Midterm+Activity+II+-+the+'Skinny'

What I had in mind was for each person in the class was to take the list of topics for this class as a set of "jumping off points" for web-based explorations of your own. I like to think of each topic as "the tip of an iceberg", and I'm asking you to use the internet as a guide to help you find out about more of the iceberg. Now, the path may not be easy or straightforward; some ways of searching will lead you to places that are too technical or specialized; some will lead you away from the issues that interested you about the area in the first place; you may have to get creative with your search strings, and you'll certainly have to watch out for the 90% rule; some people just have strange ideas about music ... but then again, it might be fun to look briefly into (and tell us about) these, too! They're all a part of the WWOM. But whenever you don't like what you are finding, change the way you are looking; you are in control of this train, and the only constraint is that there needs to be some kind of recognizable, authentic connection back to the subject matter in Music 175 – because it genuinely issued from there, we are supposing. I strongly advise against the strategy of //starting// with a topic that is //not// in Music 175 and trying to make it fit retroactively somehow. It will smell funny if you do this, and some of us have a good nose for these things. Besides, you have a pretty broad field of things to choose from. Scratch your itch to find out more about woofers and tweeters somewhere else.

Next, you'll of course want to report back on the results of your journey, or meander, or major guided surfing expedition through your topic area, and to do this, create a New Page on this Wiki, give it a spiffy title, and write up what you've learned, clearly and crisply. Show us what made it interesting to you; teach us about it. Provide links to some (say 3-5 or so) of the more useful, intriguing, or provocative pages you encountered. A picture wouldn't hurt, if it's appropriate to your topic, helps you explain, illustrates some finding, or just enlivens your page a little. Are there some unanswered questions in particular that you'd like to raise about this topic? Maybe something worth pursuing further on your Original Project for the course? Just asking ....

It's hard for me to imagine you doing justice to all this using fewer than 500 words. And because you would like your page to be read and appreciated, make a point of taking the time to read and comment substantively on at least two (2) of your classmates' pages.