's childhood had a major impact on the decisions that he made. My evidence supports that the treatment from both his mother and father as a child, greatly affected his life as a man. I do believe that no "sane" person could commit such a terrible act as the Holocaust.

http://prezi.com/dnkss2plwz0x/untitled-prezi/?kw=view-dnkss2plwz0x&rc=ref-37491605

Beginning to Final Presentation!

I used the website SlideRocket.com for my State of the Project presentation, so I wanted to try and venture out a little bit with the options given to us. The first thing I tried was making my own website on weebly.com. I found this website hard to maneuver because I don’t really consider myself “technologically savvy.” It had a lot of dragging and pressing different buttons and I just found myself getting very frustrated. I feel like a good thing about weebly.com is that a website would be something different and unique, versus just a regular poster board or PowerPoint. I found that using Prezi presentations was a lot easier for me because it felt more like I was constructing a PowerPoint. As of right now, I am either going to stick with SlideRocket or try doing Prezi for my final presentation in class! Here is the link to what I have so far on Prezi. 

http://prezi.com/dnkss2plwz0x/edit/#19_14586512

Plagiarism

I don’t believe that the concept of plagiarism is changing; it is more that it is becoming easier to plagiarize. The definition of plagiarism will always be the same but more access to online articles and journals is making it easy for us to take other people’s ideas and words. I think that you would not be able to tell if it was plagiarism if you took an idea from friends or family for a paper or speech you are writing. They would not be able to tell if it were plagiarism, especially if the teacher or professor had never met your friend that you got the idea from. I know of several incidents where there was not necessarily any flagrant plagiarism, the professor just saw too many similar ideas and thoughts throughout the paper amongst the class. I know that some cases of plagiarism are pretty much obvious but I would hate to have to be the one to decide if someone was plagiarizing!

Plagiarism

I don’t believe that the concept of plagiarism is changing; it is more that it is becoming easier to plagiarize. The definition of plagiarism will always be the same but more access to online articles and journals is making it easy for us to take other people’s ideas and words. I think that you would not be able to tell if it was plagiarism if you took an idea from friends or family for a paper or speech you are writing. They would not be able to tell if it were plagiarism, especially if the teacher or professor had never met your friend that you got the idea from. I know of several incidents where there was not necessarily any flagrant plagiarism, the professor just saw too many similar ideas and thoughts throughout the paper amongst the class. I know that some cases of plagiarism are pretty much obvious but I would hate to have to be the one to decide if someone was plagiarizing!

Citations for my helpful sources!

Research Question: Did the events of Adolf Hitler’s childhood psychology affect his ability to make rational decisions pertaining to the German people during World War II.

These are two of my sources that I have found particularly useful when researching my topic!

T.L. Brink. “ The Case of Hitler: An Alderian Perspective on Psychohistory.” Journal of Individual Psychology 31.1 (1975). Psychology and Behavorial Sciences Collection. Web. 2 Apr. 2013.

Hughes, Matthew and Chris Mann. Inside Hitler’s Germany: Life Under the Third Reich. New York: MJF, 2000. Print. 

Blog Homework 3/14

Today I looked through different databases on Galileo and found one that stood out in particular. I was trying to find a database that dealt more with the psychological side of my research topic rather than the historical side.  There were a few different psychology based databases but the best one for my research topic was the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. When searching on this database I used the key words Adolf Hitler and childhood. The very first article and actually the only article on this database pertaining to my topic that came up was incredibly useful to my research topic, the name of it was “The Case of Adolf Hitler: An Adlerian Perspective on Psychohistory.”  This article is exactly what I have been looking for because it is so specific to my research topic. I have yet to find something that had what I was looking for in one article, I have been putting together bits and pieces from different articles in order to properly address my question.

Social Media

When searching using Reddit.com I did not find anything specific that would help me with my research topic. I found a few pictures of Adolf Hitler at all different ages but that does not really help me specifically with my topic. When I searched on Facebook all I found were pages that people made about Adolf Hitler, most all of them were “fan pages” and had no useful information that I could use. I found that I could click on Web results on Facebook when I searched something but that ultimately gave me the same information I already have.  I did not find stumbleupon.com useful for my research topic either. On the interests page when you first sign up there was no interest for history, and the pages that came up for psychology were mostly games and IQ quizzes, which had nothing to do with my topic whatsoever. I have found that researching my topic on social media websites will most likely not be successful because my topic is mainly a history related topic. I don’t really take part in a lot of social media websites, besides blogging for this class I mainly use Facebook for personal activities. 

Homework: 2/26

I found an article on Facebook that has to do specifically with Carrollton and the area of west Georgia. The article I found is http://times-georgian.com/view/full_story/21813980/article-Gas-prices-could-top--4-next-month?instance=TG_home_story_offset and it discusses the rising gas prices in Carrollton and all over the nation. This article estimates that gas prices could rise above $4 per gallon next month.  It shows that gas prices are up from averages in previous months and also last year. It goes on to describe some of the problems that are causing the gas prices to rise. The author of this article is making an argument and uses statistics of previous years and gas prices and also the prices of oil at different times. This article does not emotionalize this topic because they use facts to back everything up. I think that the author uses Slippery Slope when they say “If the Fed curtails or ends the program earlier than anticipated, that could affect economic growth and reduce demand for oil.”

