Develop Research Skills with Microsoft OneNote and Microsoft Word

It is important for today’s school leavers to have transferable 21st Century Skills as well as academic qualifications. Knowing how to conduct research, critically evaluate and synthesize information are essential 21st Century Skills. Using the Internet students can find resources on any topic within seconds, but often don’t know how to critically evaluate the legitimacy and quality of those resources. In fact, they may produce work by simply copying and pasting from these resources without respect for the author and sometimes without fully understanding the content. Programs like Microsoft OneNote have features to help students use and cite online resources, generate a bibliography, and critically evaluate what they find.

In this tutorial you will:

1) Learn to use electronic dictionaries and other

Tools: Microsoft OneNote and Microsoft Word

ICT Skill Level Required:

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reference works that are integrated in Office programs.

2) Learn to create an automatically generated scientific bibliography of used resources.

Educator Scenario

Anat and Kerim are colleagues, who teach children aged 14 and 15. They often have discussions about the pros and cons of technology in education. They are concerned about students using copy and paste to create pages of content without respecting the intellectual property of the authors, critically analyzing the validity of the content, and sometimes even using words or phrases they don’t understand. They plan to use built in features of Microsoft OneNote to help their students develop better research and evaluation skills.

1. Word and OneNote offer integrated dictionaries and reference works. Click on the Research icon

to get access to these resources. On the spot you get grammatical or semantic information about a word when you type it into the box on the right.

Depending on your language and country you might have a different list of available reference works and dictionaries. It could also be that some available electronic books need to be activated and added to the list.

How to use the dictionary feature in Word web link How to use the reference feature in Word web link

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2. With Word you can generate a scientific bibliography of resources used.

Open the References tab and click on Insert Citation. You can then submit the data of the resource.

How to add a citation or reference in Word 2010 web link

You can choose the type of resource (websites, books, articles…) but also the bibliographical standard of your preference.

When the selected resources have been fully understood and when the content has been rephrased or cited with respect to the author, the student can create the bibliography by just pressing a button.

How to add a bibliography in Microsoft Word 2010 web link

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3. Spread the word! Why not organize an in-service training for your colleagues and practice the

features students would use when putting together a research paper. In the training suggest colleagues practice the following steps:

a. Use Bing to select a resource on a topic and paste a portion of the content in a Word or OneNote page.

b. Highlight the words or sentences a student might not understand.

c. Use the built-in dictionaries and reference works of Word or OneNote and paste the explanation.

d. Rewrite the paragraph ‘in your own words’ with the aid of the explanation.

e. Add the resource to the bibliography (Word) and publish the bibliography under the rewritten paragraph.

Further Resources and Ideas

Partners in Learning Critical Thinking Teaching Guide

Framework Alignment

UNESCO CfT: Technology Literacy (ICT, Basic Tools) and (Teacher Professional Development, Digital Literacy)

ISTE: Model Digital Age Work and Learning (3d) and Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership (5c)

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