Building an educational resource site

[jpmcgrew]

To go along with our note software, NoteScribe, we're working on building a website which will contain resources for students about a variety of education topics and areas including: note taking (of course!), citation help, paper composition, and many other topics.

What I was wondering is, what type of resources would you like to see on an educational resource website? I know most of us are not students anymore, but if you still were, what types of things were you always looking for on the web to make your studies easier?

If anyone has any specific websites (that have been helpful, or even have a similar concept), please feel free to list them!

[Brutha]

Study Hacks could be helpful for you.

What I was wondering is, what type of resources would you like to see on an educational resource website?

Something awesome.

One idea would be a website that also links me to scientific research that showed that the processes should be that way you describe them.
Being scientific in your approach of listing the techniques might help you to get recommanded by professors who want their students to learn better study skills.

[jpmcgrew]

Thanks for the tip on Study Hacks.

The idea of putting some hard science behind what we're presenting is a great idea too. We could use a few professors behind our site (and product) so whatever will draw them is what we need to do, I suppose.

[Lauxa]

The thing I had the hardest time with in college was paying attention in class. My mind would wander, I would start doodling, or I would fall asleep. I could have done so much better if I could have just kept my mind on what the professor was saying. Taking notes sort of helped, but then I would get bored with taking notes and start doodling or writing codes or something.

Actually I continued to have trouble with this beyond school, for instance in meetings or presentations at work. So if you have some advice for this I will still be interested.

The other thing would be tips for forming study groups. How often to meet, the optimum size of groups, how to keep the meetings on-topic, what preparation should be done prior to meeting and things like this. Which, now that I think of it, would also be valuable for work situations.

[Brutha]

Another thing about notetaking:
Have you thought about including some sort of automatic highliting of notes?
If I write a computer program I usually use an editor with context highliting.
Maybe you can make words that don't appear often in normal language bold to make notes easier readable.
Names could maybe always get a certain color.
Maybe a program can help making notes more readable that way and allow someone to easily review their notes.

[jpmcgrew]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Another thing about notetaking:
Have you thought about including some sort of automatic highliting of notes?
If I write a computer program I usually use an editor with context highliting.
Maybe you can make words that don't appear often in normal language bold to make notes easier readable.
Names could maybe always get a certain color.
Maybe a program can help making notes more readable that way and allow someone to easily review their notes.

Brutha,

We just released an update last week that includes a highlighter within the edit note window. That way, as you said, users can highlight main ideas, or any other concepts they choose.

To make it possible, we've created a multi-colored highlighter so the user can perform the action that you are discussing.

I don't know about the possibility of an "automatic highlighter". I'm thinking about the programming for something like you've mentioned (though I'm not a programmer I have a little idea, I think) involving the names, and I don't know if that would be possible. Wouldn't there have to be some sort of "If" function and then names? I don't know, maybe my programming knowledge is overly lacking and it is possible! haha.

[Brutha]

I don't know about the possibility of an "automatic highlighter". I'm thinking about the programming for something like you've mentioned (though I'm not a programmer I have a little idea, I think) involving the names, and I don't know if that would be possible. Wouldn't there have to be some sort of "If" function and then names? I don't know, maybe my programming knowledge is overly lacking and it is possible! haha.

In general I guess your main problem is to show that using your software has a definite advantage over using a normal wordprocessor to store notes or a freeware notesoftware like zotero.
To do that you have to differentiate yourself and do things that other people don't do.

Having an program that tries to get a bit of information about the text is probably no easy thing but it could still be worth something.
The easy things don't have a large payoff.

If you solve difficult problems people talk about your product. People don't talk about average products but about products that are innovative and different.

Most people already have a calender (the most important thing about calenders by the way is the freedom to leave and to sync the information with other calenders).
If someone has an smartphone with a calender (more and more people have smartphones) that calender has to sync with his other calenders because he doesn't always has access to his computer.

In general you have problem that a computer program can help with. If you program you usually don't use notepad or word but an editor that helps you to program.
Having a notes program that helps you to structure could also be worth something.
As far as I know other note programs don't give the user that possibilty.

You have notes with are stored as keywords. When someone read another note and there is a complicated word that he doesn't understand at the moment but he has made a note about that keyword a while ago marking that keyword can help the user.

You do have quite a bit of information and the computer do the job of processing information.
Software can be more than digital paper.