Thing 16 - Student 2.0 Tools

I think this is the coolest tool! All those painful years, working my way up from five paregraph essays to longer papers, research papers, senior thesis, masters thesis . . . I felt I learned those lessons well, developed some reasonalbe writing skills (write, rewrite, rewirte . . .lessons I generally skip when blogging [oh well]).

I was particularly impressed by the U of M tool, which helps with the scheduling of the entire project, provides manageable steps along the way, with examples (what is a good thesis statement), links to the different research tools, databases, people, etc. The most difficult part of writing papers for me was the scheduling, and the tool gets you started (and reminds you with emails).

The RPC tool was a bit broader, and doesn't hold the users hand quite so tightly (varied schedules and tools for various disciplines). None-the-less, an impressive tool.

My son is the student closest at hand, and though still over his head, I expect there is a tool out there somewhere aimed at fourth graders.

As for work, many of my clients come to me because they need to write patents. Like research papers, patents have very specific research expectations, tight deadlines, and stringent requirements for the final product. There are many printed tools, but somthing interactive like this would be amazing. My own littlel project - is there somthing out there like this already? Let's check !