Project preposal form

Project Proposal form
Learner Name	Matthew Wheeler			Learner number	953184
Centre Name				Centre Number
Teacher Assessor	D Golby			Date	14/10/2011
Unit
Proposed project title		Is the social network becoming a modern day superpower
Section One: Title, objective, responsibilities

Title or working title of project (in the form of a question) Is the social network becoming a modern day superpower or is it destroying? Project objectives (eg, what is the question you want to answer? What do you want to learn how to do? What do you want to find out?): I want to find out using a lot of research from the internet and newspapers on how the social network (in particular Facebook and tweet) affects us for the best or the worst. I will find research that evenly supports both sides of my argument. If it is a group project, what will your responsibilities be? This doesn’t apply to me. I will be doing everything for my project/essay.
Section Two: Reasons for choosing this project
Reasons for choosing the project (eg, links to other subjects you are studying, personal interest, future plans, knowledge/skills you want to improve, why the topic is important): The main reason I have chosen this topic is because I always see allot of good and bad news on the internet, papers or TV about social network sites. I would find it interesting and fascinating to look into this my project. Summing it up this a fun topic which I am interested to look into meaning I am very unlikely to get bored of the idea of this topic.
Section Three: Activities and timescales
Activities to be carried out during the project (eg, research, analysis, writing, preparing for the presentation, etc): introduction research analysis presentation/layout writing it up The rest of the remaining time I could use to fix anything that is wrong with my essay style topic.	How long this will take: 1 week 2-3 weeks 2 weeks 1 week 3 weeks
Milestone one: Target date (set by tutor-assessor): Milestone two: Target date (set by tutor-assessor):
Section Four: Resources
What resources will you need for your research, write up and presentation (eg, libraries, books, journals, equipment): I would need access to the internet to do research which I can do. Newspaper articles and video clips may possibly be needed from a library. If there is a book that relates closely to my topic then I may read it to see what I find. Would need access to a computer in order to store and write up my essay, I have a laptop so I can handle that. What your areas of research will cover? I will need to research both sides of the argument that I am researching for my topic.
Comments and agreement from tutor-assessor
Is the learner taking this project as part of the Diploma? Yes/No If yes, which Diploma are they taking? ______________________________________________ Comments (optional): Is project derived from work which has been/will be submitted for another qualification? Yes/No Which qualification (title and unit)? _______________________________________________ Comments (optional): I confirm that the project is not work which has been or will be submitted for another qualification and is appropriate. Agreed: (name) (date)
Comments and agreement from project proposal checker
Comments (optional): I confirm that the project is appropriate. Agreed: (name) (date)

Manage

What will be included?

My essay will mainly be based upon the social network system (in particular Facebook and Twitter). I will create an essay style argument between whether the social network is good for us as a society or bad for us. I will also keep this argument un-biased so as not to show any favouritism to which side of the argument. At the end of the essay I might include a small opinion on how I feel about the matter but I will mostly be using information I find from the internet, news and books to back up both sides of my argument.

A lot of the information included in my essay to back both sides of the argument will be taken from news articles or internet although I will digest it down and put it in to my own words and at the end I will most likely include a list of where I found all my information which will be put in the credits at the very end of my essay.

I am also very likely to insert pictures and embed videos from the internet onto my essay to backup parts of the argument that I have written down. Pictures and videos also keep the audience more captivated during reading or having the essay presented to them.

Although the essay is mainly based around whether the social network is good or bad I will probably write down in my own words an introduction telling people what the social network is and possibly go into a little extra detail on what twitter and Facebook are.

Near the very end of the essay I will most likely end with a summary of which side of the argument looks strongest against the other side. But most likely I will keep it as equal and fair as I can because it’s not my role to decide on which side of the argument won because I wrote the essay argument so that would make me biased if I did.

Layout

1: Title of essay, name and any other necessary information that is required for the project.

2: Introduction to what the social networking is (what Facebook and twitter are and how they work)

3: Introduction to both sides of the argument. Start with for and then move on to against.

4: Main part of the essay which will include all my argument points for each side. After an argument “against” has made and explained one of their points it would then be the argument “for” turn and then after that back to the “against” side of the argument. This is also where I would use a large majority of news articles and internet information to back up both sides of the argument. If I do include videos or pictures this area is most likely where I will use them.

5: Summary where I will conclude with the argument without giving away which side of the argument I support and at this point I will most likely ask the audience/ viewer which side of the argument they agree with.

6: credits section at the end telling people where I got my resources from such as newspaper articles, Internet information or videos and pictures.

How I will spend my time on this extended project

I have made a plan of what I will be doing at certain dates which lead up towards the final presentation of my extended project. I will be doing work on my extended project from home but I will not be managing the work I do at home because that would be to difficult. I will set dates for deadlines for certain parts of my extended project so I do not fall behind or strt to struggle with timing.

25^th November 2011: By this point I must have come up with an idea of what I want to do my essay styles argument on. I must also have decide what I want to to include in my extended project by this point and finnaly I must also have decided and written up how I want the layout of my documentary to look like.

