Research Resources: Utilizing EdTech to Work Smarter

Research projects are a cornerstone in any secondary curricula. New standards on Research skills are not merely for ELA or Mathmatics classes. Whatever your subject, we need to teach, model, and allow students to demonstrate mastery of research skills. Educational Technology can assist in this process in numerous ways. Below is a list of various apps, extensions, web services, and resources that you can incorporate into whatever research project you assign next.

Brainstorming & Organization Resources - That all important first phase that puts and keeps students on track

• Make Checklists in Google Docs
• Create a concept Map in Google Drawing
• Google Keep (They already have this) - Create checklists on tasks needed to complete when planning a project, collaborate with other students, and get reminders sent across their devices
• Mindmup - Mindmaps on your Chromebooks
• Popplet - Web and iPad app that allows you to create multi-media mindmaps
• Wunderlist - App & Extension - Create dynamic to-do lists for students to stay on task when planning a project

Note taking Resources - Use to type up ideas and arguments or counter-arguments for tpics raised in the project

• Google Keep - add notes quickly 
• Sticky notes - see my previous post on sticky notes
• Super Simple Highlighter - kinda self explanatory, but students can highlight info on web pages and they stay on the page when they return to them later after closing their tab
• VideoNot.es - synchronize their note taking with any video they are tasked with watching. Notes are saved in Google Drive
• Evernote - Evernote is an excellent educational research for keeping organized on projects. It operates like a Digital Notebook where students have the ability to take notes and clip sites and documents on the web related to their research topic. Web-version, Chromebook App, Extension, and mobile apps for all your devices

Information Collection Resources - Locate and save sources for the project

• Feedly - Curate content from around the web around a single topic or tag. The mobile app allows for syncing with the web account. Students can have the information come to them
• Google Keep - again...this thing is awesome
• Padlet - When students would work on research projects, I'd often have them save evidence from a website that was useful for them. Padlet works well for this as an online, collaborative corkboard of sorts. So if there is a group research project, students can be working on the same Padlet together
• Evernote - Again...powerful tool

Citation Resources - Gotta make sure credit goes to where it belongs

• Chrome Extensions - Cite This For Me and EasyBib will give the proper citation of websites instantly in different styles 
• Citation Machine - Books, Magazines, Websites, Journal, Film? No problem...this free web service can do that for your students in thousands of styles (Turabian? Hmmmmm)
• BibMe - Works like Citation Machine

Presentation Tools - Speaking & Presenting standards need to be met as well

• We Video App - Students create Digital Stories ...think iMovie or Movie Maker only the Chromebook version
• Bunkr - Web presentation software where students can embed a ton of content from code, to interactive graphs, social media posts and more! It looks and presents everything nice and clean 
• Weebly - Students can create their own websites and portfolios in a drag and drop fashion!
• Infographics - these are great products to create depending on the research project ad purpose of the presentation. This would be an excellent presentation option for Technical Writing research projects. The best web resources for this is Easel.ly, Canva, and Piktochart