2012 Spring research Project

1. Jacob Morgan
Ms. Lester/Ms. Hamilton
World Lit/Comp
Spring 2012
Learning Reflection
1. I learned many key items while doing this project. The most interesting thing that I
learned about was the use of technology in the treatment of PTSD. I found it very interesting that
therapists and doctors used smartphone apps to treat symptoms of PTSD. Another things I found
interesting was the low standards for the army to allow people to go back to the battlefield. The
army thinks that it is appropriate to give soldiers suffering from PTSD a lot of medication to
treat the symptoms and send them back out. This has not been effective and has resulted in many
casualties. Other things I learned about is what people think about PTSD. For example, some
people think it is better to lose a leg then it is to get a mental illness, because their problem is
actually recognized rather than ignored.
2. I have had only one problem and that is that the person I intended to interview said he
would answer my questions and then he never did. I did find it a bit difficult to find information
on the treatment of PTSD when I first started, but I later used sweet search and found all the
information I needed. I found out that if I look through a lot of information on sweet search then
I can find an article that contains the the information that I am looking for. It also helps me in my
search to narrow down a search term so that the articles are more relevant.
3. The hardest part of this project for me was making the prezi. I planned it out and had to
try to make it flow. This was really was not that difficult but it was very time consuming. This is
because i am not very good at making prezis so i had to really work hard to learn how to. I had to

2. go look at many different prezis so that i could learn those techniques and implement them in my
own prezi.
4. Reading All Quiet On The Western Front and What Was Asked Of Us was very
beneficial to me. This helped me to understand what it was like on the battlefield, both in modern
times and during World War One. Reading What Was Asked Of Us helped me with my decision
on my topic for my project because it showed me the insecurities of veterans after the war and
what it was like for them when they were on leave or when they were back home, or even on the
battlefield. While i was reading this book, it made me wonder if they would ever get better, if
their life could ever go back to the way it was before. So I picked the treatment of PTSD for my
topic to explore this.
5. While I was reading my book, I was very disturbed because of the amount of violence.
I never realized that things like that happened in real life. This was a real eye opener for me and
made me realize how terrible it must be to go through war. I can only imagine how bad it can be
for someone to have to deal with PTSD after going through war. Thankfully, I learned about the
many treatments and learned that it is not hopeless for someone who has PTSD and they have a
chance to be cured.
6. I think the thing I did best was learning about the smartphone apps and portraying that
information. I am also really proud of my Netvibes page. I think that I did a very good job on it
and I used it in conjunction with Scoop_It to really save time and get my research done. Thanks
to both of these web tools I was able to get this project done ad spend more time on things that I
really need to work on, like making a good prezi.
7. The most challenging thing I had to do was make my prezi and make it flow. I
overcame these challenges by looking at examples of good prezis and implementing some of

3. those techniques into my own prezi. It really helped me to see examples of other prezis because
it allowed me to get more ideas that really helped my prezi look nice.Another challenging thing
that I had to deal with was looking up pictures, because I did not know where I needed to look to
find pictures that I could use until Ms. Hamilton showed me the Flickr Advanced Search.
8. I really think that my information gathering skills increased by using Netvibes and
Scoop_It in conjunction with each other. This made researching much faster and I got a lot of
information about my topic and was able to organize and use this information effectively. I really
do think that using these both in conjunction is the best way to research for a large research
project, because it helps get all my information into one place.
9. I think that using prezi to portray my information was effective. It allowed me to
organize my information in a way that it was easy to understand. It also allowed me to put
my information for relative topics into one place. Another thing that helped me portray the
information was the use of images with my information. I think that this really helped me clarify
the information and help give people a clearer image of this topic.
10. The information dashboard that I used was Netvibes. I used it to gather my
information, sources, and tools all in one spot and organize it all effectively. I also used it to
gather all of the pictures I used in my prezi and put them together. I really think that using
Netvibes helped speed up my research and help me get the things done that need to be done. I
used netvibes to house a lot of things, like my mindmap, picture, notes, sources, and my final
product. It really helped to have all of my stuff in one place.
11. I think that the skills that I gained will really help me with American Literature
and Composition next year. For example, if i need to do research on the internet and then
organize my information into a shaping sheet of some sort, then I could use Scoop_It to gather

4. information and organize it into a mind map. Another example is if I am reading a book and
need to organize my information into a shaping sheet I could also do a mind map to organize my
information. This showed me a lot of useful tools on the internet like Flickr Advanced Search
and Sweet Search.