Study Tools

Note Taking: OneNote vs EverNote (+ Together)

If you're a TA student you will be taking reams and reams of notes. Yes, pencil and paper is tried and trusted, but going back to these notes is always problematic. 

  • If you have a recent copy of Microsoft Office you have OneNote (and if you're on a Masters university course, you can buy it for next to nothing at Software4Students using your university email address).  I particularly like its ability to store anything (include voice) in a nice filing cabinet metaphor. Mac users should take a look at Together as a note taking solution.

  • Alternatively, you might consider EverNote. This majors on mutli-device, so you can take notes with your laptop and smartphone and work desktop PC and it will be all nicely synced together.

Mind Mapping

If you have a visual learning style, mind mapping your notes can be a very powerful way of organising your thoughts. Try one of these - they're all good. Just depends which style of mind map and user interface you like best.
  • Freeplane | The daddy of free mind mapping tools.

  • XMind |  Free mind mapping tool with paid for extras if you get keen.

  • Bubbl.us | Cloud based brainstorming and mind mapping.

Research and Bibliography Tools

  • You can use Microsoft Word to manage your bibliography, or you use specialist tools, such as:

  • EasyBib | Online storage of your bibliography 

  • Zotero | [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.

  • Crossref | the official DOI® link registration agency for scholarly publications with citation-link searching.

Specialist Sources

Peer Reviewed Open Access Online Journals

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