How I Use It
I most recently used Easy Bib with a 7th grade Language Arts class that was completing a research paper. Before turning students loose on Easy Bib I walked them through changing the source, what to enter to generate a citation and how to copy and paste citations into a Microsoft Word bibliography. We do not have the paid version of Easy Bib, we only use the free version, so it tends to get used mostly for MLA citations. The trouble with Easy Bib is that students often ignore all of the boxes that don't get automatically filled in. I find that many of my students do not want to dig to try to find a website's author etc. Unfortunately this often leaves teachers with incomplete citations throughout the bibliography. I think it's important to take the time to talk about the importance of citing sources and filling in as many fields as possible when creating a citation in the program. Ultimately all of the 7th graders were able to create complete bibliographies, though some citations were still missing key details.
My Take
The days of teaching citations and bibliographies from a textbook seem to be over, at least at my school. I think Easy Bib is a nice way to convince students to create a bibliography and the process is less tedious than it would be to do the citation by hand with a book in front of you. I do wish that Easy Bib had all citation styles available for free... when I teach my 8th grade science students APA citations next month we will use a different, free program. Ultimately I think Easy Bib is a useful tool, as long as teachers take the time to discuss the importance of full citations and how to get the citations out of the program.
