Teaching Students How to Annotate Their Sources

I Introduction

The first two sessions of this workshop series discussed how to teach students to recognize fake news and how to expand their online filter bubble to include a wide range of information and points of view. This session will focus on tools students can use to annotate the sources they locate online. In today’s research environment students locate information online, print it out and then highlight parts of the article they think is important to their research project. At no point do students rephrase or analyze and evaluate the passages they read. Without knowing how to interpret the information read students lack the ability to thoroughly understand the information being presented in the resources they locate online or in books.

The following technology tools give students the ability to organize their resources, so they can add their own interpretations to the information they locate online. In addition, many of the annotation tools allow teachers to make comments on students’ notes or papers, thereby reducing the need to print out every document.

II Print Friendly

Before looking at annotation tools let’s look how to change a web page into a document without ads or meaningless fluff.

Under Student Links (https://www.sno.wednet.edu/Page/2408 ) on the Library Media Center’s web page there are many different applications students may use for completing their classroom assignments. One of my favorite student links is Print Friendly. Print Friendly allows people to enter an URL and it will strip out the ads and all the extra fluff leaving just the article to print, turn into a PDF, or email the article to themselves. This saves on paper and toner when printing documents off web pages. Example: last year, there was an article from a web page all freshmen needed to print out for a research assignment. If the student printed the web article without using Print Friendly, then the article was 13 pages. However, when students used Print Friendly the article was only 6 pages. Using Print Friendly saved over 3,000 sheets of paper for just this one article. You might want to share this application with your students for projects in which your students need to print out web pages.

Steps in Locating Print Friendly on the LMC Web Page

Click on the Student link on the LMC home page - https://www.sno.wednet.edu/Page/1343 .

Click on Print Friendly to open dropdown menu - https://www.sno.wednet.edu/Page/2408 .

Click on the Print Friendly URL to launch web page - http://www.printfriendly.com/ .

Example of Using Print Friendly

Let’s say a student was researching Yellowstone bison for a class and they found this USA Today article on their web page. All the student would have to do is copy the URL,

paste the URL in Print Friendly and click on Preview.

Print Friendly took out all the banner, side clips, and ads from this article and the student is left with just the article. The student may print, make a PDF, or email the article to themselves.

Print Friendly is not always perfect when it pulls out an article, but I have found this application to work with most of the URLs students have used with this program. I highly recommend you use this application with your students when they need to print out several articles for a classroom assignment.

Lastly, if students save the article as a PDF, then they can use XODO, or any other annotation tool to rephrase, or analyze and evaluate the article.

III Microsoft Word

Microsoft has included simple annotation tools in their Word program. Students can use these tools to annotate Word documents you give them, or articles they save as MS Word documents.

Under Review, students can highlight text and create a New Comment. This allows students to rephrase or analyze and evaluate passages in Word documents. Also, students can Delete their comments. In addition, they can Show Comments on their documents. This allows other students or a teacher to Reply or Resolve their comments to this document.

If students don’t Show Comments, then thought bubbles will be created near their highlighted text where you can either click on the thought bubble to view the comment or use the Previous and Next buttons above the document to move from one thought bubble to the next one. Again, you can Reply and Resolve comments.

Using these annotation tools allow you to check to see if students are understanding the documents they are reading and to check their critical thinking on their topic.

IV Annotating PDF documents

There are several annotation tools for PDF documents on the market. Some of these programs allow you to use their basic apps for free, but you have pay for their more advanced versions of their app. Abode Acrobat Reader and Kami are used in many school districts, but it costs teachers or districts a yearly subscription fee. Currently, XODO is a free annotation app that can be used on many different platforms. Today, this workshop will use their web app for Chrome.

The home page for XODO is https://www.xodo.com/app/#/ . Under View and Edit, you can either open a PDF from a Local File, Google Drive, or Dropbox. Or, you can drag and drop a PDF into the rectangle.

Once you open a PDF, you can click the down arrow in the tool box to see the various ways you can annotate this document. You can highlight text, add comments, create free (insert) text, underline text, strikethrough text, add lines or arrows, add a signature, call out bubble, add pictures, create rectangles, ellipses and polygons around text, and/or create a cloud.

I doubt if anyone would use all these tools, but I am going to annotate this document using just a handful of these tools, so you can see how each one of these tools work.

I used four tools (highlight text, comment note, underline text, and ellipse). For each one I created a note listing my thoughts on the topic. All comment have Edit or Delete buttons. Like Word, there is a Reply button for each comment and a Cancel button for your reply.

Once a student has finished their annotation they can then save their document. When you open the Save feature it looks like you only have three options (e.g., Google Drive, Bookshelf or Dropbox).

However, if you click on any of these options, and then go back to Save you will be given the option to save to your Computer.

Your downloaded PDF will show your PDF with the various tools you used on the document. However, your comments don’t show until you roll your cursor over the link. When the cursor rolls over the link a pop-up box will appear with your comments.

V EBSCO Databases

EBSCO databases has a limited annotation system that allows you to take notes but doesn’t tie it to highlighted text. You click on Create Note, then click on New Note.

You do need to create a free account to save your notes and articles.

VI Opposing Viewpoints in Context (OVIC) and Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL)

OVIC and GVRL have a slightly better annotation system. You highlight the text you want to make a comment on, select a Highlight color and then click on Note to write. Click the Save button to save your highlight and note.

Click on Highlights and Notes to view the notes you took for each colored highlight. Click to Saved to My Folder or Send to your OneDrive to share with others.