Easy Chrome extension to aid in the research process
Community Review for Citelighter
My Take
I love this extension: it is easy for students to navigate through any website, it highlights right on the page (no navigating elsewhere or having multiple tabs open), and it allows students to change the headings to match their research topics. I like that I can teach this process in the beginning, and let students work independently while I help individuals who need the extra attention. It also allows for students to write their own "commentary" on the highlighted (captured) information.
The only negative I did find was the way the citations look in the project page: If you have a lot of citations, you are doing a LOT of scrolling to get to each of them. Once you "use" the citation in your outline, it highlights that citation, but does not delete it. For students with visual or spatial issues, this might be overwhelming.
I am interested to see if the developers will add a way to share projects with teachers or other students to increase collaboration, though it might be available through Google Drive (once information is accumulated).
How I Use It
In our English classes, we research a career choice that each student wants to learn more about. Citelighter helped me to streamline the research process: they were allowed to search online sources on their own, highlight (capture) the most important information for their paper, and then organize these highlighted (captured) bits into a specific outline. We changed the outline headers to match the Step up to Writing outline. Students were able to organize this information, omit unnecessary information, and connect the information to the source itself. The set up time at the beginning of the whole process was extensive, but well worth it once the process got rolling. Additionally, integrating with Google Drive was a MAJOR benefit for our assignment.