Teaching for Information Literacy

 
Organizing information

• Utilize a variety of visual organizers
• Take notes using point form and paraphrasing
• Create an outline
• Tag and describe bookmarks using a social bookmarking tool

Taking Notes

Note Cards - examples
Taking Notes - using the notecard method

The following two links are from Debbie Abilock's NoodleTools - many ideas and links for teaching students to paraphrase, quote and summarize.

• Big Ideas of Note Making and Note Taking
• Note Making and Note Taking Links

Research Building Blocks: Notes, Quotes, and Fact Fragments (Grade 3 - 5)
The students learn the importance of finding the words in sentences and paragraphs that contain the facts they need for compiling their research. The students then move to putting those notes into their own words, avoiding plagiarism. Embedded in this lesson is an online activity where students can participate in the fact finding process.

Online Note-taking tools

ReadWriteThink Notetaker (Grade 3 - 5)
This hierarchical outlining tool allows students to organize up to five levels of information for reading and writing activities. During or after reading, the Notetaker can be used to compile and organize reading notes, research, and related ideas. During the writing process, students can use the tool to organize their information and plan texts in the prewriting stage and to review and structure their ideas during writing and revision.

Ubernotes - This web-based application focuses on just one thing; helping you write and then find your notes. A review of this application can be found at School Library Journal.

Best4C - online diagram tool that allows you to create, edit and share charts

Google Notebook
Clip and collect information as you browse the web:

• Clip useful information.
  You can add clippings of text, images and links from web pages to your Google Notebook without ever leaving your browser window.
  
• Organize your notes.
  You can create multiple notebooks, divide them into sections, and drag-and-drop your notes to stay organized.
  
• Get access from anywhere.
  You can access your Google Notebooks from any computer by using your Google Accounts login.
  
• Publish your notebook.
  You can share your Google Notebook with the world by making it public.

NoteStar from 4Teachers
Designed specifically for students in grade 4 - 12 NoteStar is an Internet utility to assist in the preparation of research papers. Teachers and students can set up research projects with topics and sub-topics. Students may then take advantage of NoteStar's many features to collect and organize their notes and prepare their bibliography page.

The article Hitting the Books in McGill Reporter, Jan 2008 recommends the following two tools:

MyNoteIt
A note-taking tool for students that allows you to take notes directly in the web interface, or upload existing Word or OpenOffice documents, scanned images, handwritten notes and audio files into a searchable database. Also features an assignment calendar, a to-do list, a grade-tracker and add-ons for Facebook and cellphones.

Notecentric

An online note-taking application for Facebook. Its capabilities seem to be more limited than mynoteIT, but it has the advantage of operating through one of the best-known destinations on the web.

Creating the Outline

Using Outlines - this article discusses how to use outlines at the different states of the research including the working outline, the pre-writing outline and creating an outline to hand in.