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updated 10/2009

Why

When you write a research paper and use information from a source other than your own brain – your own personal knowledge – you must give credit to each source.

When you’re writing a paragraph, each time your change sources you must cite the source you’re using before you begin using another source.

How – using Noodle

Create and save a Works Cited page.  When you save it, name it something like workscited_cheatsheet.

Leave your Works Cited page open and open another Internet Explorer window – not another tab, another whole Internet window!  Log into your Noodle account and open your research paper folder.

The list of your sources on the Noodle “bibliography” page is in the same alphabetical order as your Works Cited page in Word.  So, the first entry on the Noodle page is also the first entry on the Works Cited page; the second entry on the Noodle page is also the second entry on the Works Cited page, and so on.

So what you need to do is tile your windows. 

Right click on a blank area of your bottom task bar.  Choose tile vertically.  If it doesn’t work, try opening the Works Cited page (the Word document), leave it there and then click on Noodle, leave it there and click on the Works Cited page again.  Now try to tile your windows.

To actually make the cheat sheet:

On Noodle look at your first entry.  At the end of the line on the far right-hand side, you have the edit and parenthetical reference buttons (and a few more). 

Click parenthetical reference.  A box comes up with what you use to cite that source and it appears in parentheses.  “( _ )”  – these things!

Highlight what appears in parenthesis INCLUDING the parenthese AND the period at the end.

Now look at your Works Cited page, the Word document.  PASTE your citation on the blank line underneath the first entry.

I put a blank line after my citation, but that’s just me.  I like my entries separated a bit.

Repeat that process for all your sources. 

When you finish, go to Edit, select all.  Change the font to Times New Roman 12 and take off the italics.  (Those citations you copied and pasted won’t be in the right font.)

updated 10/2009

Alrighty, you are not supposed to have a header on the first page of your paper.  For this discussion, we are going to say that the first page of your paper IS the first page of your paper – not your title page, ok?

Hello, hello.  Hello?  Anyone out there?  Would someone please leave a comment?  Is anyone reading these words of wisdom?

(You did paste your Works Cited page in as the last page of your paper, didn’t you?  Well, you were supposed to.  It should be the last page of your paper and it should start at the very, very, very top of the page.  And the header should be on this page.)

Go ahead and print JUST page one of your paper BEFORE adding the header.  Go to file, print, and check the circle for pages and enter “1″ in the box.  Of course, if you are ON page one of your paper you can go to file, print, and check the circle for “current page” so that just your first page prints.

It has no header.

Now.  Add your header.

Print the remainder of your paper.  Go to file, print, and check the circle for pages and enter “2-X” —- X being the number of pages you have.  If you have six pages you’d put “2-6″ in that space.

That was not difficult was it?  Good luck, people.  It’s time like these that make me glad I’m old.

Read this post. 

Updated 11/2009

It takes a few steps and alot of copying and pasting, but you do not have to retype your paper if you’ve typed all your notecards into Noodle.  

To just go ahead and print your notecards because you want to retype everything into your paper (and that’s fine if you want to retype everything, it is YOUR paper after all!):

Click the “print” link located between the “delete” and “tag” buttons.

Choose “export to Word (rtf)” and submit

Export ALL notecards and submit

Choose OPEN and then you can print your notecards.

There’s your notecards.  They are in the order you placed them in, so make sure you put your notecards in order BEFORE you print them out or save them as a file.  If you have not done that, stop, go back and create “piles” of notecards and put each pile in order.  See the earlier post on creating piles of notecards.

To save your notecards to a Word document so you can just copy and paste everything over into your rough draft and NOT have to retype the notes:

Click the “print” link located between the “delete” and “tag” buttons.

Choose “export to Word (rtf)” and submit

Export ALL notecards and submit

Choose SAVE  – NOT open.  Remember WHERE you’re saving the file and name it something like    notecards_2009   and then click save.

If you’re given the option to click open once you save the file, go ahead and open.  If you don’t see that option, just open Word and open the file you just saved. 

There’s your notecards.  They are in the order you placed them in, so make sure you put your notecards in order BEFORE you print them out or save them as a file.  If you have not done that, stop, go back and create “piles” of notecards and put each pile in order.  See the earlier post on creating piles of notecards.

• Edit, select all
• Format, font, Times New Roman 12 or whatever is required for your paper
• Format, paragraph, line spacing, double
• Format, bulleting, choose the second option
• Format, bulleting, choose “none” 

These changes will make copying and pasting your notecards into your paper much easier.

Now, keep going . . .

