A student-friendly, step by step guide to organizing research materials
Community Review for NoodleTools
My Take
NoodleTools is a wonderful resource for students who need a safe place to organize their research, or for those students who need extra help in creating cohesive research papers. More functional than "edutainment," NoodleTools does its best to engage students and present the research process (from thesis writing to citation) in manageable chunks. NoodleTools includes a thesis writing feature, research planner / due date reminder, notecard generator, development space (this is a new feature, collaborating with GoogleDocs) and, of course, a citation generator. The draw back is that NoodleTools is a subscription-based platform, costing $15 for individual, non-institutional use. However, NoodleTools is free to try.
How I Use It
I've used NoodleTools for the past three years and have found it to be a useful tool. The most successful way I have implemented NoodleTools is by chunking the tasks, allowing multiple days to work on each chunk. It helps to encourage students to work on their research papers with NoodleTools open, so that they can transfer ideas from their source to their outline or notecards. The one drawback I always encounter is the speed in which students familiarize themselves with the platform (and research process). Although NoodleTools is fairly intuitive, it takes some students (especially those in younger grades) a period to adjust to using the technology, and develop a good work flow.