Text annotation

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Introduction

By text annotation we refer to the process of annotating a text in various ways.

“Annotations are usually small text documents attached to a published article. Ideally an annotation is attached to a fragment of an article. Thereby additional information about this specific part of the content is added. An annotation is a kind of electronic post-it and may start a discussion about the annotated part.” (Krottmaier, 2003).

“Ovsiannikov, Arbib, & Mcneill (1999) suggested that online annotations involve four major functions: remembering, thinking, clarifying, and sharing.” (Yeh et al, 2006).

See also annotation system and note taking.

Software

See also: List of web 2.0 applications

Text fragment annotation systems

Word processors

• Most word processors allow annotation, however most of these don't allow on-line collaboration.

E-books

• Somme e-book standards (e.g. e-pub) allow for annotations by the individual reader (e.g. they remain on the local machine and are not shared).

Online web-based word processors

• Buzzword, Adobe's online word-processing solution (Flash based)
• Etherpad, real-time online writing
• Google docs
• OpenGoo, another alternative to Google docs
• Peepel

Internet capable word processors and editors

• Goby, a free collaborative editor supporting multiple documents in one session and a multi-user chat. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-like platforms.
• Zoho writer
• Microsoft Office (web discussion)

Online journals

• Journal of Universal Computer Science

Shared web page separate annotation systems

Shared web page separate annotations systems allow to annotate a web page without modifying the original. Many of these systems now also include or even require convenient web browser extensions.

Web two services (commercial)

• A.nnotate, to upload, annotate, share. online document review and collaboration of PDF, Word and HTML.
• Annotea (Kahan), comments, notes and explanations
• Diigo, an extension to the popular social bookmarking tool
• Fleck, to post public or private text notes on a page. Similar to Diigo.
• ShiftSpace (Firefox plugin)
• Stickis, web page annotation system that let's you connect to content "channels" of other people, Channels may include text, images, RSS feeds.
• Trailfire, IE and Firefox plugin that lets you post notes (called marks) right on top of a webpage and string them together with hyperlinks (making "trails").

Research systems

• AnnotatEd (Farzan & Brusilovsky)
• Xlibris An early attempt to create an annotatable e-book (Schilit et al., 1998)
• Open Annotation Collaboration A more recent initiative “to facilitate the emergence of a Web and Resource-centric interoperable annotation environment that allows leveraging annotations across the boundaries of annotation clients, annotation servers, and content collections. To this end, interoperability specifications will be devised.” ([1], retrieved 15:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)).

Personal web page annotation systems

• Zotero

Use cases in education

In education, we may distinguish two kinds of text annotations

• Notes a reader makes to himself/herself when studying texts or when noting references they plan to further investigate (Wolfe, 2002).
• Comments a reader makes for someone else.

Annotations can by typed, e.g. marked as questions or answers.

• “Bargeron, et al, (2001) claimed, tools for manipulating and rearranging annotations can scaffold different note-taking and information strategies that help students learn to move from reading to writing. Specifically, annotations can provide in-context personal notes and can enable asynchronous collaboration among groups of user”. (cited by Yeh et al, 2006).

Links

• Annotation

• web annotation (Wikipedia)

• WebAnnotation, an entry in the orginal wiki.

• Five Ways to Mark Up the Web by Nick Gonzalez on April 10, 2007. Techcrunch.

• Top Web Annotation Tools: Annotate+Bookmark+Collaborate
• 5 Great Alternatives To Google Docs You Should Consider by David Pierce, Makeuseof.com, March 2009.

Bibliography

• Farzan, R. & Brusilovsky, P. (2006). AnnotatEd: A Social Navigation and Annotation Service for Web-based Educational Resources. In T. Reeves & S. Yamashita (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2006 (pp. 2794-2802). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Abstract/PDF

• Kahan, J., Koivunen, M.-R., Prud’Hommeaux, E., and Swick, R. R. (2001). Annotea: An open rdf infrastructure for shared web annotations. In Proceedings of the WWW10 International Conference.

• Krottmaier, H. (2003). Enhanced Annotations. In C. Crawford et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2003 (pp. 991-993). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Abstract/PDF

• Krottmaier, H. and Helic, D. (2002). More than Passive Reading: Interactive Features in Digital Libraries. In Proceedings of E-Learn, Montreal, Canada.

• Marshall, C. C. (1997). Annotation: From paper books to digital library. In ACM DL, pages 131–140.

• Ovsiannikov, I.A., Arbib, M.A., and Mcneill, T. H. (1999). Annotation Technology. International Journal, Human-Computer Studies, 50, 329-362.

• Schilit Bill, Gene Golovchinsky, and Morgan Price (1998). CHI 98 Conference Proceedings, ACM Press, 1998, pp. 249-256., April 18, 1998. PDF

• Yeh, S., Lo, J. & Huang, J. (2006). The Development of an Online Annotation System for EFL Writing with Error Feedback and Error Analysis. In E. Pearson & P. Bohman (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2006 (pp. 2480-2485). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Abstract/PDF

• Wolfe, J. (2002). Annotation technologies: A software and research review. Computers and Composition, 19, 471-497.