To actually copy and paste your notes into your rough draft:

1. What you have open is a file named notecards (or something similar.) Now we want to save that same file AS YOUR ROUGH DRAFT.  No, I am not crazy.  Go to file, save as, and name this your rough draft.  Trust me.
2. You must cite your sources within the body of your paper.  It’s a really good thing if you’ve already put your parenthetical references on your notecards – you’ve already cited your sources!  YAY!!!  …

If you haven’t done this already, you will need to cite each source within a paragraph BEFORE switching to another source.  For example, if sentence 1 & 2 were taken from source A, then at the end of sentence 2 don’t put a period.  Space once after the last word of sentence 2 and in parentheses cite that source.  Put the period after the parentheses.  On to sentences 3, 4, & 5 of that same paragraph.  These came from source B.  Do the same thing.  At the end of sentence 5 don’t put a period.  Space once after the last word of sentence 5 and in parentheses cite that source.  Put a period after the parentheses.

3.  What I recommend you do is to CUT or DELETE all the stuff you don’t need.  Take it away.  Trash it.  Delete it off your document.   What you’re working from IS your notecards, but at this point you have cited your sources AND you have your notecards in the order you want them.  Take out all the titles, subheadings, source citations – NOT your parenthetical references at the end of your notes.  Take out the word “source” and the entry immediately following the word source.  See?  Look at your notes and you’ll see what I’m referring to.  Don’t shake your head.  Look at your notes and reread this #3.

I highly recommend that you hit the save button regularly throughout your copying process!

Combine your notes into paragraphs using the backspace key (duh) and create new paragraphs where needed. 

Once you’re done deleting all the junk, make sure you hit save, read your paper and add in transitional words or phrases to make the paper flow.  Look at where you’ve citied your sources within a paragraph.  Did you do all of that correctly?  Remember that you only stop and cite a source within a paragraph when you are CHANGING sources. 

If you used two notecards from the same source back to back in the same paragraph and the parenthetical reference is the same, you need only to incude that citation at the end of the second notecard.  That’s because you’re in the same paragraph and the parenthetical reference is the exact same.

Go.  Make it so.

updated 10/2009

Log in, open your list and this puts you on the Bibliography page.  Click the print button (see illustration below.) It’s the print button of the LEFT side of your screen.

Mrs. Reeves students:  On the Italics/Underlining line … if it doesn’t have “italics” then you should click “underlining” … and change it to italics.

Click Export and Print (it’s in green font.)

You’ll get the white bar toward the top that’ll flash blue when you scroll over it.  Scroll on top of it and while it’s blue, click and choose “download file.”  If you don’t see this blue bar … don’t worry about it.  Keep going to the next step.

Choose SAVE.

Name your file and save it somewhere you’ll be able to find it later!

If you want to see your Works Cited page choose OPEN and look at it.  If you don’t wanna see it right now, just click close.  REMEMBER WHERE YOU SAVED IT so you can find it later!  We named these files using our name and “workscited” in class.  For example, harrypotter_workscited.   If your Works Cited page did not open and you need it NOW, just open Word, locate the file you just saved, and open it !!!

Inserting this into your paper LATER  … (that would mean after you’ve completed all your notecards and when you have your paper completed, all 3-5 pages of it) …

After you type your paper and you’re at the END of your paper:

• hit the enter key until you get to a new page in your paper
• open this Works Cited file
• copy the whole thing including the title
• now paste it onto that new page in your paper (the new page you hit enter a million times to get to)

This way it’ll get the header that you’re required to put in your paper. 

Confused?  Good.  jk (just kidding)

updated 10/2009

The Big Picture

You’ve written about 35 notecards in Noodle or you have about 35 handwritten cards.  Now you need to wind up with a 5-6 page double-spaced Times New Roman 12 pt. paper.  What are you going to do with all those notecards?

Sort them. Sort them into piles accord to similar ideas – according to your outline.

Remember the biography paper example?  Make a pile of cards for family, another for education/training, and another for accomplishments/awards.  Three piles.  This first sorting is your Roman numerals. The first piles you’ll create are going to match the Roman numerals on your outline.  These are your major categories of information.

I.   Introduction

II.  Family

III. Education and training

IV. Accomplishments and awards

V. Conclusion

Your outline is a grade, but the piles are just to help you organize all the notecards into the proper sequence for your paper. 

Your outline is meant to help you organize all your information.  So, it makes sense to use the outline to create your piles. 

Once you have your main piles for the Roman numerals, then you need to orangize each pile.  Rearrange the order of the notecards in each pile so that they are sequenced in logical order.  This means organizing each pile according to the A, B, C, etc. for each Roman numeral of your outline. 

