#387 – Tech in the Writing Process: Pre-Writing, Gathering Ideas and Content

#387 — Tech in the Writing Process: Pre-Writing, Gathering Ideas and Content

AVID Open Access
13 min

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Paul Beckermann 0:01 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I’m your host, Paul Beckerman.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 0:09 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit?

Paul Beckermann 0:25 In the past few episodes of Tech Talk for Teachers, we’ve been journey toolkit?

Paul Beckermann 0:25 In the past few episodes of Tech Talk for Teachers, we’ve been journeying through the writing process and looking at how we can leverage technology to make our students more efficient and effective writers. So far, we’ve clarified our writing task and generated some preliminary ideas. We’re now ready to dive deeper into gathering the ideas and content that will actually make their way into the writing. This task will again be shaped by your purpose, but regardless of intent, you need to begin deciding how you will develop your ideas.

If you’re writing about a personal experience or conducting creative writing, you may want to return to the brainstorming stage. However, when you’re brainstorming this time, your work can be more targeted to specific ideas that you wish to develop in your writing. In a sense, you’re generating a bank of raw material that you can use to build your writing project.

By brainstorming digitally rather than on paper, you will have a searchable document that can be more accessible later in the writing stage. It will also allow for easier copy-paste actions that can save you lots of time if you choose content from your brainstormed ideas. In today’s episode, I’m going to spend more time on expository writing, since that’s a little more involved and often requires research, and if you do need to conduct research for your project, this is the time to do it. You should have identified topics and ideas in the previous task that you can now use to guide you through the research process. Many times, writers will sketch out a preliminary outline that can define the research that they will do and the content that they need to gather. This is often based on the preliminary ideas survey that they conducted in the previous step. They may have gotten ideas from how other resources have been arranged and developed.

While you don’t want to have them copy these, you can have them learn from them and use them to develop their own ideas in a meaningful way. This preliminary outline can serve as a roadmap, giving focus as they research, gather specific resources and develop their ideas. Let’s look at research first, as students research and gather ideas to use in their writing, consider having them use some of the following resources. Some are online, while others are offline.

Number one, conduct web searches. This isn’t new to any of us. The internet is woven into the fabric of almost every part of our lives. However, familiarity doesn’t always mean effectiveness. We need to help our students develop effective search queries and to evaluate the credibility and quality of the resources that they find. Helping students become credibility detectives is a life skill that will go far beyond researching and writing a paper in school.

Number two, it’s also helpful to have students find primary sources, sources that are presented as they originally exist and not through the lens of a third party, such as a journalist. If they’re searching online, two great sources for these include the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. If they’re researching offline, they might conduct experiments, interview people, conduct surveys or attend a live event.

Number three, use research databases. Most library media centers subscribe to quality research databases. These are collections of resources that have already been vetted for quality and credibility. It’s important for students to develop a strong foundation of ideas using these resources so that they have a baseline of credible information, which they can compare to other resources that they find. This cross-referencing of content is one of the most important ways we can teach students to judge the credibility of content.

Number four, conduct, AI-assisted web searches. This is an area that’s rapidly developing, and we probably need to be a little cautious here for a while. Still, AI isn’t going anywhere. So it can be empowering to our students to introduce these AI tools in school, and it’s okay to be honest about their flaws and their strengths. I’m not talking about having generative AI simply write the content for students. Rather, I’m suggesting that you have them use the AI tools that have a research element to them with citations and reference sources used in the summaries. Perplexity is one of these options. While it will provide a summary, it also offers a Sources tab that students can click and then explore the source material used to generate the summary. ChatGPT and Gemini both now have deep research options.

Microsoft suggests crafting AI prompts to include phrases such as, “help me find scholarly online articles about insert topic here and list relevant texts and links that I can explore further on my own”. This is a great tip, and can be used really with any of the generative AI chatbots to help guide you through the research and inquiry process. You might want to explore AVID Open Access article search and seek credible information. Step three of the searching for answers inquiry process. This article breaks down ways to gather ideas and content in more detail, provides online search tips and reviews methods for finding credible information.

Next, let’s take a look at citations. As students research and collect information, it’s important that they keep track of where that information came from. That means generating citations for each source. For younger students, this might mean copying a web link or jotting down the title and author of a source. As students get older, they should be encouraged to generate full citations, according to one of the widely accepted style guides available, such as MLA or APA. The Purdue Online Writing Lab, also known as OWL, is an excellent resource site that helps guide students through the research and citation process. Think of it as an online Writing Guide that even includes an integrated version of a citation generator. In fact, digital citation generators are now the norm, and you can have your students use one of these online tools to create citations that they can use in their work. This can save a lot of time from doing the tedious part of the process, leaving more room for the actual thinking and writing. That’s a win in my book.

