Social annotation is a digital and collaborative practice in which multiple users interact with text or video through comments, highlights, and discussions directly linked to specific parts of the source. This practice extends the traditional act of reading and watching into a participatory activity, allowing individuals to engage with both the text and each other in educational ways.
For learners functioning within a formal educational setting or an informal setting, social annotation can benefit learners in multiple ways. It can transform reading from a solitary to a communal act, encouraging students to engage more deeply with texts. Students can pose questions, share interpretations, and challenge each other’s views directly on the digital document. This interaction not only enhances comprehension and critical thinking but also builds a sense of community among learners. Potentially, educators can also participate guiding discussions or reacting to student comments.
Beyond the classroom, social annotation is used in research and professional fields to streamline collaborations. Researchers and professionals use annotation tools to review literature, draft reports, and provide feedback. This collaborative approach can accelerate project timelines and improve the quality of work by incorporating multiple expertises and viewpoints efficiently.
I have written previously about social annotation as a subcategory of my interest in technology tools that allow layering and even earlier in the description of specific annotation tools such as Hypothesis. As now seems the case with many digital topics, social annotation eventually was expanded to incorporate AI. This post updates my description of the capabilities of the AI capabilities of Glasp. Glasp is a free tool used to annotate web pages, link comments to videos, and import annotations from Kindle books. It functions as a browser extension when layering comments and highlights on web pages and videos. The accumulated body of additions is available through a website which is where the AI capability is applied as a mechanism for interacting with the collected content and for connecting with other Glasp users.
The following content is divided into two sections. The first section focuses on the AI capabilities applied to personally collected content and the content collected by others. The second section explains how to locate the content of others who have used Glasp to collect content designated as public. This second section describes capabilities I have personally found very useful. As a retired individual, I no longer have access to colleagues I might interact with frequently. Collaborative tools are only useful when collaborators are available and developing connections can be a challenge.
Interacting with stored annotations using AI
The following image displays the personal browser view from the Glasp site. The middle column consists of thumbnails representing multiple web pages that have been annotated and the right-hand column the highlighted material (no notes were added to the source I used for this example) from the selected source. The red box was added to this image to bring your attention to the “Ask digital clone” button. This image is what you would see when connecting to my site to interact with my content. The button would read “Ask your clone” if I was connecting to my own account to interact with my content. Here is a link you can use to interact with my content. After you have read just a bit further, return and use this link to duplicate my example and then try a few requests of your own.
The next image displays what happens when the “Ask digital clone” button is selected. You should see a familiar AI interface with a text box at the bottom (red box) for initiating an interaction. I know the type of content I have read so I have generated a prompt I know should be relevant to the content I have annotated.
The prompt will generate a response if relevant information is available. However, here is what I find most useful. The response will be associated with a way to identify sources (see red box). Typically, I am most interested in reviewing original material from which I can then write something myself.
The link to relevant highlights should produce something that looks like the following.
Locating content saved by others
Glasp offers a capability that addresses the issue I identified earlier. How do you locate others to follow?
The drop-down menu under your image in the upper right-hand corner of the browser display should contain an option “Find like-minded people”. This option will attempt to identify others with some overlap in interests based on the type of content you have annotated. So, you must start by building at least a preliminary collection of annotated sites yourself. If you have no content, there is nothing available to use as the basis for a match.
Glasp should then generate something like the following. You can click on someone from this display to query their existing public material. If you then want to follow that individual, their site should contain a “Follow” button.
Summary
I hope this is enough to get you started. You can use the link to my account to explore. It seems unlikely to me that Glasp will always be free. They must have development and infrastructure costs. For now, the company has offered an interesting approach that has grown in capability during the time I have used it.
I have long been interested in cell phone photography as a way students could learn about GPS and GIS. The capabilities of our phones in this regard are probably now taken for granted and consequently ignored as a learning opportunity. If anything, the capability of connecting the phone to a location marked in captured images may be considered a security risk rather than a capability to be applied when useful.
Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow the investigator to search for interpretations of data related to place. GPS uses the signals from multiple satellites to allow an individual with a GPS device (hardware) to determine the location of the GPS device (place) in terms of precise latitude, longitude, and altitude. Put another way, the device allows you to determine exactly where you are standing on the earth. Typically, your position can be determined with greater than 10-foot accuracy. You may be familiar with GPS navigation because you have GPS hardware installed in your car or perhaps your phone. These devices know where you are and can establish a route between where you are and where you would like to go. The most basic function of a GPS is to locate the device in three-dimensional space (longitude, latitude, and altitude), but most map location (show location on a map), navigate, and store data (e.g., the coordinates of designated locations). Smartphones do so using true GPS (using the signals from satellites) but may also determine the location of the phone by calculating the phone’s location to multiple cell phone towers. The triangulation process with the cell towers is similar to that dependent on satellites but less accurate.
