So you've managed to download your music to your MP3 player, instant messaged all your friends, watched and organised a bunch of video... now how about that school project?

While it might be top of your to-do list, homework when you are at school is, well unavoidable, so you might as well make the most of it, and with the tips and pointers below, it should make it that much easier.

First step... Finding facts

Have a look in your school or local library.
While you might think its old fashioned, books are still great starting points. They're specific to your topic, are freely accessible from your local library, and tend to be very accurate. (Auckland libraries have their catalogues online here www.elgar.govt.nz)

Bring the librarian to you through the internet.
www.anyquestions.co.nz allows you to chat directly with a librarian over the internet about your school project. Confirm a fact that you’re not quite sure about, or ask for help around how best to research your topic.

Use the web to search.
The Internet can seem like a bottomless source of information but before you just start searching away consider what you’re actually looking for. The keywords you type into a search engine determine what comes back, so if your researching the country Fiji for instance, you might want to break your searches down into “Fiji population”, “Fiji government”, and other more specific groupings to avoid getting lots of results around the best flight deals.

If you use Live Search (http://search.live.com) you can also use the "Advanced search" option to easily build a more accurate search tailored to what you’re after. Eg, if you wanted to find news articles on Sir Edmund Hillary that were published in Australia you’d select the advanced search, enter “Edmund Hillary” into the search box, select exact search from the drop list, and add it to your search, then under country region, select Australia and add that. The search you end up with looks something like this
"edmund hillary" loc:AU
and the results should all be very relevant.

There are other parts to Live Search too, for news articles use the News option which will only give you results from reputable news websites. Use the Images option to find relevant pictures. There’s even a scratch pad that lets you shortlist the photos you think you might like into collections. And if you login to Live Search, you can save all the searches to refer back to later.

The good old... or new... encyclopaedia.
Even with good Internet search skills, finding that specific piece of information can be like looking for a needle in a haystack, especially if you’re on a slow internet connection. For getting to the nitty gritty fast, nothing can beat the reliability and sheer volume of information contained in DVD based encyclopaedias’.

Among the best of the bunch is Encarta. This reference library includes articles, speeches, news stories, multilingual dictionaries, timelines, maps and multimedia on thousands of topics. Best of all, Encarta's search engine takes you straight to the important articles, without having to wade through dozens of marginally relevant websites that can pop up during an online search. You can get Encarta at the major software retailers, and there’s also a basic version of it online at http://encarta.msn.com/

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/) is also a good resource online, and as it’s edited by anybody who wants to share their thoughts, it tends to be kept up-to-date. Just be aware that there’s also a greater chance of inaccuracies.

Step Two... Organising thoughts

After the research phase is complete, it's time to organise all that information into concise sections and summarise it all into a readable format. Some teachers provide sample outlines, but if you have nothing to go on, tools like Encarta's Homework Starters can act as a guide on virtually any school assignment — from book reports to science projects.

Microsoft OneNote (part of Office Home and Student) can also be really handy for pulling together snippets, images, tables, audio, screenshots and more from into one place and organising them into a logical sequence for a report. It functions just like a notebook with pages and sections, but it also has some smart features like searching and it also keeps track of the websites you took information from, so you know who to refer to in your bibliography.

From there Word is a great tool for actually writing your report. You can easily insert tables and pictures, select from templates to make your report look fantastic, spell-check, thesaurus, and tables of contents, bibliographies, and footnotes are all simple. There’s even integration with many of the research tools listed above.

Step Three... Your Thoughts

It’s extremely easy to copy and paste a bunch of extracts together and call it a project but it’s also very easy for a teacher to see that that’s what you’ve done too. If you actually want to achieve a decent grade, you also need to formulate your own point of view and a way of expressing that opinion in your own words while still accurately presenting the research facts.

Finally when putting together your project, consider what your teachers are looking for when marking your report?

• Relevance to the topic
• Correct references to your sources
• The student's own point of view
• Correct structure and proper style
• Transitions between areas of discussion
• Consistency of logic
• A flow of ideas
• Originality
• Relevant examples that are well-used and fully explained
• Interesting writing that indicates an interest in the material
• A well-phrased conclusion worthy of discussion