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Organizing info for Research Report on Computer?


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So, we used to use note cards.  ...

My son no longer uses note cards and has excellent work, but he is good at organizing and synthesizing.

My dd who has dyslexia informs me that for her upcoming reports she also plans to use only her computer to take her notes, organize and then write the report...I tried to argue the point that for certain people, using the old fashioned, hands-on approach is not a dead thing, and can still be better.  But, she insists....

So...Is there a better way than just using Google Docs and trying to keep it all straight in multiple documents?

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You know I hadn't thought of asking my hubby until this evening, which is funny since he works at a tech company and lives and breathes technology...lol

He recommended Scrivener and it looks like it'll be perfect. It's expensive but we feel it's important to provide our daughter with whatever tools she needs that may help her!

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1 hour ago, Calming Tea said:

You know I hadn't thought of asking my hubby until this evening, which is funny since he works at a tech company and lives and breathes technology...lol

He recommended Scrivener and it looks like it'll be perfect. It's expensive but we feel it's important to provide our daughter with whatever tools she needs that may help her!

The good thing about Scrivener is that they offer a long free trial period. 

We tried it for quite a while, primarily hoping to use it as an organizational tool like you, and in the end I just could not figure out how to make it meet our needs.  I wanted the cards to hold snippets of information gleaned from various sources - a fact, a quote, an interesting idea, etc.  Instead, the cards seemed designed to hold sections of text once it was written.  I can see that that would be useful for moving around paragraphs and sections, but it didn't offer us the grouping and organizing abilities that we were looking for.

Wendy

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Probably not very helpful but my dd uses different color text for different sections and/or types of notes within a single document.  Then she cuts and pastes them into her outline and goes from there.  She has done the notecard method too and finds this similar but less time consuming.

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10 hours ago, skimomma said:

Probably not very helpful but my dd uses different color text for different sections and/or types of notes within a single document.  Then she cuts and pastes them into her outline and goes from there.  She has done the notecard method too and finds this similar but less time consuming.

I would recommend something like this as well. You can keep one copy intact and make a copy that you use for cut and paste. At the end, the intact copy can be used to verify that all the information was cited properly and ended up in the proper place. 

I suggest inserting a page break for each new resource, and at the top of the page have the source information (full citation). Color code each page by source. 

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