GIS is a software tool that allows the user to see the relationship between “layers” of information. In most cases, one layer is a map. Other layers could be the presence or quantity of an amazingly diverse set of things— e.g., voters with different political preferences, cases of a specific disease, fast food stores, a growth of leafy spurge, or nitrate concentration in water. The general idea is to expose patterns in the data that allow the researcher to speculate about possible explanations.
With the addition of specialized software, some GPS devices and smartphones provide similar capabilities. The device knows your location and can identify restaurants, gas stations, or entertainment options nearby. The field of location-based information is expanding at a rapid pace. One approach involves providing useful, location-specific information. For example, how close am I to the nearest gas station? A second approach allows the user to offer his or her location as information. Being able to locate a phone can be useful if the phone is lost and some applications allow parents to locate their children using the location of the phone the child is carrying. Sometimes, individuals want to make their present location available in case others on a designated list of “friends” may be in the vicinity providing the opportunity for a face-to-face meeting. Obviously, there can be significant privacy concerns related to sharing your location.
A great example of student use of GPS, GIS, and the Internet is the GLOBE program (http://www.globe.gov/). GLOBE is an international program led by a collaborative group of U.S. federal agencies (NOAA, NSF, NASA, EPA). Over 140 colleges and 10,000 schools from over 90 countries are also involved. GLOBE involves students in authentic projects led by scientists in the areas of air quality, land cover, water quality, soil characteristics, and atmospheric sciences.
In the GLOBE program, students in classes taught by specially trained teachers work with scientists to collect data according to precisely defined protocols. The advantage to the scientists is the massive and distributed data collection system made available by the Internet. Data gathered from precise locations (identified with GPS) can be integrated (with GIS) on an international scale. Students have access to educational materials and learn by contributing to authentic projects.
The GLOBE projects are presented in ways that have local relevance and have been matched to K–12 standards. While the topics of study most closely address standards in the areas of math and science, the international scope of the project also involves students with world geography, diverse cultures, and several languages (the project home page is available in seven languages). The data are also available online, and groups of educators are encouraged to propose and pursue related projects.
Readily available software and hardware also allow educators to design projects that are not dependent on formal, large-scale programs. We all have become much more familiar with GPS devices and many of us own navigation or phone devices that could be used in educational projects. Digital cameras tag images with GPS coordinates. Once we have a way of determining location, we might then consider what data we can match to location. Fancy equipment is not always necessary. Sometimes the data are what we see. Do you know what a Dutch Elm tree looks like? Have any Dutch Elms in your community survived? Where are they located? There are also many easy ways to use location to attach data, in this case photos, to maps. For example, Google Photos offers some amazing capabilities. If you store cell phone pictures in Google Photos, try searching for a location (e.g., Chicago). Google Photos knows where some things are located (e.g., the Bean), but will also return photos based on the embedded EXIF data that includes GPS information.
Probes you may already own, your phone and data collection
Your cell phone has an interesting feature. It can store the exact location from which each picture was taken and other information with the same file containing the image. These data are stored as part of EXIF (exchangeable image file format). You may know that some images are accompanied by information such as the camera used to take the picture, aperture, shutter speed, etc. This is EXIF data. The longitude and latitude (I can never remember which is which) can also be stored as EXIF data.
I have a record of my first experience exploring these capabilities. I was using a camera with GPS capabilities rather than a phone, but it is the personal insights about capabilities that resulted that are relevant here. In was 2009 and my wife and I were in Washington, DC, for a conference. We spent some time visiting the local landmarks and I took the following picture. As you can see, we were standing at the fence that surrounds the White House and I took the following photo. I think tourists would no longer be allowed in this location, but that was a different time.
I used the EXIF data to add the photo to Google Maps. In the following image, you can see the image and the mapped location in street view. At first the map information confused me – no white house. Then I realized, we are standing on Pennsylvania Ave. on the other side of the fence shooting through the trees to frame the picture. We were the pin looking through the fence, over the flower bed, toward the White House. I have often said I have a different understanding of technology because I have always been a heavy tech user and experienced life as technological capabilities were added. I was there before and after and thus have a sense of how things changed. When technology capabilities are already there you often learn to use them without a need to understand what is happening and without a sense of amazement that can motivate you to seek understanding and creative applications.
