NoodleTools Tips for Teachers

Setting up a teacher’s personal account:

1. Click into your school library's NoodleTool link2. Select Create a Personal ID

Having Students Share their Work with you via an Inbox 1. In order for your student’s to share their work with you during the process, you should set up an

Inbox before the project begins. 2. You do this, by choosing the Inboxes tab at the top of your project page, and click on New

Projects Inbox

33850007978355

On the this screen, you can manage your inboxes- create a new one, and/or delete or archive older inboxes.

3. To create a new Inbox, follow the suggestions in the screenshot below.

4. You can modify the directions on notecards if you’d like.

Evidence for Formative Assessment

What you can do and see as a teacher once the project is

shared to your Inbox1. Choose the Inboxes Tab at the top of your projects page. Open your class by clicking on name

of the class and you will receive a lot of information right away- number of notecards, who has been working on it, etc…

2. Click on the student’s project to open it up

3. Once it is open, you will see their dashboard page.

4. After you check their dashboard (Research question /thesis) click on Sources off the top menu bar. Click on Show/Hide Notecards. Give feedback on your student’s citations and notecards.

How to comment on projects shared with your assignment inbox From Noodletools ( https://noodletools.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/6000164827-how-to-comment-on-projects-shared-with-your-assignment-inbox)

Students will appreciate having a chance to improve or correct their work based on your feedback before they submit their final work.

When you open a project shared with an assignment inbox, you can add comments to the project as a whole, or on specific source references and notecards. Note that you cannot edit a student's references and notecards directly. A student can add another student as a peer-reviewer or full collaborator on a project, and those students can also write comments on the project components. All comments are "public" (i.e., all teachers and students who have access to a project will see all the comments written -- there is no concept of private comments, or comments that are directed to a particular user).

Read “How to write and respond to project comments (the basics)” to understand how commenting works from the student's perspective. Compared to a student, a teacher has a few additional options when writing a comment, as described below.

1. Classification

Classify your comment to help the student understand your expectation. For instance, if they need to go into a notecard and make changes based on your feedback, using the "action required" classification would be appropriate. In future NoodleTools updates, we expect to provide you with new views and analysis of comments you've written based on this information. For now, it is mainly just informational for you and the student.

2. Require response

When a student receives your feedback, it becomes a "to-do" item for them. Normally, they have two options to clear a to-do -- they can either enter a response and click "Send" or they can click the To-do/Done toggle switch to mark it "done" without writing a response. If you want to require the student to write a response (i.e., eliminate the option of just clicking the toggle switch to mark it done), mark the "Require response" checkbox before you click "Send."

3. Save to my comment bank

Are you writing a comment that you know you want to re-use in the future? Mark the "Save to my comment bank" checkbox before you click "Send" and the comment will be saved for later use. To re-use the comment, just start typing any part of the saved comment into the "Enter your comment" textbox and any matching comments in your comment bank will show up in a dropdown as you type. 

4. Edit my comment bank

Click this link to view your saved comments. Comments are categorized as Project, Source, or Notecard comments (based on what item you originally write the comment on). Under the Options menu, select Edit or Delete. You can also add a new comment.

 

5. Editing and deleting comments

After you send a comment, it can be edited as long as no one has responded yet. Click the pencil icon. Note that students do not have the ability to edit or delete comments, which helps make sure they use the feedback system responsibly. We expect to add the ability for a teacher to delete a comment after it is sent in a future update.

 

Lesser Known Features of Noodletools that can be helpful for specific assignments.

Dashboard Features:

NHD/Historical Research Features: 1. To label your sources primary or secondary, go to the Sources page, and check the box next to

the source and select the proper label from the Description pull down menu at the bottom of the bibliography page.

2. Once you have identified your sources as either primary/secondary, you can organize your bibliography by this manner as well.

Students can Print their sources in a variety of formats: Works Cited, Annotated List of Works Cited, Works Consulted or Bibliography Page

1. After you open your project, go to the bibliography page.2. Click on the Print/Export button on the left hand side.

3. If you just need a “basic” Works Cited button , choose the Print/Export to Word button

4. If you’d prefer an Annotated Bibliography or another option, choose the FORMATTING OPTIONS button and choose from one of the options provided.

Help for In-Text Documentation / Parenthetical References1. If you are t using a preformatted citation from a Database, Noodletools cannot help the

students with their In-Text documentation.2. If it is not preformatted (QuickCited) source, click on the Options button next button to

the right of the citation.

