Save the Web for Later: Help students organize their research with annotation and bookmarking services
RSSBeside printers in school libraries and classrooms nationwide lie piles of pages that students have printed off the web. Much of that paper will never go anywhere but the recycling bin. Why? Because too often students print an entire article when they only need a snippet of information. This problem can be solved by teaching students to use online annotation and bookmarking services.
With iCyte, users can highlight and save sections of websites for later reference. When you save an item in iCyte, an archive of the site is saved in your iCyte account. To organize your findings, you can create folders within your account. iCyte offers add-ons and bookmarklets for Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari. The service normally costs $7.99 per month, but iCyte is available for free to teachers and students who can provide a valid educational email address (.edu or @yourschoolname).
Evernote is your filing cabinet for almost all things digital. In it, you can save web pages, notes, pictures, voice notes to yourself, Tweets, and just about anything else you could find online. You can even take pictures with a cellphone and send them to your Evernote account—a handy thing for field trips. Evernote works with most web browsers and mobile devices.
If you have a Google Account, it’s well worth your time to investigate Google Bookmarks. In Google Bookmarks, you can create lists that can be shared publicly or kept private. As with Google Docs, you can invite other people to share and add to your work. Lists in Google Bookmarks aren’t limited to simple text links; you can add maps, images, and videos. Google Bookmarks can be added to your existing Google account so you don’t have to remember a new user name and password to take advantage of the service.
The web is full of annotation and bookmarking tools. There simply isn’t enough room to cover them all here. Some other popular services you might want to explore include Diigo, Inslices, and Reframe It.
| Author Information |
| Richard Byrne (richardbyrne@freetech4teachers.com), a high school social studies teacher, writes the award-winning blog Free Technology for Teachers. |
