NoodleTools How-to Guide: How to Write & Respond to Comments

Overview

When you share a project with a teacher's inbox, you can send comments to and respond to questions from that teacher. Likewise, if you've added collaborators to the project, you can read and respond to their comments. Note that if no student collaborators have been added and the project has not been shared with an inbox, you will not see the commenting features described below.

Comments are permanently added to the project and cannot be deleted, so be responsible with what you choose to say!

Comment fields are displayed by default, but if you do not see them (or wish to hide them), click the eye icon at the top of the screen and check (or uncheck) the "Comments" box.

Step 1.

If your comment or question is about a specific source citation, navigate to Sources and enter your comment/question in the comment area below the source citation.

To add a comment or a question about a specific notecard, you can do that from the Sources screen as well. You can show/hide notecards under a particular source citation by clicking the orange notecard icon in the "Notecards" column (or show/hide all notecards via the eye icon at the top of the screen (checking or unchecking the "Notecards" box).

Alternatively, you can navigate to the Notecards Detail View and enter your comment/question in the comment area at the bottom of the notecard in the center area (after selecting the notecard in the left panel).

Step 2.

When a teacher or collaborator responds or leaves new comments for you, the Comments option in the blue panel on the left will display a number in red. The number indicates how many comment threads are in a "to-do" state (meaning that someone has written a comment that you haven't responded to or marked "done" yet).

Note that if you are on the Projects screen, clicking "Comments" in the blue side-panel will first prompt you to select which project you want to view the comments for. If you have a particular project open already, clicking "Comments" from the Sources or Notecards screens will just open the comments panel right away.

Step 3.

The comments panel opens on the right.

The panel displays:

• A "general project comments" thread (whether or not that is currently in a "to-do" or "done" state)
• Any source citation and notecard comment threads that are in a "to-do" state (i.e. someone has written a comment that you haven't responded to or marked "done" yet). Open the "Source Comments" or "Notecard Comments" sections by clicking on those headers.

You can click on the blue link at the top of any citation or notecard comment thread to open the associated citation/notecard in the main panel to the left.

Remember: The comments panel only displays source and notecard comments that are in the "to-do" state. You can view ALL source and notecard comment threads by viewing them under each citation and notecard on the Sources screen.

Step 4.

To respond to feedback, type into the text field and click Send. The "To-do" toggle will automatically change to "Done." Alternatively, if you don't feel a written response is necessary, you can just click the "To-do" toggle to change it to "Done."

Note: If you click the "To-do" toggle and a red message is displayed (see below), it means that your teacher wants you write out a response and click Send, not just mark it done.