October 19, 2009
The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), which provides information on emerging learning practices and technologies, cited CIT’s introduction of A.nnotate software, in its recent article, 7 Things You Should Know about Collaborative Annotation.
In describing collaboration annotation, ELI says it, “…lets users highlight specific content on a web page and add a note explaining their thoughts or pointing to additional resources. Students who use these tools for academic research can, over time, build a collection of their own studies and observations in much the same way generations of students have saved texts with dog-eared pages, highlighted passages, scribbled comments, and sticky notes.”
CIT’s Faculty Support Service installed A.nnotate on a local server for use in writing classes supported by the Faculty Innovation in Teaching (FIT) program, a program designed to allow faculty to develop innovative instructional technology projects that have the potential to improve the educational process. The program provides faculty with the technical staff and other resources necessary to plan and implement their projects, thus allowing faculty to focus on their pedagogical objectives.
A.nnotate allows users to upload PDF, DOC, and IMG files to its site and then annotate the files. These annotations act like ‘commenting’ in Adobe Acrobat. The user can highlight a word, or draw a box around an area, and then add a note to a note box. Viewers of the annotated documents may also reply or add feedback to the annotations.
One FIT project used A.nnotate for a “paper-dissection” assignment to show students how a professional journal article can be reviewed and critiqued.
A limited number of A.nnotate licenses are available for academic use. Email atc_support @cornell.edu for more information.
