Catshanghai

Here is the copy from my weekly ICT column in the school newsletter.

I have seen students use lots of different tools and methods to take notes when they are researching information from the Internet.

The most common method I have seen is to copy and paste extracts on to a Word document. There is nothing wrong with this, but there is a danger that the copied text will appear in a piece of work without a link or reference. It can also be difficult to keep track of old documents and you have to open up a new program to start taking notes. This takes time and interrupts workflow.

I have listed some of my favourite tools that make notetaking on the Internet fun and more effective.

Delicious Bookmarking
Delicious is a social bookmarking site, which means you can use it to keep all of your weblinks organised on the Internet. If you find a useful page, you can bookmark it, add some notes and searchable keywords called tags that make it easy to remember what you have been looking at later. Delicious has a plugin, which you can download into your browser to bookmark a page without having to go to another website or open a different program.

Google Notebook
If you have a Gmail or google account, you can write and store notes that can be viewed at any computer with an Internet browser. I find this very useful for making a quick record of a telephone number or idea when I am looking at a page.

Stikkit
Stikkit is similar to Google notebook except that it reads your text and organises it into addresses, calendar events and todo lists. It knows what I mean when I write the following note:

Meeting with Britney Spears
On Friday at 11:30
Britney Spears: 861352865444
Britney Spears: Britney@Britney.com

It knows that I have a meeting with Britney on Friday at 11:30. This will be put in my calendar. It will also know that I am adding a new contact called Britney Spears, including her telephone number and address.

Imified
Imified runs inside your Internet Messaging program. It works with MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk. You can then use your chat program to login to your favourite websites to add or view data very quickly. For example, I can add a new event to my Google calendar and make a note of a new task, which I need to complete that day. I use this, because it works on my cellphone.

Twitter
Twitter is a website that simply asks the question “What are you doing now?” in 140 characters or less. It is a cross between a blog post and a text message. A lot of people use it to tell the world about their cat’s fleas, but you can also use it to ask questions to a community of people who are following your twitter messages. I also use this on my cellphone.