Mapping photo collections with Google services
The following is a tutorial. The specific example that is the basis for the tutorial is not intended to be relevant to classroom use, but the example is authentic and the processes described should transfer. Now retired, we were wintering in Kauai when I decided to write this post. I do a lot of reading and writing in coffee shops and I had decided to begin collecting photos of the various shops I frequented. Others would probably focus on tourist attractions, but coffee shops were the feature that attracted me.
Mapping photos in Google is best understood as using two interrelated Google services – Google Photos and Google MyMaps. If you are cost conscience and are not interested in advanced features or storing a lot of images, you can get away with the free levels of Google tools. The two-stage process involves first storing and isolating the images you want to map (Google Photos) and then importing this collection to be layered on a Google map (MyMaps).
Creating an album in Google Photos
The first step involves the creation of an album to isolate a subset of photos. In the following image, you should find a column of icons on the left-hand border. The icon within the red box is used to create an album.
This icon should then display the Create album button at the top of the display.
Name the new album
Now, return to photos and for each photo you want to map, use the drop down menu to add that photo to the appropriate album.
Continue until you have identified all of the images you want to map.
MyMaps
Google MyMaps (https://www.google.com/maps/d/) provides a means to create multiple personal maps by layering content (e.g., images) on top of the basic Google map. Using the link provided here, open your Google account and identify what you want to label your new personal map.
If you are adding images with GPS data, the process will automatically locate the images you provide to the appropriate location. It makes sense to me, to begin by moving the location that I am interested in to the screen. In this case, I am adding images to the island of Kauai.
The following image is a panel you will see in several of the images that follow. The first use of this panel is to enter a name for the map I am creating.
The text box to enter the name is revealed by selecting the original value (Untitled map) and this will open a box to add the name you intend.
The next step is add the layer that will contain the photos on top of this map.
The approach I am taken is to add all of the images once and this is accomplished by referencing the Google Photos album that already exists. I select “coffee shops” from my albums.
MyMaps does not assume I intend to use all of the images in the designated album so I must now select the images I want to add to the map. When finished, select “Insert”.
This generates the finished product.
MyMaps allows you a way to share your map with others. Try this link to see the map I have just created. Selecting one of the thumbnails appearing on the map should open a larger view. Give it a try. Without the password, your access should be “read only”.
Summary
Google Photos and Google MyMaps allow students to explore GPS and GIS. Images taken with smartphones can be added to a Google map allowing authentic GIS projects. Care should be taken to understand how to turn GPS locations associated with photos on and off.
Have you had the experience of coming across an application feature and wondering why did a software designer decide to go to the trouble of creating and then shipping that feature? Somewhere I encountered a comment on an Obsidian feature called an Unlinked Mention. It took me some time to find it and then even more time in an effort to understand why it exists. I am still not certain how it is to be used and why there wouldn’t be similar features that would be more useful. I have come up with one way I find it offers some value so I will explain what seems a hack and then hope others can find my description helpful in encouraging similar or additional uses.
Note: My description and proposed actions are based on Obsidian on a computer. Some of the actions I describe I could not get to work on my iPad.
So, I think an unlinked mention is supposed to be understood as something like a backlink. In Obsidian when you create a link among two notes (A – B), Obsidian recognizes but does not automatically display the backlink (B-A). For a given note (A), you can get Obsidian to display any backlinks to that note using the backlinks option for the right-hand panel of the Obsidian display. For the note that is active in the middle panel, the right-hand panel should indicate linked mentions and unlinked mentions. You may have to select which you want displayed and it is possible nothing will be displayed for either option. The linked mentions are the backlinks and you can select and display the backlinked notes from this display.
The unlinked mentions are other notes that contain the same exact phrase as you have used to title Note A. Who knew? Why? Maybe I never quite understood the power of a title or how my notes were supposed to be titled. I have tried to think about this and I still don’t get it.
Here is my hack and I think a way to take advantage of unlinked mentions. Start with a blank note and add a title likely to be used within other content you have stored within other notes. To make the effort, your word or phrase would have to be something you want to investigate. I used the word “metacognition” because this is an important concept in the applied cognitive psychology research I read and attempted to apply to educational uses of technology. I have notes about this concept, but the greatest value I found in this hack was taking advantage of all of the Kindle notes and highlights I had stored in Obsidian via Readwise. In my account, there are more than 200 books worth of notes and highlights and the content for each book is often several pages long. I create notes myself as I read, but there is all of this additional content that may contain things I might find useful. Certainly, several of these books would contain content, especially highlights, focused on metacognition.
