IDT 540

Collaborative Annotation:

I like to use my courses to explore technology in some new way. Here is the plan for this course. I have long been interested in note-taking, highlighting. and the potential of "expert" notes. For example, I enjoy looking at the most popular highlights for our textbook (I would recommend you turn this option on). I also used to conduct research on student use of class notes generated by "experts" (graduate students).

There have been multiple efforts to allow online highlighting and annotation for online resources. Here is a recent effort that intrigues me (see Nature story on this tool).

To take advantage of this service you will need to use the chrome browser and add the hypothes.is extension to the browser. This is not mandatory, but it should be interesting. There is a "private" group option, but I want to make my contributions available to others who might use this service. I have created a group for the course. You join the group using a link I will share through Blackboard (remind me if I forget). Obviously, I cannot post it here.

You will need to add the Hypothes.is extension to chrome to view even the public notes (my notes). If you want to participate with others in commenting (you respond to the invitation link I will provide). You access a view of an annotated page as shown above - you can select public or the class group. If you select the group, you should be able to view my public annotations and your colleagues annotations intended only for the group.

Hypothes.is group tutorial

Note that while Hypothes.is is a serious effort, the service is still being developed and I have encountered issues. To keep a shared page from becoming to messy, shared highlights do not show up unless notes are added. I asked the creator about this and he explained it was to keep things a bit neater. You can "cheat" the system by entering a blank space in the note window, but I agree that comments are probably more valuable than seeing what someone else has highlighted.