GO-GIRL 2011 Day 5

Saturday, March 5th

Another Saturday of plugging away at our research projects! We accomplished so much today in our teams as we formulated questions to ask in our surveys which will be ready next week!

Meanwhile, our parents attended a Parent Café where they discussed other opportunities for us. They discussed other extracurricular academic programs as well as what college admissions offices are looking for. They always have our best interests in mind!

The parents also made a chain of strengths similar to the one we made. Their strong characteristics and qualities they listed included, but are not limited to: caring & compassionate, passionate about kids success, supportive, involved, leadership, focused, determined, super mom, computer skills, hard-working, driven, encouraging, problem-solving, willing to learn, flexible, structured, patient, make time, understanding, loving, easy to talk to, trustworthy, creative & crafty, motivational/motivated, fair, advocator, wanting to help, excited, resourceful, helpful, and so much more!

We're so thankful for all of the amazing and inspirational GO-GIRLs and their families this semester! :)

GO-GIRL 2011 Day 4

Saturday, February 19, 2011

This was a great day for learning about research! Our GO-GIRLs had an action-packed morning spent in our Wayne State University Undergraduate Library (commonly known around these parts as the UGL). Here, our amazing librarian friends used their computer labs and extensive knowledge to show us some great ways to research online. We now know what can be considered good vs. bad research. We got a great introduction to MeL, the Michigan eLibrary website that has boundless information of all sorts and is open to all of us as residents! By just visiting mel.org, we have an entire world of databases and online resources available to us-this is a great place to visit for our school projects! Even parents will find it easy to use ;) Then we stopped by the Towers Dormitory for a true college-style buffet lunch. We could have anything from veggie pizza, to chicken strips & french fries, the salad bar and soft serve ice cream...it was awesome! Then our afternoon was spent in our teams back in the College of Ed. working on our research project surveys. We're gradually working on refining our topics and questions, we can't wait to share our surveys with all of our family and friends so keep an eye out for them soon!

We'll miss our week off of GO-GIRL as we take a break next weekend, February 26th, but we'll look forward to picking up where we left off the following Saturday, March 5th. There's a Parent Cafe on March 5th as well so we hope that all our parents can join us as well :)

GO-GIRL 2011 Day 3

Saturday, February 12, 2011

We are well on our way to learning about research. One of today's activities consisted of talking about the notion of bias. We discussed what it means to be biased and we came up with some definitions. We discovered it is basically another way to say "unfair." We talked in our teams about whether or not we have ever experiences bias in any way. We also took part in a physical activity where we moved around the room and sorted ourselves according to categories. Our mentors asked us a series of questions and we sorted ourselves in response. This helped us understand creating good category systems for our survey question answer choices. We also discussed hypotheses and predictions. Lunch was provided care of McDonalds in the WSU Student Center. A fulfilling and educational day for all! :)

GG Day 4

Every day we are learning more about social science research here at GO-GIRL! Today was filled with activity! In groups, everyone discussed "bias" and how to identify bias in asking survey questions. Each group worked to acknowledge any potential bias in sample questions and then had a chance to test their knowledge and create their own unbiased survey question. Also, the GGs practiced putting answers into categories. This will help organize survey results of the final surveys for the semester. And finally, the GG groups put their heads together to work on their final research project. A few of the things they talked about were what populations they would want to survey to learn more about what they find interesting concerning this topic, what questions they could ask to learn more about the topic, how they think people they survey will answer these questions, and then they came up with a prediction statement. We'll keep working on these research topics every week but so far we've made some great progress!

GG Day 2

Saturday, February 13, 2010

What a fun-filled day at GO-GIRL! Today the girls and their teams discussed surveys and the who, what, why, where and how of them. Each team brainstormed a topic of interest for them. Although each team's survey and topic is in different stages of development, what they have come up with this week will get them thinking and going on further creating a topic for their eventual survey.

Because of all of the teamwork and brainstorming, today the girls seemed to come together and they got to know one another a little better. Each team began to create a team poster highlighting themselves with their team name, the team members, and adjectives to describe themselves. Wait until you see how creative they are! The sense of community is strong and always growing!

With this weekend off due to the school breaks, we hope everyone is resting well and preparing for a BUSY week next week. We're going to the Undergraduate Library (UGL) on Wayne State's campus and it is going to be so exciting to learn more about research from our favorite librarians! Hopefully everyone remembers to wear their GO-GIRL t-shirt so we can stick together and show our pride!

And, parents, don't forget about the GG Parent Cafe being held for you from 9:30-11:00am in Room 10 of the College of Education building. Our staff, university experts, and community resources persons will join us to provide opportunities for networking, share information and resources, and help you help your daughters.

We'll look forward to seeing everyone next Saturday, February 27th!