Creating Tags and Piling Notecards

1. Once you have completed your notecards, you can organize and work with them on the Notecard page.

2. When you get to the Notecard page, move your cards onto the tabletop by clicking the “Move 10” until they are all on the desktop.

3. You can pile your notecards to help organize your ideas. One great way to do that is to use the “Tag” Feature. While each notecard’s title is unique and corresponds to the main idea of one notecard, tags represent other important ideas or details within a notecard and can be repeated. It can be reoccurring idea or you can make them match the organization of your paper, for example “body paragraph 1.” When you roll over the notecard on the desktop, you should see the tag and then you can create piles according to the tags.

4. Creating a notecard pileCreating a new pile via drag-and-drop → On the Notecards screen, drag-and-drop one notecard onto another notecard on the Notecard Tabletop.→ A New pile window will appear, prompting for the pile title. Enter a brief title and click the OK button.→ Pile names should be unique; if the new pile title already exists, you will be prompted to choose a different title.→ The two individual notecards will be replaced on the tabletop with the new pile. Creating a new pile via the Add to Pile button (for piling many notecards)→ On the Notecards screen, Control-click on notecards and/or notecard piles on the tabletop that you wish to combine into a new notecard pile. The selected notecards and piles will appear highlighted in yellow.→ Click the Add to Pile button at the top of the Notecards screen.→ On the pop-up window, select the Create New Pile option and provide a new pile title.→ Click Submit and the new pile will be created in the “New Notecards” region. Drag-and-drop the new pile from there onto the tabletop where you would like it.

Using the Outline Feature in Noodletools (Information in this section is directly from the Noodletool’s User Guide.)

Creating items in the outline

When you begin a new outline, you’ll find a sample topic and subtopic already in place.

Figure 47: Blank outline

 

You can delete these default items if you wish to. Or, to edit these existing items, simply click twice on the title (“Topic” or “Sub Topic”) in the outline. The first click selects the item and the second click puts the title into edit mode. When you finish editing, either press Enter or click outside of the edit box to save the changes.

 First, a bit of terminology is helpful. As you are creating your outline, you will need to create both siblings and children of existing outline items. Siblings of item “A” would be “B”, “C, “D”, etc. -- they are at the same indentation level and are subtopics of the same item in the outline. Children of item “A” would be “i”, “ii”, “iii”, “iv”, etc. – they are subtopics of item “A”, indented right).

 To add a new “child” item (subtopic) to the outline

→     Select a topic in the outline and click the green “+” button or press the Insert key. This adds a subtopic under the selected item. Alternatively, right-click on an item in the outline and choose “Add Subtopic (Child)” from the menu to create a subtopic.

 To add a new “sibling” item to the outline

→     Select a topic in the outline and press the Enter key. This adds a sibling topic under the selected item. Alternatively, right-click on an item in the outline and choose “Add New Topic (Sibling)” from the menu.

 Note: Clicking the green “+” button with no outline item selected will add a top-level (I, II, III, etc.) item.

Moving items in the outline

Use the left and right arrow buttons in the outline toolbar to change the indent level of an item in the outline. Use the up and down arrow buttons in the outline toolbar to change the order of subtopics (sibling items) under a topic item.

Deleting outline items

To remove an item from the outline, select the item and click the Delete button (a red “X”) in the outline toolbar. Alternatively, right-click on the item and choose “Delete” from the menu. Deleting a topic in your outline will delete all of the subtopics under that topic, so use this carefully

Adding Notecards to you outline

To begin, simply drag-and-drop a notecard or notecard pile from the Notecard Tabletop onto a topic or subtopic in your outline. Moving notecards into your outline does not remove the notecards from the tabletop; it only associates the notecard with the node in the outline. Dragging a notecard pile into the outline will add all of the notecards within that pile to the topic or subtopic in your outline. To distinguish notecards from topics and subtopics, notecards are represented by a small notecard icon, as shown:

 Figure 49: Moving notecards into the outline

 

Once a notecard is associated with an item in the outline, you can move it around in the outline by clicking and dragging it to a different location in the outline. Or, to remove it from the outline, click and drag the notecard out of the outline back onto the tabletop area.

 You’ll notice that when a notecard has been added to the outline, a small black checkmark appears in the top-left corner of the notecard on the tabletop. This helps you keep track of which notecards you have already added to your outline.

 In addition, clicking on a notecard within the outline causes the notecard on the tabletop (and its representation in the birds-eye-view) to flash blue so you can quickly identify its location on the tabletop.