Taking notes for a research paper?

[yvonne]

My oldest have an 8-10 page history paper to write. I'm having such a hard time helping them find a system of taking notes that works and is efficient for them. 

 

How does your student take notes for a research paper today? 

 

Most of my friends took notes on index cards. I never used index cards, just took notes on notebook paper and color coded the info for different topics with colored pencils. This worked great for me, but I'm sure most of my friends would think I was crazy. I thought they were crazy trying to manage those monster stacks of index cards. I know it is purely personal preference, but I don't know how to help my students figure out what works best for each of them & they're in crunch mode. (Yep! Should have done this in junior high! Working with my daughter on it now.)

 

Does anyone's student use an app for making electronic index cards?

 

Does anyone or anyone's student just take notes on notebook paper?  How do you/they organize the notes on notebook paper?

 

Do you/your student find the paper index cards the easiest option?

 

 

[2_girls_mommy]

In high school and college I was taught and graded on using the index card method.  Personally taking notes on paper works fine for me as well, but we always had to turn them in to get checked at some point even in English 2 in college. I am a natural list maker and can  organize my notes into an outline, grouping like things together later, so for classes where I didn't have to turn in the cards I didn't always use the cards.  BUT, I have my 8th grader take them to note cards the way R&S is teaching her, the way I was taught, so that she is familiar with the method. 

[yvonne]

Thanks!  Have you seen/tried any electronic index card apps?

[JennyD]

Thanks!  Have you seen/tried any electronic index card apps?

 

 

I write research papers and am on a perpetual search for a good electronic index card application.  I have been using Circus Ponies Notebook for years -- it isn't perfect, but I have not yet found anything I like better.  This thread reminds me that I should look around again, though.  

 

Edited April 17, 2016 by JennyD

[JanetC]

You might look into attaching your notes to a citation manager like Zotero or CiteULike?

 

There are electronic index cards in Noodle Tools, but honestly, I thought the product was awful to use.

 

Do you have a particular reason you want electronic index cards? There are some generic online note systems like OneNote and Evernote with free tiers.

[yvonne]

You might look into attaching your notes to a citation manager like Zotero or CiteULike?

 

There are electronic index cards in Noodle Tools, but honestly, I thought the product was awful to use.

 

Do you have a particular reason you want electronic index cards? There are some generic online note systems like OneNote and Evernote with free tiers.

 

I don't have a real reason for an electronic index cards. We didn't have computers when I was in college, so I was wondering if there was some new, better, miraculously efficient way to manage notes now that computers are ubiquitous. My handwriting is terrible, as is my children's, so I was thinking electronic might be better than handwritten.

 

I've heard of OneNote & Evernote. I'll have to try working with them to see what they can do. New apps are always kind of a steep learning curve for me.

 

Thanks for the ideas!

ETA: Is either of those (OneNote or Evernote) any easier or more straightforward to use than the other? 

Edited April 17, 2016 by yvonne

[hornblower]

The serious peeps seem to be using Evernote.   I didn't use it with dd (already in post sec) and she has been muddling along without it so far but I'm really tempted to to implement this next year with ds. 

Here's a brief blurb about it https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2014/04/14/5-tips-use-evernote-academic-achievement/ 

& an index of lots of articles about how to use all the features it has: https://storify.com/nic221/how-academics-and-scholars-are-using-evernote

[yvonne]

Thanks for the links, Hornblower!  Helps to have a starting point.

[Hoot]

I always used the index card method and have taught ds to do the same. I prefer being able to lay the cards out by paragraph and see where I need more information, have too much or redundant information, and even physically manipulate the cards on the floor to build paragraphs. It often helped me to see if a fact would be better placed in a different paragraph long before I started writing.

[JanetC]

The OneNote model is to organize as you go, with sections and subsections of pages in your notebook.

In Evernote, the model is to dump everything in and use search or tags to find it later.

 

Evernote is more polished on Mac than PC.

OneNote is more polished on PC than Mac.

 

Both companies are trying to be strong on both platforms, and Evernote is pretty close to this ideal. OneNote on the Mac frustrates me when I want to embed documents like I do on a PC and it won't work.

[elegantlion]

I'm working on a research paper right now and using the index card method. It's driving me crazy, actually. I usually do notes on paper with a different page for each general topic. I decided to try it this way and it's making the whole process feel fragmented and scattered. Next time I'll stick with paper.

 

I am using some tips that have been helpful. I made my bibliography first and then coded each resource with initial of author last name (none overlapping thankfully) and a number. So if I had a resource by SWB it would B1. So when I write the reference note I head it as B1 and the page no, so I don't have to write out the entire name of the source. 

 

I also had a brief outline, so I knew where in the paper each reference might go, so the cards are divided in 5 sections. 

[Luckymama]

My kids have used EasyBib to format their bibliographies. EasyBib now has new "essay tools" for researching and writing papers. Dd used them for her most recent research paper and found them to be essentially like paper index cards that she could type on, edit, and manipulate.

 

http://content.easybib.com/guides/

 

She hated using paper index cards and found notetaking in a word document to be clunky and disorganized. She'll use the EasyBib tools for her next paper.

[MerryAtHope]

Most of my friends took notes on index cards. I never used index cards, just took notes on notebook paper and color coded the info for different topics with colored pencils. This worked great for me, but I'm sure most of my friends would think I was crazy. I thought they were crazy trying to manage those monster stacks of index cards. I know it is purely personal preference, but I don't know how to help my students figure out what works best for each of them & they're in crunch mode. (Yep! Should have done this in junior high! Working with my daughter on it now.)

 

Easy to lose an index card though. I like paper too, only instead of color-coding, I used numbers in circles--all #1's went with one topic, all #2's with another, and so on. I try to do headings on the top of a page to organize from the get-go, but sometimes it doesn't work that smoothly for me, and the numbers clarify later on.

 

If they write on just one side of the notebook paper, they can always cut it up later if they need the ability to lay things out like index cards--best of both worlds to me.

 

I actually think the big time-saver is to get all of the bibliography info needed up front--index cards or notebook or computer really won't matter if they forget and have to go back to find a page number, to remember if something was an exact quote, to get the publisher or date etc... It's really a pain to have to figure some of those things out later. 

Edited April 17, 2016 by MerryAtHope