One of things I have always struggled with as a student was reading online. Yes, I know I teach all about technology and digital tools, but one of the reasons I like to print out EVERYTHING is because I really need to annotate the heck out of something. I've heard of annotation tools that let you mark up web pages, but on initial investigation I noticed there was a cost of some sort.
But today I discovered free annotation tools that enable one to mark up, circle, annotate, you name it. I've only tried out two of these five tools so far, but they were indeed free, and pretty easy to use.
I like markup.io because it's so simple to use. I wouldn't use it for heavy annotations, but maybe to simply circle or box an item, and to put a few comments in. Think of this as annotating for elementary or middle school. This is an especially useful tool if you have a computer and a projector but no smartboard. This even lets you save the annotated page as a link.
Another tool that is particularly useful is called bounceapp.com This is a little easier and more useful for annotation as the text is a bit smaller, so there is more room for commentary on the page. Think of this as capturing a screen shot.
There are a few other free annotation sites on the link above. Check them out and feel free to comment. I especially find these useful as a former student, but they could be very useful in education as the teacher could mark up specific parts of a website and even share these annotated pages as links.
Interesting applications. I think I would use them/find them helpful where I am trying to do something explicitly with a web page. For instance if I am using illustrations in a blog post to show someone how to use a site like Wordpress, it may be nice to circle or highlight on the web page what I am referring to in my composition.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't, however, use them for note taking, for the same reason I don't really use electronics for note taking in the first place. I could not find a study but I seem to remember there actually being scientific evidence for being better able to remember something when you have written it down and not typed it out. I know for me personally I wouldn't remember most of the things I read and studied if I wasn't able to mark and highlight by hand. For some reason, the highlighting function in word and these applications don't get the information to stick in my head. I'm not sure if that goes for everyone or not.