Help your students with citations using the Easy Bib Add-in for Office 365.
Once you get your students to download and install the app using their Office 365 account (personal Microsoft accounts can also be used), you can teach them how to use it within a Word document to get citations for a book, journal, or website in MLA, APA, or Chicago style formats. I have taught 9-12th graders how to use this add-in, and I find that we are able to focus more time and energy on using critical thinking skills to understand and make decisions about how to give credit to something that is not straightforward. For example, students can easily generate a citation for an Amazon review, but the student has to decide whether or not it makes sense to group multiple reviews together or cite them separately.
Once students install the add-in, it will appear under the References tab of the Word Ribbon. The icon is an orange book.
Click the orange book and the service will load. Choose the type of source and style needed. If a website needs to be cited, simply paste in the URL and press Enter to get started.
Choose the correct website from the list that is generated, and move the mouse over it until a + sign with Select beside it appears. If the + sign is not visible, simply drag the window to the left to view it.
Once the +sign (Select) is clicked, the citation will be generated. Continue with the other sources. Once all sources are completed, click Insert Bibliography and watch the magic happen!
The bibliography usually appears on the 2nd page.
Ideas for implementation:
- Ask students to generate citations with the add-in and then compare them to a citation format from an authority such as OWL Purdue. This reinforces the idea that machines can make mistakes, and it is always a good idea to double-check the citation with a reference source.
- You can focus on teaching students how to give credit with in-text citations and other parts of the research process because of the ease and efficiency of generating a Works Cited page with the add-in.
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Contributor: Melanie LeJeune
Melanie is a Technology Integration Coach/Librarian at St. Louis Catholic High School. Her library experience and master’s degree in Library & Information Science were instrumental in preparing her to be a tech coach.
Follow Melanie on Twitter: @maclejeune
