PTP: Mendeley

I would introduce Mendeley in my classroom during an Inquiry/ Research Unit to help students organize their online sources and articles. As a student, there is nothing more frustrating than when you find a useful article and cannot find it again later. As a university student, it is hard for me to remember all the steps I went through to find it in the first place, so I can only imagine how frustrating it might be for a junior high or high school-aged student. By introducing students to Mendeley, students will be able to save links and citations to websites and articles that they can return to whenever they are ready to use them.

Also, Mendeley formats their citations in the style of their choosing, so students no longer have to worry about doing that themselves. I still recommend that students double check Mendeley's citations (because sometimes the program struggles to pick up all the information), but that is one less thing for students to have to stress about.

I would also recommend this programs for group work or projects. Mendeley can be particularly helpful if students are falling behind in their group work. By forming a group online, they can share sources, post comments, swap notes and get anything done at home that they could not do in class. It would be interesting, as well, to try coordinating with teachers and classes in other schools or districts to form inter-school student research groups. I'd have to think a little more about a reason and purpose for such an assignment. Inter-state/school sharing might be more helpful/ a better activity for university students.

I'm glad I chose to use Mendeley as part of my project. It has been particularly helpful for me at the end of the school year as I try to organize all that I've learned in my class readings. I can organize the articles I've read by subject: teaching reading, teaching writing, teaching grammar, etc. My professors use a lot of online material, so it's been great to be able to move all my readings into one organized location. I also love being able to put tabs and notes electronically on the readings so that I don't have to print and mark every article. It's also useful because once I'm done with the semester, I will still have access to all the materials that were available to me during the school year. I will be able to look back on them and use them for other classes or situations in the future.