Web-based Annotation Tools

Have you ever wanted to add annotations to a web site so your students (or friends) will know exactly the portion of the site on which they should focus? There are several tools that can prove useful.

http://reframeit.com/ adds a panel to the right side of the web page (in your browser) to display annotations and comments.

http://www.diigo.com incudes an educator’s version that features bookmarks, annotations, highlights, sticky notes and more.

http://www.mystickies.com adds sticky notes (that is, “bookmarks on steroids”) to annotate web sites. Sticky notes enable you to do more than just link to a page; rather you can add notes and annotate to highlight the important paragraphs and features.

Since When Is Twitter an Educational Tool?

Last June attendees at the Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange (TTIX) conference (http://ttix.org/2010-sessions/tweeting-from-the-titanic-a-hands-on-demo/) participated in a hands-on session using Twitter to teach and recreate history. The end result was “Sinking the Titanic, 100 Years Later” (see http://twhistory.org/). Twhistory is an online effort to use Twitter to teach, recreate, and reenact history. Further, the educators involved “see opportunities for students to learn to think more deeply about history by participating in creating TwHistory reenactments with their classmates. They will learn how historical narratives are made.”

Other reenactments are listed at http://twhistory.org/reenactments/ if you wish to see further examples.

By the way, if you’re still skeptical of using Twitter because of your initial experiences with the tool, check out the Twitter Life Cycle at http://cogdoghouse.wikispaces.com/TwitterCycle and Alan Levine’s blog at http://cogdogblog.com/2007/04/26/splj-20/. It might change your mind.

If you’re still not convinced, you might want to try a collaborative 3D timeline for a classroom project (rather than the Twhistory approach). If so, check out http://www.beedocs.com. If you have an educational need, there’s an online tool.