Educational Uses of Annotating Tools

Collaborative annotation tools are a social starting place for immersing students in the scholarly practice of research and annotation, while encouraging them to share information and build on the work of others in a dynamic community of thought. With tools like Diigo,students might have the opportunity to collaborate on the interpretation of resources in ways not possible inside a classroom or with printed materials that should not be written in, such as library books. In addition, while scholars have found in the web an unparalleled information resource, using it effectively depends on tools that help organize the data and simplify the process of locating resources when they are needed. These tools empower users, giving them the capability of commentary and reflection rather than restricting it to authors and website creators. Finally, academics across disciplines and institutions value these tools and the accumulated observations of instructors, experts, and peers that they facilitate (Educause 2009).

Here are 8 annotation tools that you should check out:

1- Diigo
You can use it both to annotate , collect, and highlight content found online. It also has apps for both Android and iOS.

2- Webnotes
Webnotes allows you to highlight and add notes to both web pages and PDFs. You can also use it to organize your bookmarks and share them with others.

3- Awesome Screenshot
This is an extension you can use on Chrome to capture screenshots and annotate them by adding arrows and text boxes.

4- iCyte
This is a great research tool. You can use it to save your bookmarks and just like the previous tools, it lets you annotate and add notes to your web pages.

5- Bounce
This is a cool web tool that lets you take a snapshot of any webpage and add notes to it before sharing it with others.

6- Mark.up
Lets you draw on any webpage with a variety of tools to express your thoughts, make a point or to just simply edit.

7- Screen Draw
This is an extension for Firefox users. Screen Draw lets you draw or type text over the top of any page in any color or size and then save it to png or jpeg.

8- Draw Here
Use the Draw Here bookmarklet to draw on top of web pages while you are browsing the web. If you save your drawings, other Draw Here users will then be able to see your drawings when they go to the same page.

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Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
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