Designed by educators, NoodleTools is an online platform that promotes authentic research and original writing. Integrated tools for note-taking and outlining, source evaluation and citation support students’ critical and creative thinking. Mentor-teachers can monitor student progress and provide targeted feedback.

Teacher feedback: As the primary mentor, you can monitor students’ progress in real-time and provide in-context feedback. You may also wish to invite the librarian or other faculty to review and comment on student work.

Note-taking and outlining: NoodleTools notecards are specifically designed to make connections, record and develop original ideas, articulate arguments, and avoid accidental plagiarism. The Notecard Tabletop contains organizational features like tagging, labeling and piling that support logical and inspired writing.

Annotated bibliography: Students can create an accurate annotated bibliography in MLA or Chicago/Turabian style, grouped into primary and secondary sources according to National History Day requirements. They can choose from a broad range of source options, including legal citations. Pop-up help and dynamic citation templates are embedded at points of need. The student’s polished bibliography can be exported to Google Drive or any word processor.

Source evaluation: Research shows that all students find source identification and evaluation to be especially challenging aspects of the research process. “Show Me” online teaching modules guide students in identifying source types, including primary sources, and in assessing the relevance and credibility of information.

Group collaboration: For an exhibition, performance, documentary or website project, student teams can work simultaneously on the group’s notecards and citations and view each other’s changes in real time.

Differentiated levels: Students have an option to select either the Junior or Advanced/Senior level of NoodleTools based on their self-assessed proficiency and their National History Day division. Each level includes appropriate help for identifying, evaluating and citing sources. Should Junior-level students find that they are using advanced source types, they can seamlessly move up to the Advanced level.

Schools can subscribe to NoodleTools for very reasonable rates! Please request a quote to learn how affordable our single-campus and district licenses are.

Note: NoodleTools no longer offers complimentary NHD accounts, but if you are a teacher mentoring students for NHD and haven’t used NoodleTools before, please feel free to request a one-month free trial.