Ideas to Inspire

The Awesome Highlighter

If your students are doing web research, this web 2.0 tool is pretty cool. It allows students to highlight key points in their web research and if you like them to use Post its, or sticky notes while they’re reading, this tool lets them add notes on the site. The notes can be downsized by pressing the hide button and a little “read” widget will stay by the text where the note is located. The note feature can be used to demonstrate the reading strategies you’re working on in class like summarizing, evaluating, predicting, connecting, etc.. Awesome Highlighter is easy to use and no registration is required. Students copy the URL to the site and the site will pop up with the highlighter menu bar on the top. It saves their sites with their highlights and their notes.

*Caution – some sites are not compatible with this free tool, but it’s still a user-friendly, valuable tool.