The Moss-Free Stone

As a classroom teacher, I used to commonly take students to a computer lab, give them a list of questions, direct their attention to a bookmark folder or a list of websites on a dry-erase board, and set them off to doing their research. One challenge I found particularly frustrating was the inability of some students to disseminate large amounts of information, assessing what was useful to their task and what was irrelevant or superfluous. Many students had the tendency to compensate by simply including too much information. Others left out important facts, leading to faulty conclusions. Part of the problem sometimes stemmed from the nature of the resource. I taught science, and many science websites are written in a less-than-concise manner generally inappropriate for middle schoolers.

Two unique tools I have been exploring enable teachers to focus students’ attention on key parts of a web page. Fleck and Trailfire are online resources that allow users to annotate websites for their own purposes. For example, a teacher might add notes, pose directing questions, or clarify confusing material. This is done via text boxes, which are added in a simple process using browser plugins. Students simply visit the links to the teacher-modified versions of the page, and off they go.

Fleck users may create cool little tabs on any page which can be opened or closed by the user. Closed tabs appear as a small, round button that expands when clicked. These tabs are referred to as Buttons or Notes in the Fleck toolbar, which appears accross the bottom of Firefox (seen below).

Users select the option they need, type in desired text, and save their page. Tabs may be left open or closed. The page below has a note with instructions for the page on the left and two questions for students on the right.

Users can email Flecked pages or publish them to blogs. A disadvantage to Fleck at this point is that, as far as I can see, students would need to visit the links generated by Fleck, rather than browsing naturally through a marked site.

Trailfire addresses this issue well. While the general concept is the same, Trailfire allows users to create a linked “trail” of web pages, based upon a category title given to each marked page. For example, in the example below, a Trailfire note is added to the same web page.

Teachers can post instructions, additional information, questions, etc. in the note. They also give the note a category title. When finished with the page, users click the navigation arrows in the top of the note to navigate to the next or previous page in the trail.

As with Fleck, Trailfire offers a browser plugin. In Firefox, this is displayed as a panel on the side of the browser, as seen below.

Both of these tools offer educators an effective means of directing student Internet use. They also might be a useful means for students to take notes as they conduct their own, independent research. They could be used collaboratively, allowing students to post questions or comments and respond to one another’s thoughts.