For example:

II.  Family

      A. Parents and siblings

     B. Spouse and children

It makes logical sense to put the notecards about the person’s parents and siblings first within the paragraph.  Then you would talk about the person’s spouse and children.  Place your notecards in order according to this logical train of thought!  It’ll be how you write your paper.  You want the notecards in the exact order that they’ll appear in your paper.  It t’will make life easier!

updated 10/2009

New Notecard

Alrighty.  Open your list.  Your sources should be listed.  Click “Notecards” on the menu bar at the top (where you have My Lists, Bibliography, Notecards, Help.) 

 Click “new notecard” on the top right. Then, a few reminders  …

Title – You must name your notecard.  Give it a title that tells what’s on the notecard.

Source – If you’ve entered your sources, use the drop-down menu to indicate which source you’re using.  You MUST include the source so you can cite the source within the body of your paper!

URL – If you are taking notes from a source on the Web, copy and paste the address line into this space (like a Web page or online journal/magazine article.)

Pages – For books you must include the page number(s) you’re taking notes from.  You will need this when you cite your sources within the body of your paper.   For magazines and journals, if you have the actual page numbers of the article, list the page number. 

Tags – If you’ll give your notecard a tag, you will be able to sort your notecards later according to these tags.  For example, you have a notecard about where the person went to college.  Tags would include: education, college.   Another notecard tells where this person went to elementary school.  Tags would include: education, elementary.  The card about the person’s high school would include: education, high school.  You have a second card about the person’s high school.  The tags for it would be:  education, high school. 

If you sort the cards according to education tags, you’ll be able to see just these four cards: one on elementary school, two on high school, and one on college.  Then you might decide all these cards should go in the sample pile.  Now you create a pile! (See blog post on Noodle – Piles.)

Direct Quotes & Paraphrases

For this research paper, do not use the direct quotation and the paraphrase notecard on the same screen.  If you are going to have both for the same source, then you need to create separate notecards.  You should have more than one notecard per source anyway (you “might” wind up with just one notecard for a source, but probably not.) 

Placing your direct quote and your paraphrase on separate notecards will allow you more flexibility in arranging your notes in order.  Take my word for it.

Go ahead and cite your source on your notecard. 

Direct Quote

For a direct quote, begin by typing in the quotation marks in the Direct Quote box.  Paste or type in your direct quote and remove the period from the last sentence of your quote.  Insert your parenthetical reference – where you got your source.  This is the information in parentheses that gives the author and page number or editor and page number.  If there was neither an author or editor, you’ll have an abbreviated version of the title in place of a person’s name.

The end punctuation goes AFTER the parentheses (like this).

You should introduce your quotation.  Do not just place a quotation in the middle of your paper without some type introduction.  No, no, no. 

If the quote comes from the author or editor of the book, you begin your sentence …

According to author (or editor if you’re using the editor because you didn’t have an author)  Debbie Reeves, “Your quote goes here” (50).  The page number goes inside parentheses.  Since Debbie Reeves wrote the book, you’ve already given credit to the author.

If the quote comes from someone in the book that is not the author, you begin your sentence . . .

According to Professor Melanie Kemp of Quitman High School, “Your quote goes here from the great librarian you wish to quote” (Reeves 50).  You are citing from a book Debbie Reeves wrote, but your quote was by someone other than the author.  You gave credit to the right person for the quote and must give credit to the author at the end of the sentence in your parenthetical reference.

Paraphrase

When you are summarizing or paraphrasing information from a source in your own words, you end the last sentence WITHOUT punctuation.  Then insert your parenthetical reference (the stuff in parentheses) and after the parentheses insert your period.  For example, this sentence ends with author and page number (Kemp 50).  Notice where the period is placed.

updated 10/2009

When you log into Noodle, you’ll be on the “List” page.  Click one of your lists and it opens you to the “Bibliography” page.  This is where you’ll enter the information about each of the sources you are using for the research project. 

From the drop-down list, choose the type of source you’re using and click CREATE CITATION.  Remember to read all the green questions AND the answer choices and select the best answer.  I think this is the most difficult part for students: taking the time to READ these questions AND the answers !!!

However (I wanted to start with “But,” but I figured English teachers would have a stroke!), if you really understand what makes a magazine a magazine and not a journal …. if you understand that a Web site has many Web “pages” … if you really understand that a book that has no author will most always have an editor … if you understand that when you use bits and pieces throughout a book you need to cite the whole book and not just one chapter … if you understand that the more you understand the smarter you are and the EASIER this whole process will be !!!  Now, read this really long post and all the others on Noodle and go forth and be smart.

Web Sites vs. Magazine & Journal Articles

Web sites are most always FREE unlike the journal articles you find in Academic Search Premier.  Our state legislature pays for your subscription to EBSCOhost through the MAGNOLIA site, so the journal and magazine articles you locate through these sites are considered subscriptions.  Web sites are FREE.  Journal and magazine articles are not Web sites !!!

