Managing Research

With any educational program comes research. Now I am going to really date myself here! There are some of us that can remember going into the library and actually opening drawers in a card catalog. We can also remember pulling actual hardback and paperback copies of the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature.  Then of course there were the wonderful foot notes. Yes, remember rolling the paper back and forth in the electric typewriter to put a little mark where you needed to stop typing to leave room for the foot note at the bottom.  Of course this process became much easer as we moved into the digital world and word processors. However, there was still the difficulty of managing our sources.

I just spent this morning trying out some interesting tools. These are desktop and web based programs to aid in my not only finding research articles, but these tools also create my citations, allow me to take notes (what no note cards) that are stored with the resource. Now that is great news but there is more. These tools will also work in my word processing software to create in text citations and build my works cited/bibliography as I write!

Now this may not be news to many of you. I realize some of these programs have been around for a few years. But I couldn't help but think about their impact on my own research efforts. It also makes me wonder why I would walk into a classroom or library of a middle school or high school and see citation charts posted on the walls. Why are we not using these tools with our students, especially in 1:1 environments? We all know that the different styles for citing research change. We cannot teach all of the styles. Why would we? Instead, we should be teaching students how to use these tools.

We can begin small by using such tools as EasyBib and BibMe. As students move into high school and more in depth research projects they can be introduced to tools such as Mendeley and Zotero.  As part of my Ed Tech program I will be using and evaluating these programs over the next few weeks with others in my cohort. Watch for a post with a summary of those reviews.