Top Tech for Digital Annotation

Attach, translate, and transcribe audio comments in G Suite

Bottom Line: If you already use Google Workspace, this simple add-on can make it easier to send comments and feedback to students in the virtual space.

Rich collaboration and close-reading tool invites deep, easy-to-assess discussions

Bottom Line: Versatile, free discussion platform for teaching, peer review, assessment, and fostering active reading.

Turn social media habits into collaborative, close reading

Bottom Line: This is a lean, focused tool that nonetheless could see a lot of use in different types of classrooms.

Crop, customize, and remix online video content with interactive tool

Bottom Line: This is a valuable tool that teachers can use to flip classrooms or support student-led creation.

Empowering reader invites students to read with purpose

Bottom Line: Far beyond the average e-reader, this tool helps students connect with texts and each other while giving teachers useful insight into student thinking.

Versatile annotation tool helps users critically connect with content

Bottom Line: Kami is an effective way to promote student interaction with texts, authentic documents, and pictures.

Discover, create, remix, and share first-rate museum artifacts

Bottom Line: This thoughtfully crafted, open-ended curation and creation tool has a place in most classrooms.

Cross-platform tool for creating, reading, editing, sharing documents

Bottom Line: Versatile tool is a must-have for classrooms working with multiple device platforms.

Create professional-looking media with an abundant library of templates

Bottom Line: It's a treasure trove of well-designed templates and features that encourage creativity and collaboration, but expect some growing pains.

Useful Chrome extension lets teachers add interactivity to websites

Bottom Line: A potential go-to tool for teachers focused on building critical reading skills, especially those in Chromebook classrooms.

Tool makes webpages and digital texts spaces of critique, discussion

Bottom Line: This tool opens up digital text and the web to analysis, annotation, and discussion, whether inside a classroom or with the world.

Capture, annotate, sync, and share across the digital landscape

Bottom Line: Sharing options and annotation features support paperless collaboration and instruction, especially for users proficient in other Microsoft apps.

Add a hint of fun to note-taking or annotating images

Bottom Line: It's easy to annotate images and screenshots, take handwritten notes, and organize it all with Evernote.

Social bookmarking encourages discovery, collaboration, and sharing

Bottom Line: With a Diigo educator account, teachers and students have a safe space to organize, customize, and share Web content while learning about a variety of subjects.

Chrome extension helps organize web-based research

Bottom Line: For Chrome users and mostly digital classrooms, this is a fairly intuitive tool that'll help students wrangle their research.

Collaborative tool lets users annotate songs, literature, web content

Bottom Line: Students can collaboratively engage in the process of annotation and analysis with various texts -- both within the forum and on the web.

Browser extension helpful for annotation and research organization

Bottom Line: A solid -- with room to grow -- annotation and research tool; serious users will need to pay for premium.

Sheet music goes digital with helpful organizational tool

Bottom Line: For already devoted music students, this is an ideal spot to store all things musical, share, and get feedback.

Cool annotation tool has an overwhelming array of features

Bottom Line: With some significant instruction and serious intentions, a cool tool for annotating text.