Citelighter Education [2]
What’s It Like? Citelighter is an engaging online platform designed to support students and teachers as they tackle the intricacies of the writing process. Students simply sign up and download the Citelighter toolbar or work on the Citelighter website. Students can work on Citelighter’s platform to research topics and construct their own written work or use the Citelighter toolbar to search and cite from the open Web. On the platform, students follow a series of scaffolded steps predetermined by their teacher; they’ll explore leveled articles and various multimedia content (videos and images) before they begin writing a paper. As students find useful excerpts, capturing and organizing is as simple as highlighting, clicking, and dragging. Citations are automatically saved and referenced in a bibliography.
Price: Free/subscription
Grades: 3-12
Pros: It’s like a one-stop shop for research and writing, from gathering sources to organizing research and outlining a workable draft.
Cons: The automatically compiled bibliography could potentially encourage student passivity rather than inquiry into why citation is important.
Bottom line: This smart, intuitive system supports students in every step of the writing process.