Thing 21 - Student 2.0 Tools

The Assignment Calculator and the Research Project Calculator are both excellent tools to help students complete a research project on time. Where were they when I was in school? Oh, that's right, we didn't even have PC's back then! No one had ever heard of "e-mail." For today's busy and focused students, however, I believe these tools will be their salvation. I will definitely recommend them when helping students gather the resources they need to research a topic. The student research planning guide, although very basic, could be used as a handout for a teen program on how to do a research paper. The Teacher Guide does not appear to be very useful in the public library setting. My experience is that handouts are not very helpful to students unless the handouts are specific to your library. I would instead attempt to work with the student to determine the parameters of his/her assignment and then to suggest appropriate resources from among the library's holdings.