Every year we have the elementary gifted classes (grades 4 &5) come in and do a project on countries around the world. They each have to pick a country and write about it, as well as bring in a dish from that country to share. These are smart kids, and we usually do a lot of preselection as far as books go, so there's generally no problems, but some of the sheets under the teacher's guide would be great to give them as guidelines.
Same goes for high school students. I don't know what standards are around Florida, but right after I graduated, they started making students do junior and senior projects. Basically they're just year-long research projects, but man, what a pain they are! So glad I didn't have to do that! Anywho, I'm sure there are some kids who don't have the first clue on how to research and write a paper, and some are unlucky enough to have terrible teachers. This would be the perfect tool for them! Of course, getting them to use these would be the hardest part. Most teens think they know everything, and don't need any help or conversely, are totally inept and want it done for them.
I was most impressed with the Assignment Calculator - is seemed to be geared more toward college/high school level. I particularly liked their link about writing thesis statements, and the examples of strong and weak ones. The Research Calculator was fine, but seemed to be geared toward a younger audience.
Being a procrastinator, this might have been a good tool for me to have. Of course, being such, I probably wouldn't have used it anyways - instead preferring to leave it til the week of, and then cramming as much as I could into as little time as I could spend.
3 weeks ago
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