Pre-search and books!

11.)    I believe that my “pre-search” helped me to narrow down my topic and also helped to reinforce that this was the topic that I wanted to stick with. As of right now I do not believe that I need to narrow my topic any more but that could change as I continue to research my topic. For example, if I find information that would help me to be more specific with a few key words in my topic. My topic at this point is; “Did the events during Adolf Hitler’s childhood have a psychological effect on the decisions he made during the Holocaust and World War II?

22.)     Through my research I found the book “Adolf Hitler; his family, childhood, and youth.” The author of this book is Bradley F. Smith and the call number is DD247.H5S55. This book can be found on the second floor of Ingram Library. 

More on researching my topic!

There are not too many differences on how I research now to the way I used to. I had several classes in high school that really taught me how to decipher a good source from a bad one and also how to properly research books in the library. I think that what is really different about my research process is having access to Galileo and the library webpage. Throughout high school I had access to Galileo but I was never really sure how to properly use it and now I do! I am still slightly confused with finding the keywords to type into the Academic Search. I am still confused because I am not really sure how to find synonyms for the keywords that I picked for my research topic.

Special Collections

I feel as though I could get a lot use out of special collections for my research topic. I know that there would be several newspapers a     nd possibly flyers that I could use for my research. I believe that it is important to use special collections because it allows you to experience for yourself what happened and what those people were feeling.  This semester I am taking two history classes; World history and US history. I know for sure that I could really use special collections to my advantage in those two classes.  Since I am a history major, special collections is going to play a huge part in pretty much any class I take in the future. Special collections are a big part of the research process because it provides you with information that you cannot just get anywhere. It allows you to really get into and go in depth with your research topic. 

Homework Blog: Adolf Hitler and the APA

Through the research that I have done I have found that there are several books that have good information about my topic. It is easier to find books on my topic because it is a history topic and there has been more opportunity for books to have been written. I also believe that scholarly articles are a good source of information for my topic. I believe that psychology would be an area of study that has to do with my topic because the events of Adolf Hitler’s heavily affected his mindset and the way he acted. I don’t know much about different associations revolving around Psychology, but after doing some research I found that the American Psychological Association (APA) would be interested in a topic such as this. They would be interested because they can compare Hitler and events in history to events today that might affect someone’s psychological state.

Researching my topic

I think that I have pretty much decided to stick to my topic of Adolf Hitler during World War II. I know that it still needs to be narrowed down a little bit, so as of right now I am focusing on how Adolf Hitler’s youth impacted the choices that he made during World War II. While I was researching I found that by just searching Adolf Hitler, there was a good bit of information on his early childhood and early life in general. I also found that researching Nazi Germany during World War II helped provide accurate background information on the crimes that were committed by Hitler. When researching, I discovered that it also helped to research why the events in Hitler’s life would affect him. For instance, if the events had some sort of psychological affect that may have scarred him. I feel like after class I realized that I have to make sure my topic is not too broad, and that I researching really is a process! 

Research Topic ideas

One of my ideas for a research topic is how being involved with a sport or extracurricular activity affects how a student does in school. I am interested in this because I am athlete myself and I would like to know if it affects me in the same way it affects someone else. Just from personal experience I have seen that not everyone is the same, so I believe it would be cool to see from person to person. My other idea for a research topic is history related. I would like to do more research into Nazi Germany during World War II, more specifically Adolf Hitler and what made him do the things that he did. I am interested in this topic because I am a history major and this topic in general fascinates me. I am not really sure as of right now if these are the topics that I would like to stick with.

Research for my New Car!

Surprisingly enough, my parents just bought me a new car a few weeks. As I have gotten older, I have realized that buying a new car is not as simple as it may seem. A lot of thought and research goes into the process of making sure you are purchasing the right car for you.  One of the first things I looked at was the gas mileage of the car, and then I compared that to other cars. I used websites such as cars.com and cargurus.com to find the different information and prices, so that I could compare them. I used these websites to look at customer reviews for the different cars I was interested in.  I also used the Kelly Blue Book website to find out how much my car would be worth for a trade in. All of this information and research helped when I was buying the car, because it allowed me to make sure that I was getting a good deal for my car!

What I think about the library!

I would have to say that my favorite part of the library is the peacefulness. I love the fact the library is somewhere that I can go to my homework and study without having to worry about outside distractions. I think that it is really neat that at the UWG library, there are different levels of quietness on the different floors depending on what kind of work I need to accomplish. My least favorite part about the library is that there is just so much information. There are books about almost everything and at times it can get confusing. I know one thing that still confuses me is where to find books that are on course reserves for certain classes and professors. Last semester I had a few instances where I did not look in the right place for the course reserves. My biggest problem or confusion about the library is that it is just so overwhelming, and a lot of times I just do not know where to start. 

Homework 1/8: What surprised me about class today.

My name is Whitney Maples and I plan on majoring in History. I am a freshman from Forsyth, Georgia. I was surprised to learn that we would be doing so much with the internet, because I assumed we would be doing more with books in the library. I am excited to do the blog because I have never had a blog before.