Thing 16. Student 2.0 Tools

After reviewing the two research calculators--one from the U of M, the other from Minitex, I have decided to fall back to the overriding blogging ideal for comment and review...total honesty!!....really, maybe the best thing about blogging for me is the feeling that I don't have to say anything to make someone feel better about their work, no matter what their nice intentions are, unless, that is, I truly believe they kind of deserve it....Well, these two tools don't, in my opinion...Just tell me, how extremely dull can someone make these two "modern" Internet tools for the young scholars out there???

And that's too bad, because the intentions are so good, and I do think we need some interesting and useful methods to assist students getting started learning honest research writing...Unfortunately, these tools from reputable sources, bored me right away...and they certainly don't make me feel more like hunting around to find some research project to try them out with, nor would they be motivating me to seriously pass them on to some young, eager student, unless truly I wanted to scare them away from doing research forever!

Where to begin...first big mistake, and it's dumb, dumb, dumb...and it's from the U of M Calculator...never put your name on something, and then have the various parts go to all these different universities to fill out the many aspects of research writing...no control, every link forces you to read different writing styles, different fonts and layouts,some topics overlap previous subject matters on previous links...on and on it goes...Dear U of M---why not spend the time to write it all yourself, in one style and with one clear voice and layout...what the U did here was directly in violation of the research paper guidlines they are trying to espouse...being clear, organized, and logical...and taking too many shortcuts (though nicely credited)...bad research technique U of M...you bad, bad gophers....

Next major problem with both tools...and this embarasses me to say...mainly because I am myself the worse violator of this rule...namely, these sites are way too blabby or should I say, verbally excessive...too much talking and not enough action!! On and on with the talk about the "rules" and the Vulcan, cold, pure logical progression in research writing...so boring, and so sleep inducing...thousand of words, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (Shakespeare, U of M writing class of 1586).

Cut the amount of words down...no student, whether in college or whatever, will ever read all this stuff when there are video games out there...I said above there is too much talk, no action... and by that I mean what should have been done, is use the net to get more concrete and practical...clearly show more examples of correct note taking, for example; maybe link a view of a note card that a real reasearcher really used for his own paper, or what a real first draft and outline looks like from a real person...by the way, C-Span, on the dreaded TV, has done something like this...ask professionals reasearchers to show what they actually do to prepare a written work for publication...very fascinating, unlike these sites...

And another thing, when they break down the various steps, why not have the sites form an outline that can be filled in by the students so that they can just start writing...enough of this endless talk...the Minitex Calculator site (RPC) had a nice section of handouts--of course, only in the teacher section---very old school....a great writing tool would have integrated these handouts right within the student section, just as the research process is being described, so that a wanna-be scholar can get right to it and start writing using these handouts as a guide...giving the teachers a handout to print out for their class is an example of using the internet like it was an old school house, so traditional, still thinking in the old ways...Please, Minitex, unify your site--no teacher section, no student sectiion---put it all together and let the users write away within your handouts and guidelines, just after you give them your rules; then your students will turn into correct, formated, little eager writing fools...a little like me right now (except for the correct part)....oh, did I also mention the number of dead links on both sites...enough..I can't take it any longer...I am going back to my video game...