Getting There

Meeting with our American History teachers this morning to iron out the big paper requirement brought out that the teachers offered their students a choice to use the online bibliography/notecard creator NoodleTools or do them all by hand. They thought that either would serve the purpose, as that is the way they learned and it worked for them 20 years and 5 years ago. Very tactfully, I tried to convince the teachers that letting the technology work for the students and remove the tedium from the process would leave them more time to work with the intellectual material. I reminded them how long it took them to find the proper format in the MLA guide and then to try to replicate it along with the correct punctuation and order. If students create citations by hand, their chances of error are great. I saw their expressions change as they realized that I might be correct. I also told them that colleges offered the electronic service to their students and that The University of Texas used NoodleTools. They relented and agreed that students would use NoodleTools for their bibliographies. The notecards… well, I still have some work to do!