Web Sites

If you’re using a particular page on the Internet, you need to cite that page giving the title of that Web page and the name of the Web site.  Look around the page and see if there’s a link to “home” … you need to cite the main Web SITE if your page is part of a bigger site.  So, let’s say you have a Web page and it’s part of a bigger Web site.  You’ll list the author and title of your Web ‘page” and you’ll also list the name of the Web “site” and list the author or organization responsible for the entire Web “site” … clear as mud?  Thought so.  If you are using multiple parts of a Web site, then cite the Web “site.”  When in college, check your MLA manual! 

Unique URLs

A Web site that you find through Google, Yahoo, Ask or other search engine is going to have it’s own Web site address.  That’s a unique URL, so check that box for Web sites. 

Magazine or Journal?  Which is it?

You have to choose between journal and magazine before you click CREATE CITATION.  A simple way of deciding is to ask yourself if you can buy it at Wal-Mart.  More than likely if you can buy it at Wal-Mart then it’s a magazine.  Journals are more professional.  They’re usually geared toward one subject area.   They’re more “scholarly” and educational-type.  Magazines are geared more toward pop culture, sorta. 

For Magazine and Journal Articles

Make sure you do read the questions folks, especially the one that asks if publication info (like page numbers & date of publication) is provided.  Look at your article and see.  More than likely that info IS available.  For the question or print or online … if you are using the magazine or journal itself, if you have a copy of the whole magazine/journal in your hands, then you’re answer is PRINT !!!  If you’re using EBSCOhost (going through MAGNOLIA) to get your article, then your answer is ONLINE.  Your magazine/journal is online which covers one this is only available online but also one that is in PRINT but also available online.

Books

Part or Whole:  Before you can cite the book you need to know if you’ll be using bits and pieces throughout the book or if you’re only going to be using one chapter. 

Whole book: You need to cite the author and if there’s no author you’ll need to cite the book editor.  If you have an author, don’t worry about the editor (for high school purposes-for college purposes consult your MLA manual.)

Part of a book: Ok.  If you’re using just a chapter or part of a chapter and there’s no book author but there is a chapter author, cite the editor of the book and the author of the chapter.  Include the title of the chapter in your citation.  When in Noodle or other citation maker, MAKE SURE you choose to create a citation for using “part of a book” and not an “entire book.”  Otherwise, Noodle (or other citation maker) won’t ask you for the chapter/article title and there’ll be nowhere for you to enter the author of that chapter. 

Multiple chapters: For high school purposes, when you’re using several chapters from a book, cite the book as the “entire book.”  For college, consult your MLA manual! 

Publication city: When multiple cities are listed, use the first city for high school purposes.

Publication date:  Use the most recent date when multiple dates are listed.

Encyclopedias: Juniors and Seniors are not allowed to use encyclopedias as a source on their research paper.  However, if you use a specialized encyclopedia from the reference section, that is an allowed source.  For example, several medical reference books are part of an “encyclopedia” set of four or more volumes.  When you cite those special encyclopedias, make sure you choose encyclopedia from the drop down list to create your citation.  Also, pay attention to the page where you enter information.  You most likely WILL have a volume number and sometimes you will have an “edition” listed.  Read the title page of your book carefully so that you include all relevant information for that source.

updated 10/2009

Remember, as a QHS student you have a Noodle account paid for for you by the library!  You’re welcome.  If you have not received a username and password through your English class, come see me in the library.  Or email me @ mkemp@qsd.k12.ms.us

To use Noodle for a research assignment you need to create a separate “list” for each assignment. 

You can use Noodle for your research assignments even if your teacher doesn’t know what Noodle is.  You can use Noodle even if your teacher does not REQUIRE you to use Noodle.  If the site helps you create your Works Cited page, use it.  If it helps you organize your notes, use it.  If you hit a snag, email me or come see me. 

Oh, and name your list something that tells you what the assignment is!  I would recommend including the teacher’s name and class period just as we did for your English class and then I’d include the name of the assignment.  A short name for the assignment.

A really good article by Sue Waters gives great tips for bloggers:

Use Short Paragraphs

People are not going to read really long paragraphs.  So, when I blog I am going to use really short paragraphs, even if I have to include a whole bunch of paragraphs.

Use Headings

If my post is going to be long I can make it easier for someone to read if I use headings.  Headings will make the title larger and will bold it.  If there’s alot of points to whatever I’m writing, then I could use the “bullet” feature to put the little dots in front of each point … that would make it easier to read.

Hyperlinking

If you are writing a blog and referring to someone else’s blog, you should give them credit by hyperlinking to their blog — specifically to the post you mentioned in YOUR blog. 

Always Comment Back to Readers on Your Own Posts

When someone makes a comment on a post on on my blog site, then courtesy demands that I respond to the person who took time to make that comment.