Web
2.0 Assignment – Exploring NoodleTools
Klaasje
Prins
EDUC
3239
Lakehead
University
Table
of Contents
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………….
page 3
NoodleTool Versions.…………………………………………………………………………..
page 3
AACRT Template - Access, Analyze, Create,
Reflect, Take Action .……….... pages 4 – 7
User
Guide………………………………………………………………………………………… pages 8-16
Within the user guide:
System Requirements………………………………………………………………………. page 8
Getting Started………………………………………………………………………………… page 8
Overview of Personal
Folders…………………………………………………………... page 9
Creating a New
Project……………………………………………………………………. page 10
Dashboard………………………………………………………………………………………
page 12
Adding Citations………………………………………………………………………………
page 12
Recovering a Citation……………………………………………………………………….
page 13
Notecards………………………………………………………………………………………...
page 14
Creating an
Outline………………………………………………………………………….. page 15
The Paper………………………………………………………………………………………..
page 16
Reflection………………………………………………………………………………………..
page 17
References………………………………………………………………………………………
page 18
Noodletools
Introduction
NoodleTools
is a web-based program that has tools for note taking, creating outlines,
making annotated bibliographies, and collaborative research and writing. There
is no software required for this program; only a web browser is required. The recommended Internet browsers are Google
Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Internet Explorer. NoodleTools has “unparalleled citation
tools”, according to the website.
Teachers can actually monitor student’s contributions to a project and
give feedback that is visible on a student’s home dashboard.
NoodleTools Versions
NoodleTools MLA Lite (free)
NoodleTools
MLA Lite can be accessed right on the NoodleTools homepage. It is free, albeit it is limited to MLA
style, Junior level projects, elementary-level citation subsets, and citation
features only.
NoodleTools Express (free)
NoodleTools
Express is made for students who just need one or two quick citations. The downside is citations cannot be saved
into a source list; however, the entire range of citation types is available
(APA, MLA, and Chicago/Turbian).
NoodleTools Premium (annual
subscription)
To
access the subscription version of NoodleTools – with total coverage of MLA,
APA, and Chicago styles) can be accessed with the sign-in button on the NoodleTools
homepage. If you are accessing
NoodleTools form your library or school, you may be told to use a customized
login link for that school or library.
AACRT Template - Access, Analyze, Create, Reflect, Take Action
(Adapted by H. DeWaard from R. Hobbs, Digital and Media
Literacy: Connecting Culture and Classroom, Corwin Press, 2011.)
Student Name:
|
Klaasje Prins
|
|
Name of Software / Web 2.0 Tool
|
NoodleTools
|
|
Access
|
Where do you get it?
Do you download? Where does it save?
|
It is a Web-based tool, so no downloading required. It is not downloadable and does not save
anywhere. You must have internet
access to login.
|
How do you access (web, hard drive, server)?
What information do you need to follow acceptable use agreements
and information guidelines?
|
You access NoodleTools via the web.
In order to follow acceptable use agreements and
information guidelines, you need to: register your information and pay for a
subscription – if you are a student and your school pays for it, your
subscription is free – individuals under 13 must have their parent or
guardian pay for an individual subscription; if you breach terms of service
NoodleTools has the right to terminate your account; NoodleTools may modify
the listed terms at its discretion; NoodleTools may add, remove, change its
contents without notice or liability to users; the users are responsible for
the content of their messages and the consequences of theses messages
(NoodleTools can terminate your messages if you violate any of the following:
using another subscriber’s information, post harassing, unlawful, sexually
oriented, profane, vulgar – unless within the extent of the
topic area of a message board as determined by NoodleTools – racially
offensive language, or anything that could give rise to a criminal
offense. NoodleTools has the right to
delete such content and will fully cooperate with law enforcement
personnel. You must agree to not
impersonating another person or entity.
You cannot use NoodleTools to post, distribute, or send illegal
material of any kind, including but not limited to, illegal material in the
form of text, graphics, video, programs or audio. To sign up, you must recognize
that NoodleTools permits access to content that is protected by copyrights,
trademarks and other intellectual and proprietary rights.
With regard to third-party services,
you may order or purchase services through NoodleTools from other persons not
affiliated with NoodleTools.
You are responsible for the
confidentiality of your username and password and must notify NoodleTools of
unauthorized use to your password or subscription. You must agree that using NoodleTools is at
your risk. There is no guarantee that
the site will not crash, have errors, or have omission in material. NoodleTools is not responsible for any
damage or loss caused indirectly or directly caused by ideas suggested by
NoodleTools and is not responsible for any other content that occurs on the
World Wide Web. NoodleTools is not
liable with regard to any sort of damages.
