In which I enjoy marking

Posted By Kevin Gaugler on March 3, 2009


These tough economic times have required sacrifice, even from Google. It’s sudden drop in revenue has forced the company to also drop several of its services, including Google Notebook, a web annotation tool. Apparently, I was one of only a few who have come to rely on the service for making sense of all of my internet wanderings. Admittedly, I was upset. This would teach me to rely on free web services that could vanish in an instant. What could ever replace GoogleNotebook? Well, a quick Google search easily pulled up almost forty alternatives: Annotate, BubblePly The Awesome Highlighter, iLighter, BackBoard, BookGoo, ClipClip, Clipmarks, Co-ment, Diigo, DrawHere, Evernote, Fleck, Instapaper, JotCloud, Kwout, Markkit, MyAnnotations, MyStickies, ProtoNotes, ReFrameIt, SharedCopy, ShiftSpace, SimplyBox, Sniped, Snips, Skitch, Stickis, ToRead, TrailFire, ÜberNote, WebNotes, WiredMarker, WizLite, and Zotero. If that’s not enough choice, Yahoo has announced that it will come to the rescue and fill the void with a service called SearchPad. Yahoo will need something truly innovate to distinguish itself from the competition.

I noticed someone started a spreadsheet on blist for pulling together a comprehensive comparision of web annotation tools, but perhaps the task was just too overwhelming. I suggest we help the poor soul and each take a tool to review and add to that blist. And when we help each other in this way, we also benefit, too, of course.

At first glance, most of the services I found seem to repeat functionality, although a few like Evernote and Instapaper offer iPhone applications that allow you to clip and mark on the go. BookGoo takes a bit of a different approach in that it let’s you upload a document for a group to annotate and mark, a handy feature for collaborative writing projects.

Although I have not tested each of these web annotators, I thought I’d comment on the ones I’ve used, found useful or plan to use soon.

Diigo

Barbara and I already talked about Diigo extensively in a previous post and have even interviewed Maggie Tsai from Diigo. Diigo is a social bookmarking and annotation tool that has quite an active community. In fact, I would say that professionally, Diigo is my most useful social network. I’ve found countless pertinent websites by using Diigo‘s toolbar effectively. In fact, if you install the Diigo toolbar and sign up for an account, you’ll notice that some have added sticky notes and comments to our blog posting on Diigo itself. Another tool in Diigo’s educational war chest is something called webslides. First, you can create a “list” of bookmarks. Then you can choose to view it as a webslide; in essence turning your list into a slide presentation. For example, here is a webslide I created to introduce students to Bullfighting. I have experienced one issue with the webslide function that I wanted to share with you: by clicking through the presentation, you’ll notice that some sites have “timed out”. Too, videos on YouTube tend to not be playable through the webslide. We invite you to listen to our previous interview with Maggie Tsai to learn more about Diigo.

Trailfire

I love Diigo, but the bugs in webslides forced me to look for other tools that would allow me to walk students through a series of web pages that included YouTube videos. As such, I was happy to find and test Trailfire last year. I believe my students had a slightly more transparent experience with Trailfire. Students experienced fewer hiccups with Youtube videos following the trailmarks than they did navigating Diigo’s webslides. Here is a trail I created with Trailfire on the Spanish Civil War.

If you’d like to learn more about Trailfire, I’ve included a 4-minute introduction to the service.



ShiftSpace

So far I’ve only played a bit with ShiftSpace but I’m quite impressed with what I’ve seen so far. First, ShiftSpace is an opensource community, which means if enough people embrace it, we’ll soon see some amazing features from this tool. One feature in particular, called SourceShift, has intrigued me since it gives me the ability to add code to any page. If I want to embed my own YouTube video and explain an article in a foreign newspaper, for example, ShiftSpace allows me to do that. The main downside to ShiftSpace is that its a bit complex for the novice user. You have to install several plugins into Firefox and then remember to hold down the shift key and use your mouse to choose your options. To sign in to your account, you need to hold down the shift key and hit the space bar. It’s from this key sequence that ShiftSpace derives the name. In addition, ShiftSpace also has a feature called trails which is somewhat similar to webslides and trailmarks. What sets the ShiftSpace trails apart is that it lays out the trail in a graphical matrix similar to a mindmap rather than as a simple linear presentation of the links. I have high hopes for ShiftSpace and plan to experiment with it a lot this year. For those who are interested in taking their web graffiti to the next level, here’s a two-minute introduction to ShiftSpace.