20^th January 2012: By this point I must have finished all my research on what I want to include in my extended project.

3^rd February 2012: I need to have finished the introduction for my extended project at this point.

9th March 2012: The body and summary of my extended project essay must be finished at this date. This leaves me with a week (possibly two weeks) to tweak my extende project for when I must present it too the class.

Log book for my Extended Project

Here is my log book that I have been keeping up to date throughout the whole extended project to help keep myself organised and aware of what is done or needs to be done for the deadlines and targets that I set myself. It is also very helpful because it lets me know what ive covered for my extended project and what I havent covered yet or possibly missed out.

28th October 2011	In this lesson I had to choose what I wanted to do for my extended project which could have been a variety of things such as videos or music. I chose to do an essay styles argument.
4th November 2011	For this lesson I chose the topic of my essay styles argument and what the title would be. I chose my topic to be an argument about if the social network was a positive or negative thing. I chose the title as “Is the social network becoming a modern day superpower or is it destroying us?”
11th November 2011	This lesson I started planning and writing down what I wanted to include in my essay styled argument. For example, I said I wanted to include a positive point about the social network and then after that put a negative point about the social network to balance out the argument without seeming biased to the viewers.
18th November 2011	In this lesson I decided on how I wanted the layout of my essay styled argument to be and wrote it down. Here is a brief of what my layout is. Title, introduction, main body and summary.
25th November 2011	These next few lessons I have made plans to research and find information to include in my essay. Now that I have finished my layout for my essay I am researching positive and negative facts to include in my essay. Today I have looking around allot on the BBC sites and Wikipedia mostly. Next lesson I plan to broaden my search more widely.
2nd  December 2011	This lesson I have been looking more at social network story’s that  have been in articles in online papers such as Sunday Times, the Sun, the Daily mail and many more. However it seems that most of the research I found today is talking negatively about the Social network.
9th  December 2011	This lesson I was writing up more positive and negative research I found from the news. However this research wasn’t from the internet I found these sources from old newspapers that were next to the fireplace at my home.
6th January 2012	I have got allot of overall research now that helps and has impacts on both sides of the argument. I am now going to spend a week or two doing major research on how the social network was involved in the 2011 riots and what the consequences at the end were. I want this to be my main sub topic inside my essay.
13th January 2012	I am still researching into the 2011 riots and how the social network was involved. At the moment I am doing a research at the social messenger app called BBM (Blackberry messenger) which from research is told to be the most popular way of gathering people up for the riots back in 2011.
20th January 2012	I have now finished research the 2011 riots. I have in general finished with my research. I now plan to start my actual essay. I am starting with the introduction.
27th January 2012	I have finished writing my introduction. I will now start on the main body of my essay. I have come up with a codename to help me with my organisation of the essay. When I start writing up a positive paragraph about the social network in my essay I put in bold POS1 above it to remind me that that is my first positive bit of positive information in the essay. When I put my second bit of positive information I would do this POS2 and so on and so forth. The codename for example of my first negative paragraph would be NEG1.
3rd February 2012	This lesson I have finished POS1 and NEG1 for my essay. POS1 is about how Twitter saved a boy’s life after an Earthquake took place. NEG1 is about a Dutch website developer talks to the BBC and warns them about how dangerous it is for people using Social network who put down to much information on their profiles and don’t keep it protected.
10th February 2012	At the end of this lesson I have finished writing up POS2 and NEG2. POS2 is about a man whose life was saved when he made a page on the social network talking about how urgently in need of an organ donator he was. A social network user saw this and donated an organ to save the man’s life. NEG2 talks about the issue of cyber bullying and mainly topics around an article about a 36 year old man who was bullied cyber bullied by university students he taught.
17th February 2012	I have completed POS3 and NEG3 now. POS3 is talking about how the social network is used in a good way to gather people together and advertise on the social network to raise money and awareness of charities. NEG3 talks about how some people who use the social network too much are becoming dependant on it and have to use it on a daily basis to function properly.
24th February 2012	POS4 and NEG4 have now been completed. POS4 talks about the YouTube which is a key website for the social network. I talk about two main topics in this; the first is about how YouTube can make people famous and rich just by making a video and sharing it by the social network. The second talks about how it was used by Russian peaceful protestors to make anti-government videos. NEG4 talks about all the dangerous outcomes of using public chat rooms on the social network which allow people to communicate with complete strangers.
2nd March 2012	I have completed POS5 and made a start on NEG5. POS5 talks about how the social network is a powerful tool for companies who ant to advertise products or event. I go into detail mainly about music gigs and concerts that are usually advertised in advance on social network sites so that the network users can book in advance and spread the word to other social network users. I have made a start on NEG 5 which is the biggest topic of the essay which is going to be talking about how the riots were started and fuelled by the social network. I will also be talking about what the consequences for the users of the social network who were involved are.
9th March 2012	Half way through this lesson I finished NEG5 and wrote up at the end a small summary of what side of the argument I was supporting. I am now writing up everything else that is required to finish the extended project.