I’m sorry, what? Yes, it’s called NoodleTools. Dude, don’t judge. It’s actually really helpful. Let me explain: When we were about to do our Shakespeare project in my English class, our teacher mentioned a research tool online that we would be expected to use. Of course, we all collectively groaned, as we generally do when we are told we have to do just about anything. Because, you know, kids. But after using NoodleTools for three different projects in that class, I’ve grown to appreciate it, and now I bring it to you.
There are three formats of citations listed: MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian, depending on which you need for your project (if it doesn’t really matter, I suggest MLA) and what detail of citations: Starter (6 forms), Junior (Simplified for you) and Advanced (70+ forms). If this doesn’t matter either, I’d go with Junior, since it’s the least complicated to use. You can write in the details and it will cite for you, or, if the source comes cited, you can just copy and paste the citation.
You can share the project with another user, as either a full-access collaborator or a proof-reader, which has less access. You can also share it with a project inbox, so you could each work on a separate part and collect them all in the inbox.
To collect the information, you make notecards, which have three main subsections inside. There’s the quote section, where you copy and paste the information from the website so that you don’t have to switch back and forth between the tab with the info and your notes constantly, the restate section, where you say it your way and cut out any unnecessary information, and the thinking section, where you make other notes to explore or use later. The notecards can be arranged in stacks to organize like information.
The only downside I have found to NoodleTools is that you can’t make piles of the piles of the notecards, where I like subdividing more than once, but then you can just drag them form clusters, so I suppose that’s a minor issue.
This program has been extremely helpful for the organization of my projects over the past year, and I hope it can help some of you as well.