You agree not to harm any of the
associates of NoodleTools and that they are harmless from any claim or
demand, including attorney fees. The
Terms of Service shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the
laws of the State of California. When
you sign up, you agree with the laws in this state. If you breach the Terms of Service, you may
receive an email warning, have any and or all content deleted, notify proper
law enforcement, and any other action that Noodle. Tools deems appropriate. If your account is terminated, you are not
prohibited to sign up under a different account name and password. NoodleTools has the right to change charges
or cost at any time.
|
|
Analyze
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Who could use it? What questions will you ask yourself as you
learn about this software?
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Teachers, students, and
any individuals could use
it.
Questions I will ask myself as I use and
learn about this software are: how accurate are the citation tools? How would this resource work for me as a
teaching professional? What grades is
Noodletools suitable for?
|
When would you use it? For what purpose? What value does it add
to your digital presence?
|
I would use this tool for doing any paper or
my thesis as it has different levels for different users (example Starter to
Advanced).
It is a tool for setting up your research,
doing your research, making citations, and finally doing your paper.
The value this tool adds to my digital
presence is that it helps stress the importance of citing where you got your
work from, whether it be a picture, media file, journal article, report
etc. NoodleTools has the ability to
help you site any sort of information or picture
that might be used. It makes me aware of how important it is to cite,
even for my blog.
|
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Create
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What does it do? How easy or intuitive is it?
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NoodleTools allows
you to create your research question and or hypothesis; you can turn on
public access if you want to share your project with others.
A teacher can align their dropbox up with the site so that
students can efficiently drop their project to the teacher when it is
finished. The program is actually
great for group projects; from the Dashboard, students and teachers can
add/remove students from a group. The
students in the group can share their work amongst each other.
NoodleTools also has a great citation-making section for
MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turbian Styles. With that, it has an annotated bibliography
feature for citations.
|
Where/how can you show your finished work?
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You can export you finished reference list to a word document.
A teacher can also set up NoodleTools so that students can
submit finished work right to the dropbox.
|
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Reflect
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Where would you use it as a teacher - subject, topic, grade? How
can you use it professionally?
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I imagine myself using NoodleTools for grade two or three
and up. NoodleTools has an easy
starter verion for younger children and would be a great tool to stress the
importance of citing our sources from a young age. It would help students cite in a fun and
organized manner.
Professionally, I can use NoodleTools for any
vocation.
|
What steps would you take to integrate it into your digital
repertoire?
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I already use NoodleTools.
However, if I was a new user, to integrate NoodleTools into my digital
repertoire I would become familiar with the program, use it often, and play
around with the different features until I felt fully comfortable using
it.
|
|
Take Action
|
Personal or professional uses? For what purpose? For what
audience?
How are privacy, copyright, fair use issues addressed?
|
NoodleTools really can be used for both
professional and personal use. A
teacher can use it for professional use (i.e. citing sources for Powerpoints for use in class), while students can use it for
personal use, for help with all the stages of a research project.
|
Will you use it, sign up or open an account?
Why or why not?
|
I actually already have an account! I love
NoodleTools; it is the best citation-making program
I have ever used. It walks you through
how to properly make citations with pop-up bubbles that come up if you made
an error or if there is interesting information about what you are
doing.
|
|
User
Guide
System Requirements
NoodleTools is a web-based tools,
meaning one needs the Internet to access and edit their work. NoodleTools has been designed to work with
any graphical Web browser, although NoodleTools, Inc. recommends:
·
Google Chrome: All recent versions
·
Mozilla Firefox: Version 4.xand higher
·
Safari Version 4.x and higher
·
Microsoft Internet Explorer: Versions
8.x and higher
To use NoodleTools, you must have both cookies and JavaScript
enabled in your browser.
Getting Started
NoodleTools.
(2015). Login [Screenshot]. Retrieved from http://www.noodletools.com/
The above picture is a picture of the login screen.
Login
To log into an
individual account, first click the sign-in button on the NoodleTools home
page. Enter your personal ID and password
(your personal ID is NOT case sensitive; your password IS case sensitive). Clicking the checkbox titled
“Remember me” will
direct NoodleTools to save your login information, so that the next time you
visit NoodleTools, your personal ID and password will be automatically
filled. If your login is successful,
you will see your account open.
Group
subscribers follow the same procedure, except there may be a NoodleTools link
on your school’s home or webpage. There
also is a special login page that you will fill in with your school’s unique
login and password before you fill in your individual account.
Overview of Personal Folders
When
you first open your account, you will see a page that says My Projects, with all your project folders.
NoodleTools.
(2015). My Projects [Screenshot]. Retrieved from http://www.noodletools.com/
From
here, you can select the project you are working on or create a new
project. You can merge several projects
into a single project. Also from this
page, classroom teachers can look at Projects
Shared with me area of the teacher’s own personal folder and monitor and
provide feedback to students.
Creating a New Project
NoodleTools.
