Research and Reference

Trailfire is a navigational tool that can be used to navigate through the Internet. It consists of a web browser sidebar that guides you on a trail of web pages which is created by trail collectors or "guides" making it easier to find the websites you want or sites trail creators think are important.How to Use:To use the Trailfire application, download the application from (www.trailfire.com). A browser plug-in will be installed which inserts the sidebar into your web browser. Note: With the fire fox browser you can also download the trailfire application by searching for it in the Add-ons menu. Both Mozilla Fire fox and Internet Explorer are compatible with the application. To use the advanced features of the application such as the ability to create your own trails, you must register and become a member. To do so, go to http://trailfire.com/pages/join.php and sign up for your personal account.

Good reference material that will save you from making an extra trip to the library or using Wikipedia for research projects.

ZuluPad is a notepad on crack. It's a place to jot down class notes, appointments, to-do lists, favorite websites, pretty much anything you can think of. The great thing about ZuluPad is that it combines the best parts of a notepad with the best parts of a wiki, a concept made popular by Wikipedia . The basic idea has been called a personal wiki or a desktop wiki. Say for instance, you're a music major, and you're studying Bach. You've taken notes on Bach in ZuluPad, and after a long 16 weeks have finally completed the semester. Sometime after the summer break, you're taking notes on Beethoven, and your teacher mentions a way in which Beethoven was influenced by Bach. As soon as you type "Bach" into your notes, it's underlined as a hyperlink. You think to yourself, "oh yeah, I know a few things about Bach". So you click the link, and you can read all of your Bach notes. While you're reading your Bach notes, you happen to notice a link to a page about Henry Purcell, and you can refresh your memory about him, too.

Organize, share and discover research papersLike iTunes™ for research papers. Mendeley is a free research management tool for desktop & web.

RefWorks -- an online research management, writing and collaboration tool -- is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies.

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.

Citation machine helps students and professional researchers to properly credit the information that they use. Its primary goal is to make it so easy for student researchers to cite their information sources, that there is virtually no reason not to -- because...SOMEDAY THE INFORMATION THAT SOMEONE ELSE WANTS TO USE -- WILL BE YOURS!

BibMe is a free online bibliography maker that allows you to search for several types of reference materials and then pre-fills the bibliographic information for you! With BibMe you can search through a list of the most popular information sources such as: * Books * Magazines * Newspapers * Websites * Journals * FilmsYou can also search for information for other types of sources such as Interviews, Lectures, Radio/TV, Encyclopedia, and Photographs.

CiteULike is a free service to help you to store, organise and share the scholarly papers you are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser so there's no need to install any software. Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer with an Internet connection.

EasyBib is a free automatic bibliography and citation maker for the Modern Language Association (MLA) format. EasyBib also offers bibliography and citation services for the American Psychological Association (APA) and Chicago style format but an annual fee of $8.99 will be charged to the user.

NoodleTools provides innovative software that teaches students and supports teachers and librarians throughout the entire research process. * Search intelligently * Assess the quality of results * Record, organize and synthesize information using online notecards * Format your bibliography in MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turabian style

I have listed many of the sites within my mindomo map, but there are other sites that may be useful in the future.

Blog by a graduate student on how to study.

Lectures from the worlds top lecturers

A fast and easy task manager. It features heirarchies, which allow the user to collapse sub-tasks and sub-categories to conquer complexity.

A great program through which you can access your daily tasks. Use your PC or mobile phone to receive reminders and keep track of your to-do list. You can also share tasks with others (like your roommate), in case you need a little help with grocery shopping.

Welcome to your notable world. Use Evernote to save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use. For free.

List.it is a Firefox add-on that allows you to store all of your notes securely on their server. You can access your notes from any computer. There are even hotkeys for getting around in list.it.

