Reorder concepts or link/unlink notes with just one click. Build your bibliography with drag and drop. Select MLA or APA format, then just one click prints your Works Cited. Generate virtual note cards, organize and print them if you wish. You can print your concept outline, and print your final paper! It’s that easy! 
(Click the thumbnail for a help chart) The first thing you will notice about this diagram is the color coding system. Sources are Blue, Notes are Green, Concepts are Yellow and Essays are Red. This Color Coding is constant throughout the program, and it makes the interface more intuitive. If you’re looking at a screen where a big blue box is linked to a few smaller green boxes, you know those green notes were generated from that blue source. The color codes also serve to separate out the four data structures that link together and form the “skeleton” of this program. The fifth drawer, dedicated to Research Assistance, does not store data, and is dedicated to assisting the user with finding articles for later entry as blue sources. On top of the skeleton, goes the “musculature.” Once you have data, such as paragraphs or articles, you can do a lot with it. Specifically, you can run “scripts” that find, sort, and reorder your text boxes. Scripts can prepare documents for printing, they can even jump you through the different drawers of the toolbox. Every button you click calls a script behind the scenes. These buttons and hidden scripts give you the muscle to do very complex tasks with just one click. As you can see, the diagram above shows you the steps and lets you click on the step you want to work on. Begin in the research drawer, searching online article databases for full texts or abstracts that relate to your topic. Copy the full texts from online articles and store them in your database. Read each full text from within the Toolbox program - there’s no need to waste paper running off 50 pages of source material. But if you want to print your sources, there’s a button for that, too. As you read your sources, you’re likely to become across phrases, paragraphs, or ideas that are key to supporting your thesis. All you have to do is select the line or words that pique your interest, and click the “new note” button. A virtual note card is created containing the quotation you want to work with. To help avoid plagiarism, a separate “summary box” within the note card allows you to weave your own words with those of the expert you want to quote or referernce. The note card builds your parenthetical citation automatically. “You just drag and drop your green quote and it builds a parenthetical citation like this” (Example, 1). Remember those frantic all-nighters where your note cards were splayed all over the floor in crazy messy piles? Virtual note cards don’t have that problem. Instead, you browse your virtual note cards and link them to “virtual piles” called “Concepts.” This is not as hard as is sounds. Just read the card’s content, scroll through the list of Concepts you’ve created, and choose which pile it belongs in. Click to establish the link. Finally, when you are ready to write your body paragraph on a particular concepts, all the notes you’ve taken that link to that concept are there in a list on the right side of the screen. You can browse your note summaries and weave them together to form your concept body paragraphs. Write each body paragraph, then go to the concept browser to put your concepts in the right logical order. You can now print your paper! Writing a research paper is a complex multistep process, beginning with the acquisition of source material and culminating with a logically structured document that cites various experts.
This program is designed to help you stay organized every step of the way. Five Drawers make up “The Essay Toolbox.” Each drawer features a unique set of tools. Most of the time, you will use all of these drawers for the development and authoring of your final paper. Feel free to use only what you need to complete the assignment. The Five Drawers are:
(click the thumbnails for screenshot view) |
