News
Zotero: The Research Tool You Never Knew You Needed
November 1, 2019
Are you a student who painstakingly spends the last hour or two once a paper has been written to manually add and edit all of your citations? Or maybe you just fake your way through your citations and hope your prof doesn’t notice that you don’t really know Chicago Manual of Style footnote guidelines. Wherever you land, you’re citing sources and you might be doing that manually, but you don’t have to! Zotero is an easy-to-use citation tool that will make beautiful citations in your paper with the click of one button.
With Zotero, you can…
Maintain a library of sources (books, articles, websites, etc.) that contains all of the information you might need for a citation.
Pull citation information directly from websites, like the PTS Library catalog, with browser extensions (e.g. Chrome, Safari, etc.). (Zotero will even abbreviate citations when you use a source more than once or renumber if you add a citation mid-paper.)
Insert footnote or endnote citations directly into your Word document using the style guide of your choice (probably Chicago full-note citation).
Create a full bibliography at the end of your paper with the push of one button. No typing required—we promise!
You may be skeptical, thinking to yourself, “It will be faster and more accurate if I keep doing this manually.” From one student to another… trust me, it won’t! Curious to learn more or get some one-on-one training? Find us in the Digital Learning Lab on weekdays from 1-5 pm or email learning@ptsem.edu, and we’d be happy to show you!
Top Tools for Learning 2019
October 1, 2019
Are you excited about the idea of teaching and learning in the Digital Age, but don’t quite know where to start? Your teaching and learning can be enhanced with creative online tools and downloadable software, but there’s so much out there, it can be a bit overwhelming to find the tools that will work for you.
This extensive list of 200 tools for learning has just been released for 2019. The list is ranked from 1-200 according to three categories: Personal and Professional Learning, Workplace Learning, and Education. You can sort the list according to type and discover what people have found to be the most useful in each category. Notable tools in the Top 100 Tools for Higher Education are Padlet, Piktochart, OneNote, and Quizlet, but there are many other great teaching and learning tools to be discovered elsewhere on the list.
Padlet is a canvas or bulletin board that allows users to post and collaborate with texts, images, links, videos, etc. It can be used to create mindmaps or to share information in creative ways.
Piktochart is a web-based program that allows you to design infographics, presentations, and printable flyers with preset templates or from scratch.
OneNote is a program for information gathering and multi-user collaboration. With it, you can gathers notes, images, or audio and easily search, share, and save important information.
Quizlet is a digital flashcard study tool that allows you to create your own flashcard sets or use sets created by other users. You can find premade study sets for biblical language based on the book and chapter you are currently studying.
Go here to see which other tools on the list are supported by the Office of Digital Learning. Feel free to stop by the Digital Learning Lab (Library 3132) or email us if you have any questions about how you might use these tools to teach or learn at PTS.