Various charts

Visifire is a set of open source data visualization controls - powered by Microsoft® Silverlight™ & WPF. Visifire is a multi-targeting control which can be used in both WPF & Silverlight applications. Using the same API, charts in both Silverlight & WPF environments can be created within minutes. Visifire can also be embedded in any webpage as a standalone Silverlight App. Visifire is independent of server side technology. It can be used with ASP, ASP.Net, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Python, Ruby or just simple HTML. Don't take our word for it! Visit Visifire Gallery or design your own chart using Chart Designer.

Demonstrations projects

Beautiful Statistics

A Periodic Table of visualization methods

Making the World's Knowledge ComputableToday's Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. Enter your question or calculation and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer. Based on a new kind of knowledge-based computing.

Assess technologyPlanning steps

With Writeboard you can write, share, revise, and compare. notes with others.

Write and edit your paper from anywhere you have an Internet connection. You can also take Google documents off-line by installing Google Gears.Google Docs is essentially just a word-processing program.

Annotate documents and images

First, and most important, yWriter is FREE to download and use!Second, and still rather important, it's a word processor which breaks your novel into chapters and scenes. It will not write your novel for you, suggest plot ideas or perform creative tasks of any kind. It does help you keep track of your work, leaving your mind free to create.

Instead of using Google Docs, Zoho is another option for spreadsheets, documents, and many many more tasks. It is also free.

Free online storage sharingAnywhereAccessAccess AnywhereOnline Storageand SharingOnline Storage and SharingWorks with Programs You KnowWorks with Programs You Know

Take, edit, and share notes onlineRevise and edit notes with peerssearch bookmark notesmanage listscreate class groups

Provides 25GB of free online storage. Create folders, and drag files into them. Share them, or keep them to yourself.

Search the web and analyze the resultsLumifi can sift through web search results for you, identifying the most relevant information for your research. Read and analyze documentsLumifi can also read and analyze all sorts of documents. Crawl and analyze website contentPoint Lumifi at a web site and it will read and analye the site's content automatically.

ONline graphical Dictionary

A place to find journals and articles for research

A site where you can upload your documents to the web.

PDF Geni is free search engine that lets you search the web for pdf files corresponding to the search topics you provide. You can search for PDF ebooks, sheets, forms, and documents. It is an excellent tool for finding larger articles and reports which have to be saved in the PDF format due to their size. How to Use:To begin using PDF Geni, go to http://www.pdfgeni.com/ and type in a search in the search box. PDF Geni will provide a long list of PDF files that correspond to your search request as well as closely related topics.You can also download the PDF Geni search engine plug-in for the Fire fox Browser by clicking on the link located in the top right corner of the screen such as the one displayed in the image below. With PDF Geni, finding research articles and reports that are free for use on the internet is a breeze.

Similar Web is a browser add-on (compatible with both Fire fox and Internet Explorer) that automatically displays similar websites as you are browsing the internet. It is an excellent tool for finding multiple sources for the information you seek as well as discovering interesting new websites.

iBreadCrumbs is a recording toolbar for your web browser. It lets you record all of the web pages you visit while you are conducting your research for a project or paper. By recording your browsing activity you leave "a trail of breadcrumbs" behind which you can save, review, and share with your friends or colleagues. iBreadCrumbs allows students, researchers, and professors to organize the world's data into narrow research "breadcrumbs" or click-streams. To get a better understanding of what iBreadCrumbs is and how it works, please watch the short video tutorial below:

Creative Commons that explains all about licensing in publications and web sites.

Video on you tube that explains copyright laws in disney style

Free interactive guide to help faculty determine the appropriate copyright guidelines they must follow to use diffrent types of copyright protected media in their courses.

A Blog for designing online learning.

Great graduate student blog on Bloom's digital taxonomy

FREE Virtual Classroom!Now teachers and students anywhere in the world, can connect and meet live in the Virtual Classroom for an online interactive class. The collaborative web conferencing environment enables you to communicate synchronously using video and audio or through text chat, and to share presentations, documents and images on an interactive whiteboard. Join us now, to conduct your online live class and experience the next best alternative to classroom teaching.

Slideshow on web 2.0 applications for Higher Ed

A subscription that I RSS for articles on technology and learning

This blog helps students learn how to study.

Blog all about graduate schools