(2015). Create a New Project [Screenshot]. Retrieved from http://www.noodletools.com/
After
you have hit the Create New Project from
the projects page, it will bring you to the above page that was
screenshot. You will select the citation
style (MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turbian) and what citation level that is most
appropriate for the user’s purpose.
Starter is great for younger primary years, Junior the end of elementary
school, and Advanced is meant for high school to university and beyond.
Note
– The free NoodleTools Lite is set for Junior, while Express is set for
Advanced.
When
you have created your project, it will appear in the My Projects table. The most
recently revised project will appear first, the rest following in descending
order. To edit any project, click the
hyperlink under Description; this
will bring you right to the project. Below are the column names above your project
in chart format. The meanings have been
put in table format for easier comprehension.
Column Heading
|
Meaning
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Description
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The name of your
project.
|
Style
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MLA, APA, or CHI
(Chicago)
|
Level
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Starter, Junior, or
Advanced
|
Entries
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Number of citations
in the source list
|
Notes
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Number of notecards associated with
the project (only visible if the notecards feature is enabled)
|
Created
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Date and time you
created the project
|
Modified
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Date and time you
last edited the project
|
Shared
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Indicates if you have shared your
project to a teacher’s dropbox and if feedback has been received
|
Collaborating
|
Indicates if other students are
working on a shared project
|
Dashboard
The
Dashboard provides a place to write a research question and thesis
statement. You can also see a 30-day log
of activity on any project. The
Dashboard provides information with regards to the assignment drop boxes. Here, you are able to create a to-do list to
keep track of tasks. You can also create
comments in the Dashboard.
Adding Citations
In the navigation bar, click Bibliography to begin adding citations
to a new project. With the dropdown list
Cite a: you can pick what type of
source you are citing.
To
create a citation, click the Create the
Citation button after you have picked the type of citation you are
using. Depending on the source you are
citing, a help screen may appear. After
you have proceeded to the citation form, fill in as many details as
possible. A formatting guide appears in
the top right corner; this will help you if you have any questions. Once you have filled out the form, click Submit.
Repeat the procedure for any sources you need to cite. At any time, you can edit a citation by
clicking the edit citation button.
To
remove a citation, you can click the delete button (located right beside the
edit button).
Recovering a Citation
To recover a deleted citation, click
the recycle button at the top of the screen.
You can select the citation you want to recover.
Notecards
The Notecards feature helps organize
and summarize information you find during the research process. The Notecards are basically “E-index cards”;
you can make necessary notes on them.
You
can see that you put the source of your reading in, the URL, the direct
quotation, and the paraphrase/ summary of the work. Putting the author’s original work in the
direct quotation part is very helpful in avoiding accidental plagiarism when
you summarize the work in your own terms.
Creating an Outline
The outline feature is in the
Notecards tabletop. The outline assists
with organizing your thoughts in such a manner that your target audience will
understand your final paper. The most
significant idea are labeled with Roman numerals (I, II, III) and indented
letter (A,B,C) are sub-thoughts.
You can associate a Notecard with an
outline by dragging the Notecard onto your outline. Once it is associated within an outline, you
can drag the Notecard around to where it best suits your thinking.
The Paper
Noodletools is associated with
GoogleDocs so that when you click Paper
in the navigation bar, a new screen will open with Google, prompting you to
sign in with a Google login (not your NoodleTools login). If your login was successful, another page
will open asking you to allow access to NoodleTools. Your paper will be already titled with the
title of your NoodleTools project if you do so.
Note
you can only have one GoogleDocs open at one time with a project.
With GoogleDocs, you
can share the paper with your teacher and collaborate with others.
Reflection
After reviewing NoodleTools in
depth, I believe it would be a great tool for the classroom and personal
use. I did have a NoodleTools account
prior to doing this project, however, I did not know how to use all the
features such as notecards and the GoogleDocs link for making a paper. The notecards feature is actually very
useful; I decided to try it out for another class project and it made
organizing my information very easy.
I do think NoodleTools has a purpose
for all age levels; albeit I do think the use should begin around Grade 2 or 3
with the Starter level of NodleTools.
Essentially, the Starter level would help students of this age begin to
understand the importance of citing other’s work. For high school students, I would most
definitely use NoodleTools. NoodleTools
assists in developing an understanding of how citations are made, rather than
just giving you a citation.
The privacy terms and user
agreements seem acceptable for school-use.
The terms ensure that bullying or slandering a name will not be
tolerated on NoodleTools, which is important for school use. Technology use is becoming more prevalent in
all situations, thus it is important to have relevant (and safe) tools for the
classroom. NoodleTools is evidently
from my research, a safe and relevant tool that I will be using as a future teacher.
References
NoodleTools.
(n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2015, from http://www.noodletools.com/
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