2view is another tool that allows you to annotated pictures…besides those in flickr. I’ve used 2view to annotated this same picture. I think that 2view allows you to somehow incorporate the script for the annotations into your own posting of the picture (like in this blog); however, I didn’t quite figure it out. If someone else does, please reply below!

Now, this type of graphic annotating would be lovely if I was teaching anatomy; however, I can image using it on still images from a film to talk about a specific frame. Obviously, however, there are still copyright issues. Ideally these types of tools work best with images that you have copyright control over. Ahh…if I were teaching photography a tool like this could be used for a student to reflect on choices he or she made in the picture’s composition. Or it could be used by an instructor, or classmates, to give feedback on the same picture.

As I continue to agree with my rhetoric and composition colleagues who argue we need to be teaching multi-modal composition, finding tools like 2view and Slidez, an online slide show tool, gives me ideas on how to teach, assign, and provide critical feedback for multi-modal compositions.

• Social Bookmarking: bookmarks page, allows annotation, allows tagging, allows various social forms of sharing
• Social Annotating: everything above plus clipping text, images, videos, etc. from the pages being bookmarked

Over the past academic year I have converted–yes, as in “praise be” converted–to the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us. I loved how “social” del.icio.us is. It is possible to make connections to other resources, other people, through tagging, sharing, subscribing, networking, etc.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been playing with various social annotating tools. The difference? Not much, they just make it much easier to “clip” copy and images from webpages and take notes on the site. I also like that they allow you to word search both the text you clipped as well as your notes.

Some of these social annotation tools include:

• Stickies
• Clipmarks
• Google Notebook

And Google Notebook, of course, will easily transfer materials to gmail or google docs.

I’m sure some of my colleagues would be unhappy that these programs promote blatant copying from the webpages; however, its the same thing as highlighting and annotating on a hardcopy. I think this tool, paired up with something like Turnitin.com,  will give instructors great tools to help teach students to summarize, paraphrase, and cite sources.

Ultimately, I’m thinking it could be interesting to have students make short “casts” (whether audio and/or video) that would build, over time and classes, into a repository of information about the topic/course. This would be the same type of idea of having students adding to a course wiki that would expand over time as a resource for future classes.

If Spock works…it could be an interesting way for individuals to clean up their identities on the web. Think about your students with “2sexxxy4u<at>yahoo.com” email address, or, other stuff graduate students have done and don’t want found when they go on the job market? Although I don’t see this tool being anything that I would specifically build into a lesson, I can imagine having some interesting discussions about it, especially in my technical writing class. Our tech writing course curriculum requires that I have the students write a job application packet. I think it could be interesting to discuss the hows and whys a site/tool like Spock becomes necessary. It might also be a great discussion to have with students before asking them to open/start some new account.

I’ve wanted to have students screen capture their work on the web, especially after I’ve asked them to work with a new technology. Last year I tried having students download a free 30 day trial of Captivate to record their sessions as they were working with a new technology. Don’t ask…it was messy. I like this idea of Robot Reply, where you set up the capturing to be done on the webpage/server side…nothing to ask of the students. However, it appears you have to have a lot of control over your webpages to add a line of code to the bottom of every page on the website. This wouldn’t be a problem with CSS coded websites; however, it still implies that you have access to the website. The “new” tools I’m using are usually web-based and hosted off site. And I can imagine many instructors wanting to track how their students move their a course management system…yeah, get access to that base code, snort!

But I’m excited to find Robot Replay. As I played with it and a website I did have some control, a wiki I’m playing with, I realizing that the wiki has templates. This summer I was going to have students construct a class wiki. I think I’ll combine these tools and track what the students do this summer with the wiki.

I also found CamStudio, a free screen capture software, as I was writing this blog entry. I think I’m also going to spend a little time trying to find some open source screen capture softwares to re-attempt the work I did last spring. That type of screen capture work might have to wait until next fall.

Wow…and I’ve spent lots of time finding stuff to organize web research, but this is cool! I’ve been sold on social bookmarking sites for a couple of years now. And now I’m starting to like these various “clipping” or “notetaking” type bookmarking tools as well. However, the problem with most of them is that they do not bookmark, clip, or save/cache PDF files from library databases. Now I’m trying to teach my students that research in library databases tends to be a little more authoritative, scholary, academic, etc. than what they find on the web. And some days I can’t blame them, it is a whole heck of a lot easier to work with texts on the web, than the stuff in the library databases.

So…why not use a tool many of them already know and love, iTunes?

As I read the instructions for how to do this, they reminded me of the major drawback…it’s just an organizing plan; iTunes doesn’t have a PDF reader within it. However, the blog entry also lists the major plus for using iTunes to organize research PDFs, tagging. Currently I have all my research related PDFs saved in the files with the projects that I found them with. Now, most scholars know that they use the same resources for many projects. By tagging, instead of filing, iTunes allows you to associated the PDF with any past, present, and future project it needs to be associated with.

The one change I would make…the instructions linked to above mentions that you could leave your PDFs in files all over your computer. That is part of my problem! I’m now thinking put ALL research related, heck maybe just all, PDF files into one file folder. Then organize them within iTunes as outlined above. And then, as also mentioned in the article, use Google Desktop to search the text in the files for the exact PDF needed. (yes, you read that correctly, once Google Desktop scans all your files, it can read all the text in your PDF files). That just gave me another techno-clean up for this summer:

1. organize bookmarks in delicious
2. finish digital list of DVDs (insurance purposes, ya know)
3. dump all PDFs in one file & organize in iTunes

• helping students collaborate on projects, and
•  helping scholars collaborate on projects.

However,  what if you used one of these types of tools as a course management system? All the students were collaborators, and everyone would have an idea of what one another is doing. Humm…maybe try that out on a smaller class.

How would I use this with my students? Easy…have them set up email reminders for deadlines and such on the first day of class. How wonderful is that? Honestly, however, I’m thinking this could be a useful tool for myself as well. I’m constantly emailing myself with notes. Wouldn’t it be great to acknowledge that sometimes I don’t need those messages to self, yet?!

PS…as I’m chatting with people in the CTL we talked about how useful it could be to have your students email themselves goals for the course, and then get that emailed to them right before the final, or something like that?!