In my pursuit to improve your personal learning on this blog, I have added a few new widgets. One of my favorite new finds is the Roohit web highlighter, which I learned about at Ziipa. Roohit is more than a highlighting tool. This tool allows you to actually interact with the materials in blogs and websites.
Roohit Features
Several features make Roohit valuable for bloggers and educators. These include the ability to:
highlight any website or blog by simply typing “http://roohit.com/” before the web address.
email the link to anyone including yourself. Roohit also has an address book to make sharing with several people a possibility.
share on multiple platforms including Delicious, Facebook, and Twitter!
add highlighted page to favorites.
include all highlights in one easy viewing page.
include notes for highlighted points.
view everyone’s highlights and comment on them. You also can make the notes private.
embed a widget on a blog which will automatically update your highlights for others to view.
access these features on a mobile phone.
add to Google toolbar. Note: I tried this and do not recommend this for students, because other public notes are shown and some had questionable material.
use these features and not have to register!
For Bloggers
Roohit allows:
readers to highlight the important information on a blog. If the blog has the tool, then others can see the highlighted sections.
readers to e-mail the notes to themselves or others, collect the notes on a website to share with others, showcase the notes on their blog in a customized scrolling widget (check out my widget on the bottom right hand side), or print the information!
bloggers to show readers what information they are reading using the customized scrolling widget. Showcase important articles, friends’ blogs, or your own previous blog post.
bloggers to pinpoint major points in a guest blogger’s post like I did with Andreas Kalt’s recent post in my blog and Heiki Philp’s post in Burcu’s blog.
bloggers to review their readers’ highlighted sections and see what their readers find as valuable information for future posts.
bloggers to review their readers’ notes and see what their readers disagree or agree with in their posts.
bloggers to visit the user’s notes and comment on them furthering the interaction and connection with readers.
Classroom Application
Roohit is a fantastic tool for students, which allows students to:
highlight important information then take notes of the highlighted parts. This activity helps students remember the materials they read and is more engaging than keeping index cards.
email the research to the teacher.
use the notes to create a blog critiquing the article’s major points.
use the notes to help with research on a paper. Students can copy and paste important evidence from their notes, which is not possible with index cards.
evaluate and engage in other students’ blogs. What if your student bloggers connected with bloggers in another country and students interacted with the other students’ blogs using Roohit?
categorize their notes into a database or Google docs for easy reference.
Roohit is note-taking and research 3.0! So why not discard the index cards this year?
Challenge:
Use the Roohit tool to make notes of your favorite blogs and evaluate the tools usefulness for your students.
Would you like me to review another useful tool? Would you like to recommend a tool for me to check out? Please contact me!