BubblePly

I wish to conclude with a great tool particularly designed to annotate online videos with text and hyperlinks. I’ve used BubblePly before to add lyrics and links to music videos for my Spanish students and have embeded one here for your viewing pleasure. Warning: I added the video to the page using ShiftSpace, so only those who have figured out ShiftSpace and visit this post will be able to see the video. The end result is a bit mindblowing when you consider that you are viewing four layers of webtools each working together to deliver a seamless experience: YouTube>>BubblyPly>>WorldA.T.Ways / WordPress>>ShiftSpace.

Good luck and let us know if you were able to view it.

In addition, we would love to hear how you enjoy marking up the Internet.

Creative Commons License

In which I enjoy marking by Kevin Gaugler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.worldatways.com/suggest-topics/.

Categories: Mass-Customization, Productivity, social networks, Teaching and Learning, web 2.0
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About the author

Kevin Gaugler

Kevin Gaugler is Associate Professor of Spanish and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Technology has always been part of the DNA of his teaching. As a graduate student, Dr. Gaugler began working in The University of Connecticut's state-of-the-art multimedia language center to research relationships between the 5Cs and instructional technology. While at Marist, he has developed a a FIPSE-funded course entitled Spanish and Technology and has helped to create Identity Quest, a course that rethinks technology and study abroad. He has presented his pedagogical innovations at numerous conferences and colleges in the United States and is the author of several monographs.

Comments

  • Christen

    After reading this, I remembered that I thought my Google Notebooks were gone back in January. I wondered what would happen if I clicked on my Firefox plugin now and they were there. I quickly logged in to full-screen and exported everything that I thought had gone away (so many wonderful resources that I thought were gone forever!) to Google Docs because there is an easy export function.
    I say this because perhaps there are other readers out there who might have thought their notebooks were gone too, but they are available, at least for a bit more.

    I'll have to explore these new resources, but after this experience, I'm skeptical of everything that might go away instantaneously!.

  • http://www.worldatways.com Kevin Gaugler

    I had the same fear Christen. It is my understanding that you cannot open a new Google Notebook account but all of your Google Notebook material will still be there with limited functionality. I understand your concern about keeping your data in the cloud especially when the economy is weak and companies will go out of business or cut services. I still have faith in the cloud. If you read my post on how I thought I lost all our work on the blog, you'll see that it was the cloud that backed it up. That said, you might want to try Evernote since it syncs your information to a local application.

  • Christen

    After reading this, I remembered that I thought my Google Notebooks were gone back in January. I wondered what would happen if I clicked on my Firefox plugin now and they were there. I quickly logged in to full-screen and exported everything that I thought had gone away (so many wonderful resources that I thought were gone forever!) to Google Docs because there is an easy export function.
    I say this because perhaps there are other readers out there who might have thought their notebooks were gone too, but they are available, at least for a bit more.

    I'll have to explore these new resources, but after this experience, I'm skeptical of everything that might go away instantaneously!.

  • http://www.worldatways.com Kevin Gaugler

    I had the same fear Christen. It is my understanding that you cannot open a new Google Notebook account but all of your Google Notebook material will still be there with limited functionality. I understand your concern about keeping your data in the cloud especially when the economy is weak and companies will go out of business or cut services. I still have faith in the cloud. If you read my post on how I thought I lost all our work on the blog, you'll see that it was the cloud that backed it up. That said, you might want to try Evernote since it syncs your information to a local application.

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