The first website that I decided to explore and review was easybib.com. I have used easybib before, especially in college, but I didn't know all of its capabilities until now. If you sign up on the website, it takes you to an area where you can create "projects" for any research that you are doing. You then are able to create a Works Cited, start a journal where you can post notes, mindmap, or type out an outline.There is also a "paper" button that you can click on to begin typing a paper. The nice thing about this, is that EasyBib allows you to login to your Google account, so you can link a Google Doc straight to the project that you've been working on. That way, in every project, you could possibly have your outline/notes, Works Cited, and your paper all in one.
This website has an awesome availability for teachers to use if they have students complete research papers. Each student can create their own "project" on the site and complete the entire research assignment on easybib.com!
I think this site is easy to use and readily available for students. The major downside is that the developers are shutting down the "project" portion of the website on July 31st. I'm not sure why; maybe because not enough people are using it? Their main site, where you copy and paste information into boxes to create an MLA citation, doesn't say anything about creating a login to access other portions of their website. I'd really like to email their developers to ask some questions and explain my displeasure at this.
My second website that I wanted to explore some more was Google Docs. My school district is slowly becoming Google-powered, and students at the middle school level are getting Chromebooks this coming school year. Google Docs is not only Google's online version of Word Document, but it is also collaborative and saves automatically. Google has provided templates that allow you to create any kind of document that you would like to.
If a person allows others to view their document, they can also comment and edit the document. Once you open a Google Doc, you can also hit the "explore" button in the bottom right hand corner, which opens a panel in which you can look things up in another Google Doc or the Internet. This makes it incredibly easy for students to research anything they need to without ever leaving their Document. I also like the feature that Google Docs can be linked to other Docs, so you can create a trail, or linked information through the Documents.What I really like about this application is that it is collaborative, and changes are made in real time. It is also continuously saved, so there is not fear of losing new work. Teachers would be really interested to know that there is an option to "see revision history" of any document that you can see. Because students may use Google Docs to collaborate (especially in a group setting in a classroom), teachers can use this tool to see who has done what work.... a.k.a. if the work was shared evenly among participants.
I think this is great to use in the classroom. It's easy, it's free, it's collaborative, and students can CREATE using any of the features on Google Docs!
The last resource that I'm reviewing is easel.ly, which is an application that is for the more visual learner. Here, you can create beautiful infographics and posters.You begin by picking from one of their numerous templates, and then you can customize it to your linking. It can get a bit complicated with the customizing feature, so it might not be the best option for students/teachers who aren't very tech savy.The other point of contention with me is that it does not save automatically; you have to manually save your work, which can get monotonous, or students might completely forget to do it.
Once students are finished creating their inforgraphic, they can export it as a PDF, or they can present their document, which basically means that the website makes the background around the inforgraphic black. All in all, it's not the most intuitive website, and although it's really nice that students can create posters and infographics online and from a certain amount of templates, it would be nice if they could have more simplified options and more options for exporting/sharing the completed project.
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