NOODLETOOLS Note Cards All note card instruction was obtained from the Noodletools User Guide

What are note cards? They are e-index cards with some advantages: – Access notes from any computer – Link notes to your sources to avoid plagiarism – Create notes to reflect your own ideas that are not linked to a source – Organize note cards to help clarify thoughts and make connections – Share notecards with students and instructor

Note-taking strategies Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author. Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from source material into your own words. A paraphrase must also be attributed to the original source. Paraphrased material is usually shorter than the original passage, taking a somewhat broader segment of the source and condensing it slightly. Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s). Once again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to the original source. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the source material. Driscoll, Dana Lynn, Allen Brizee. “Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing." The Purdue OWL. Purdue Online Writing Lab, 15 Feb Web. 5 March 2013.

Example of paraphrasing Original Passage “Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes.” Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. (1976): Paraphrase In research papers students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to the desirable level of 10% of the final draft. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim. More than one main idea is included. (desired level of quotes AND when over-quoting usually occurs.)

Summarizing Original Passage “Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes.” Summary Students should take just a few notes in direct quotations from sources to help minimize the amount of quoted material in a research paper. One main idea is covered. The 10% level and overuse of direct quotes is not included.

Summarizing Original Passage “Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes.” Plagiarized Version Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the American University, Academic Support Center, Writing Lab, updated 2009 final copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes. The structure and vocabulary use in this passage is too similar to the original.

Creating a notecard Can be created from Bibliography or Notecards screen in Noodletools *if notecard is created in Bibliography screen, notecard will be associated with a particular citation

From Bibliography Screen Click the NEW link in the “Notecards” column of the source From Notecards Screen Click New Card button (top left of Notecard tabletop)

Creating Notecard Provide: – Unique title – Source of the note (if any) – i.e. select citation you already created from drop down list (only if creating notecard on Notecard screen) – URL – Pages from which the quote was retrieved – Tags – Direct quotes – Paraphrases and personal notes/comments/questions

TAGS A way to identify and label concepts/important ideas within each notecard. Help to identify recurring facts, themes and data that may be important. Help to locate a notecard quickly that contains a particular tag. Tags characteristics *can be keywords (e.g. climate, food, eyes) *can be a phrase (chemical_threat, life_cycle) *can have a number of tags for one notecard *can assign tag to a number of notecards *Multi-word tags must be enclosed in quotations or joined by an underscore (e.g. “chemical threat” or chemical_threat

Adding or deleting tags Control-click on notecard you wish to add or remove a tag from (cards will be highlighted in yellow) Click the TAGS dropdown box at top of screen. Select the “Tags’ option to display list of existing tags. Put mouse over the desired tag and select APPLY or REMOVE

Edit Notecard From Bibliography screen – Click EDIT button in top right corner of notecard From Notecard screen – Double-click on the notecard or hover mouse over it and click the EDIT link button in the pop-up summary.

Linking Notecard to a source From Bibliography Screen – When you create notecard in bibliography screen, it is automatically associated with the source you are working with From Notecard Screen – Select the source from a dropdown list when creating notecard **Hint – to change source associated with several notecards at one time, highlight (control-click) the notecards you want to change on the NOTECARDS screen and click the LINK TO SOURCE button.

Notecard Piles Group of notecards that share a common theme, important idea, or center on a specific topic On NOTECARDS screen, a pile is represented as a stack of notecards with a number on the front that indicates the number of notecards in the pile.

Create Notecard Pile Can only be created on Notecard screen To create new pile for 2 notecards – Drag and drop one notecard onto another on the Notecard Tabletop – A NEW PILE window will appear asking for pile title. Enter brief but unique title and click OK. Create new pile for many notecards – Control-click on notecards or pile on tabletop that you want to combine into an new notecard pile. The selected notecards will appear in yellow – Click the ADD TO PILE button at top of screen – In pop-up window, select CREATE NEW PILE and provide a new title. – Click SUBMIT and new2 pile will appear in “New Notecards” region. Drag and drop new pile onto tabletop.

Reorder Notecards in a pile Hover mouse over notecard pile and click EXPAND link Click on notecard within pile and drag-and- drop into new location within the pile.

Search Notecards To find notecards linked to a specific bibliographic source or have keywords, tags, colors, etc. you are interested in:

Printing Notecards On Notecards screen, click PRINT button about the Notecard tabletop Select “Export as Web page (HTML file) or Export to Word (RTF file) Important – if you export as an RTF file, all graphics and formatting will be lost. If you want to keep the formatting, choose “Export as Web Page, then copy/past Web Page into word document. Choose to either export all notecards, selected notecards, or notecards from a pile On NOTECARD ITEMS TO PRINT window, chose the notecard elements you want to include in the exported file. Click SUBMIT