Here are a few citation generators you might want to check out to get started. Citation Machine, Google Docs citation generator, Cite This For Me, and EasyBib. Many of these tools are now also integrating AI-powered feedback and writing help into the process. You may want to explore these options and see what makes sense for your students.

Next, let’s take a look at note taking. Another important aspect of the research and information gathering process is note taking. As students are taking notes and gathering ideas, they’ll need to keep them organized. Most of us are familiar with the strategy of using recipe cards to capture research and organize them into categorized piles. While this can still work, there are now digital options that you can also explore. These can range from recording ideas in a Google Doc to using a full digital notecard program, regardless of what you choose.

There are several benefits to collecting your notes digitally. They’re searchable. That’s a huge one for me. Ideas can be quickly cut, copy and pasted. Another time-saving element, they’ll be stored online and accessible anywhere. Students often complain about losing things. This really minimizes that, and it’s easy to apply color coding.

This is a great strategy for organizing, categorizing and clumping different ideas together. If you’re looking for digital programs to help you manage this note taking process, you might consider one of the following. Word processors. So this is the simplest one. Using Google Docs or Microsoft Word will be much taking notes on paper, and you’ll need to determine how those notes will be organized. You could keep track of them by source, but it’s more beneficial to organize them by topics that you perhaps listed on your preliminary outline. To keep track of which source each note came from, you could color code the information to match a source. You could also place a source code next to each note. It could be a letter or a number to represent the source. Or you could bookmark the source entries and hyperlink the notes back to the source. You might even want to consider adding a hyperlink table of contents at the top of the first page to make navigation quicker and easier.

Another tool is Trello. Trello allows you to create visual boards. While it was created to help manage to-do lists, your students can use it for tracking research as well. On each board, you can create lists which can be your research sub-topics with cards attached below the list. Notes can be tagged with color-coded labels to help you align to your sources. You can even add checklists or attachments to each card. Cards can be drag and drop to reorganize and as a bonus, the cards are searchable.

Two similar tools are Super Note Card and Noodle Tools. Now these tools are specifically designed for the note taking process and mimic the offline recipe card process, but they are paid products. If you have access to these, they’re ideal and allow you to connect notes to sources automatically. If you don’t have them or have a budget to purchase them, you’ll want to look to one of the other options.

Microsoft OneNote is another choice you can make if you have access to this. Microsoft notebook tool, you can create tabs for each of your main points and then pages and sub-pages for more specific notes. Eventually, you can reorganize your tabs until they morph into a sequential outline. You can also list your sources in one of the sections and then label each one with a tag or a code of your choice. This will help you keep track of source information for references and citations. OneNote is searchable, which makes it easy to relocate your ideas.

Another tool is Evernote. Evernote allows you to create virtual notebooks. You can then create notes with titles and tags that are organized into these notebooks. The tag feature can be a convenient way to connect a note to a source, or to categorize by sub-category, add links, images, and items from Google Drive.

And finally, Notebook LM. This tool is Google’s AI-powered notebook. Students can create multiple notebooks within Notebook LM. Perhaps one for each assignment, or maybe one for each main point that will be fleshed out in one specific writing assignment inside each notebook, students can then upload resources and notes. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of this tool is that it is so easily searchable. You can search either one source, a couple of sources that you select, or the entire notebook. This is a powerful way for students to interact with their research, ask questions about it and interact with it in a conversational style. While students will still need to do their own writing, this can be a powerful virtual research partner, and the conversational style with which they can interact with it can make it feel very intuitive and natural.

Alright, I’ve covered a lot of ideas here, and it can be a bit overwhelming. I encourage you to pick and choose what you want to use with your students. Don’t have them do it all right away. Consider their age, experience and the type of writing you want them to do.

What makes sense? Start small and scaffold up from there. Ideally, by the time they become seniors in high school, they’ve experienced the full package of options and know how to effectively prepare to write their paper. As I mentioned earlier, these are writing skills, but more importantly, they’re thinking skills.

To learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources, visit AVID Open Access.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out the article collection, “Power Up and Enhance the Writing Process with Technology”. And of course, be sure to join Rena, Winston and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we’re joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening, take care, and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.