A Must Have Resource for Student Researchers and Academics

August 6, 2014
Today as I was working on a paper for my PhD course "Foundations of Education Inquiry" it dawned on me to share with you this wonderful resource I am constantly drawing on to help me with referencing and citations. Online Writing Lab is an online website that provides free guidelines and rules on a variety of research topics including  how to reference your papers using both MLA and APA styles. Although nothing replaces having an official MLA or APA guide book, OWL does prove to be handy.

The great thing about OWL is that it provides you with pointers and short samples and examples of how to go about using citations and references in your paper.You can use the entries on the left hand side to quickly jump to any section you have trouble with. OWL also provides general guidelines on how to prepare and format papers and manuscripts in both MLA and APA. These guidelines are a must read for anyone engaged in scholarly work. Head over to OWL and spend sometime browsing through its content and I am pretty sure you will love it, at least I do.

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A Great Collection of Web Tools for Researchers and Academics

July, 2014
Here is a wonderful resource packed full of digital tools to help student researchers. DiRT ( Digital Research Tools) Directory is a registry of digital tools for scholarly use. The purpose behind this project is to help individuals "conducting digital research to find and compare resources ranging from content management systems to music OCR, statistical analysis packages to mindmapping software."

DiRT provides a wide variety of web tools arranged under different headings. In each category is featured a set of web tools that relates to it. And each of the tools cited is annexed with a short description and a link to its homepage.  I have been sifting through some of these tools and found them really great. Using these tools will definitely save you a lot of the hassle that comes about with doing academic or any other kind of research.

Check out the DiRt Directory from this Link.

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Great Research Tools for Teachers and Students

April , 2014
Knowing how to research and find the information you seek is an important skill. Fortunately, the Internet is a vast font of knowledge. The trick is in using the right tools. Here are a few that can aid learners in their search for answers.


1- instaGrok 

 Research any topic with an interactive concept map that you can customize and share. Watch this video to learn more about InstaGrok.

2- Colwiz 

Aimed at the university level, this free app helps students through the full research to publication process. Watch this video to learn more about Colwiz.

3- SweetSearch 

This search engine for students searches through 35,000 carefully chosen primary sources. Watch this video to learn more about SweetSearch.

4- DocsTeach 

Helps students find and understand how to use primary sources. Includes activities built from these sources too. Watch this video to learn more about DocsTeach

5- Boolify 

 Become an expert web searcher by using this visual tool to construct complex Google search queries. Watch this video to learn more about Boolify.

6- Scrible 

Finally, bookmark, annotate, and tag all the online documents you've found using this helpful free tool. Watch this video to learn more about Scrible.

Want more? Check out these collections :

Search Engines & Research Tools 

This collection is curated by Coordinator of Learning Technologies Kathryn White, a.k.a. Digital Girl.

Research Tools 

This one features  research tools for primary school students curated by teacher librarian Julia Boulton.

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