Currently, I'm working on two major projects: the foundation paper for our class and a final project for my communication, language, and culture class. Obviously, substantial research is required for both. As I was researching for both classes, it began to dawn me: I've been researching the same way for as long as I can remember, there has to have been some online tools made since I started researching in middle school that will make things easier than they are. This thought was largely influenced as I began to think of tools such as noodlebib and del.icio.us. So, I went to the Firefox extension page and searched for the keyword "research" and I ran along this wonderful little tool called Diigo. It has numerous features and I don't have room to name them all, but there are a couple I would like to mention. The first feature, and my favorite, is the ability to highlight (in yellow) sentences in online articles which you can then bookmark on your diigo toolbar (it comes installed when you download the extension). You just highlight the sentence/s with the mouse and then right-click and choose "highlight" in the context menu. This is really handy when you forget the reason why you bookmarked an article or forget what specific sentences you thought were important.. In addition, it helps you easily locate quotes you might use in your paper. Second, after you highlight, you can add a sticky note to the highlighted section to remind yourself why you highlighted it and what importance it has towards the project.
I am continued to be amazed at how technology, computers specifically, can literally do anything you want them to do within reason. There have been numerous times when I might be browsing the internet or doing hw online and think to myself "man, it would be nice if i could ______ on the computer" or "there should be a tool to do ____". Slowly, I am beginning to realize that, more often than not, the tools or features always exist, I just have to find them.
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