Thing 21 (Can I See Some ID?)

The Assignment Calculator would be a good tool for students who have a hard time staying on task to complete a project. The timeline feature is probably useful, and the documents such as the one I read about finding articles in the library are good, if fairly generic. It almost seems as if it would take just as much time for a student to learn a website or a search engine as it would to navigate and read these documents, only to have to take that generic info and apply it to a specific search. But again, for a beginner or someone who need a lot of structure I think it could be an good tool. The Research Project Calculator is like the Assignment Calculator if it were pumped up with Chernobyl bilge and left in the sun for a few million years. It's a similar idea, aimed at the teachers. We don't need no education. Anyway, again I can't help but think that researching the research process is a bit redundant and difficult when the student doesn't know how to research. This information might be hard to digest without the specific teachable moment of an actual specific search. So I'm researching caribou lice and I've found some books about it, then I read that I should "brainstorm and note ideas that you have identified in your information sources. Use arrows. Draw circles. Look for connections and patterns. Identify lines of reasoning." Sounds good, and this is a good way for a teacher to know how to approach lessons, but I can draw arrows and circles all over the tundra and I'll still have caribou lice if I don't know how to narrow my search within my specific topic. That's one nice feature of the Assignment Calculator, a constant reminder of the university writing support/librarian assistance a click away.