Tek Trek

Several times a week, I point people to specific web pages with interesting tidbits of information.  Generally, I have to say something like “check out the third sentence in paragraph 2″  to direct them to the right spot.  Of course, I could just copy/paste the text in question, but then the context of that text is lost.  I could also just pdf the page and then annotate it with the markup tools in Adobe Acrobat but it’s not very convenient and, since many people don’t have the full version, I don’t like to promote that as a strategy. So, I was happy to find Awesome Highlighter.

This tool lets you highlight specific info on a web page and even add notes. Then, you simply send the provided link to whomever you wish.  Here’s an example of this blog highlighted and annotated with Awesome Highlighter.  To create the highlights, you simply visit the awesome highlighter web page, enter the url of the page you wish to highlight.  The page opens and the highlighter and note tools are there for you to mark up the page as you will.  Once you’re finished, you’re given a URL to share that has your notes and highlights.   If you’re a Firefox user, you can add a plugin to your browser so that you can access the tools easily without going to the Awesome Highlighter web page.

I can see students using this to share research and faculty using it to emphasize certain areas of web resources they provide.  Plus, the notes tool could be used by faculty or students to ask questions, add more information,  add counter-arguments to  content found in the site, etc.