Category: Note taking

Boffo Socko Now Supports Hypothes.is Annotations

I’d played around with many of them in the past, but a recent conversation with Matt Gross about News Genius and their issues in the last week reminded me about internet annotation platforms. Since some of what I write here is academic in nature, I thought I would add native Hypothes.is Annotation support to the site.

hypothesisIf you haven’t heard about it before, you might find the ability to highlight and annotate web pages very useful. Hypothesis allows for public or private highlights and notes and it can be a very useful extension of one’s commonplace book.

At the moment, I’m not sure where it all fits into the IndieWeb infrastructure I’m building here, but, at least for the moment, I’d hope that those making public annotations and notes will also enter their commentary into the comments either here on the blog or by way of syndicated versions on Facebook or Twitter so that they’re archived here for posterity. (Keep in mind site-deaths are prevalent and even Hypothes.is acknowledges in a video on their homepage that there have been many incarnations of web annotations that have come and gone in the life of the internet.) Perhaps one day there will be a federated and cross-linked version of highlights and annotations in the IndieWeb universe with webmentions included?!

Educators and researchers interested in using web annotation are encouraged to visit the wealth of information provided by providers like Hypothes.is and Genius.com.  In particular, the Hypothes.is blog has some great material and examples over the past year, and they have a special section for educators as well.

As it’s similar in functionality to highlighting on the web, I’ll remind users that we also still support Kevin Marks’s fragmentions as well.

If anyone is aware of people or groups working on the potential integration of the IndieWeb movement (webmentions) and web annotation/highlighting, please include them in the comments below–I’d really appreciate it.

 

Replied to What are some effective strategies for taking notes from mathematics or physics textbooks? (Quora.com)
I’ll turn this question around 180 degrees to suggest that instead of taking notes from your math/physics textbooks, that you’re FAR better off PUTTING notes INTO them! Those margins are meant for writing down the parts of problems and examples that the author implicitly leaves out.

One typically wouldn’t take notes from a Spanish, French, or Latin textbook would they? Like most languages, mathematics should be read and written to practice it (and maybe even spoken).

Knowing math or physics is best demonstrated by actually doing problems – and the majority of the time, this is what is going to be on the test too, so just pick up a pencil or pen and start working out the answers.

These subjects aren’t like history, philosophy, or psychology with multiple choice or essay type questions that might benefit from note-taking, so just jump right in. Give the book a short read and start plugging away at problems.

If you have problems getting started, take a look at some of the examples provided by the author (or in other books), cover up the answer, and try to recreate the solution.

Drafting off of the Quora question “Why aren’t math textbooks more straightforward?” I’d suggest reading some of my extended answer here: Why Aren’t Math Textbooks more Straightforward?