8 Annotation Tools Teachers should Have

Annotating tools are a must have for every teacher. I personally can't imagine myself surfing online with no web tools to help me annotate, highlight, clip, and share parts or segments of the web content I find interesting. Most of the browsers nowadays particularly Chrome and Firefox have specific extensions for this purpose. All you need to do is install one of them and there you go, with one click you can master the information you read.

Advantages of the use of annotation tools in education

Educause (2009) describes the following advantages of using annotation tools in education:

1.The activity of adding reflections move students from being passive consumers of information to active readers engaged in scholarly discussions.

2.Collaborative annotation tools offer new ways for students to work collaboratively to find and evaluate information, share ideas, and create knowledge.

3.Collaborative annotation tools facilitate the incremental growth of information as users review others’ thoughts on a resource before adding their own. By providing the ability to designate who is allowed access to collections of resources, these tools reinforce the character of a cohesive group.

4.Because they are web-based, collaborative annotation applications can be made available to a global community, inviting experts in academic disciplines to provide valuable insight on students’ efforts.

5.As students collectively annotate, organize, and add value to existing resources, they learn how to sift, evaluate, and contribute. When instructors use these tools over time, student efforts might constitute an archive or library of remarks so that subsequent classes can benefit from the observations of their predecessors.

Educational uses of Annotating Tools

Collaborative annotation tools are a social starting place for immersing students in the scholarly practice of research and annotation, while encouraging them to share information and build on the work of others in a dynamic community of thought. With tools like Diigo,students might have the opportunity to collaborate on the interpretation of resources in ways not possible inside a classroom or with printed materials that should not be written in, such as library books. In addition, while scholars have found in the web an unparalleled information resource, using it effectively depends on tools that help organize the data and simplify the process of locating resources when they are needed. These tools empower users, giving them the capability of commentary and reflection rather than restricting it to authors and website creators. Finally, academics across disciplines and institutions value these tools and the accumulated observations of instructors, experts, and peers that they facilitate (Educause 2009)

1- Diigo

This my favorite tool. I use it both to annotate , collect, and highlight content I find online. It also has apps for both Android and iOS. I highly recommend this web tool .



2- Webnotes

Webnotes allows you to highlight and add notes to both web pages and PDFs. You can also use it to organize your bookmarks and share them with others.




3- Awesome Screenshot

This is an extension I use on Chrome to capture screenshots and annotate them bu adding arrows and text boxes.



4- iCyte

This is a great research tool . You can use it to save your bookmarks and just like the previous tools, it lets you annotate and add notes to your web pages.



5- Bounce

This is a cool web tool that lets you take a snapshot of any webpage and add note to it before sharing it with others.




6- Mark.up

Mark.up lets you draw on any webpage with a variety of tools to express your thoughts, make a point or to just simply edit.




7- Screen Draw 

This is an extension for Firefox users.  Screen Draw lets you draw or type text over the top of any page in any colour or size and then save it to png or jpeg.



8- Draw Here

Use the Draw Here bookmarklet to draw on top of web pages while you are browsing the web. If you save your drawings, other Draw Here users will then be able to see your drawings when they go to the same page.