Overview: If you have more than 10 notecards, you can visually organize them to "see" how the information fits together.


This article applies to: 

✔︎ NoodleTools School Subscription

✔︎ NoodleTools Individual License

✗ NoodleTools MLA Lite

✗ NoodleTools Express

Instructions


Step 1:

The Notecard Tabletop View is a space to visually organize information. If you want to outline your notes, see this outline tutorial. 


Step 2:

Strategic use of NoodleTools to create, tag, pile and page notes can help you think clearly and flexibly about what you're trying to accomplish.


Text tags in early research stages

When you begin taking notes from your sources, you are in a pre-organization stage. While you probably have a guiding question, be open minded when you take notes. You may end up broadening or narrowing your topic based on the quantity or quality of facts and evidence you find.


Text tags are useful at this stage because they represent possible categories or "clumps" of information that could help you structure your paper or project. Later in the process, you can try grouping notecards by one or even several tags on the tabletop in order to experiment with different ways to organize your work. 


How to add tags, colors, and visual cues to a notecard.


Grouping notecards visually and creating piles

Group notecards together to organize before writing a paper or designing a product. You can group notecards by simply dropping them close to each other on the tabletop or by creating a titled notecard pile. A string of notecards can become a timeline of events. A pile of notecards can collect various definitions of a concept or the elements of a claim for an argument you are going to make. 


Piling notecards has advantages. In the Notecard Tabletop View, you can move a group of notes into a node of your outline efficiently. In the Notecard Detail View, you can easily view the consolidated contents of an entire pile.


How to create and manage notecard piles.


Notecard pages

If your project has a large number of notecards and there are natural divisions, create a new page for each section. For example, if you are narrating a sequence of events with lots of information about each one, devote one page to each event. Or, if you are developing an infographic with sections of information, create a page for each section. You can move notecards and piles between pages as needed. Pages help you focus on one concept, problem or idea at a time.


How to create multiple pages of notecards in the Tabletop View.