Once I have my new note with the simple title “metacognition” and for this note look under unlinked mentions in the right-hand column, I now have lots of entries. At this point, my note is still blank, but I now can access many other mentions of metacognition from this list of unlinked mentions. If I select one of these mentions, a “link” button appears and if I select this button Obsidian generates a forward link in the A document and adds the A document to my blank B document as a backlink. The B note is still blank.
Here comes the hack. One of the core plugins for Obsidians is called backlink (use the gear icon from the panel on the left) and it contains a slider that will display backlinks at the bottom of a note (see following image). Now you can display backlinks on your blank note that allow access to the unlinked content you have linked. See the second image below.
The process I have described is a way to generate a collection of links on a topic that would not be available without this hack. It is the process that finds specific mentions of a concept within much larger bodies of content (the highlights from Kindle books) that I find useful. Give it a try.
I have written posts for Medium for a few months now. It is clear that some of my most popular posts concern note-taking and personal knowledge management. I have a history with the topic of note-taking having conducted research with college students based in my more general background in the cognitive processing of learning. When I most it is often about evaluating specific digital note-taking practices or knowledge management concepts based on basic cognitive principles. What about how learning works justifies a specific practice the self-help authors advocating for smart/atomic notes or second brain recommends.
I asked Dall-E to help come up with an image depicting the type of learning I had in mind. My prompt asked for an image showing an adult using a computer and note-taking to learn a skill that was something they had not studied in school. I decided I needed something specific so I requested an image focused on learning to bake bread.
As I have explained in some of these posts, I think some claims made for digital note-taking lack empirical support in the context to which the self-help writers propose their tactics apply.
A couple of observations about the framework within which nearly all (maybe all) existing research was conceptualized. The research I am familiar with focuses on learning within a formal educational setting. Whether it be middle school or graduate students, note-taking is largely a practice to deal with information inputs that are determined by others with the goals for the learner being storing, understanding, and applying this information to examinations, projects, and papers assigned by others. The time frame with perhaps the exception of licensing exams or graduate preliminary examinations are weeks and at most a few weeks in length. Proposals such as Ahren’s Smart Notes or Forte’s Second Brain propose unique tactics and imagine the use of notes over an extended period. Implications of these differences do not seem to be tested or at least are not examined directly by existing research.
The vocabulary of multiple authors proposing new systems and tactics can be an issue by itself. I am trying to understand the difference between smart notes, atomic notes, and permanent notes. For example, Ahrens titles his book Smart Notes, but then describes fleeting notes, literature notes, and permanent notes. There is a process here – fleeting notes can become permanent notes through a personalization process similar to what Forte in this book about the second brain called progressive summarization. I threw in personalization because that is what I call the process of rephrasing and emphasizing based on what the learner knows (again similar to certain properties of progressive summarization). I think I should be able to apply labels if I think my label communicates meaning more clearly.
What am I looking for? I am searching for research literature that examines tactics used with these digital services as applied to learner-determined goals. Starting from a long-standing and nuanced literature defining cognitive benefits associated with note-taking, note-reviewing, highlighting, basic memory, and application what can be understood about self-directed learning? What basic descriptive data are available on the common use of the various features of the affordances of digital services? What types of notes do users actually create? Do users make use of tags and links when they attempt to use the notes they have created or do they simply search? Are notes reviewed periodically and new connections found as recommended by the self-help gurus?
I have tried the various tools scholars use to explore the literature (Research Rabbit, Elicit, Google Scholar, Litmaps, etc.) with no luck. All I need is one or two quality studies of the type I have in mind and finding related work should be easy. Before I give up completely and decide advances in this area will proceed by logic and salespersonship, I decided maybe I should just ask for help. Maybe the wisdom of the crowd really exists. If you think you can provide a lead please do so. I am not putting down those who just imagine strategies for learning they think are unique and creative, but at some point I want to see the data. Am I missing something or is there just nothing there? If there is nothing there, why is this the case?
References
Ahrens, S. (2022). _How to take smart notes: One simple technique to boost writing, learning and thinking_. Sönke Ahrens.
Forte, T. (2022). Building a second brain: A proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential. Atria Books.
I had the opportunity yesterday to do a product review of the online note-taking service Mem.ai with a company representative. I make regular use of Obsidian (with the addition of the Smart Connections plugin) and Mem.ai while reading to do the same things – take, organize, and connect notes and then interact with the notes using AI. I do this as a way to explore two popular services so I can write about their similarities and differences.
The rep had sent me set of questions and then we interacted for what turned out to be a substantial amount of time in reaction to these questions. The question that prompted this post was “What modifications would I like to see Mem.ai add in the future?”
Open.ai is a great service and worth the subscription price, but I would guess any user familiar with other products would be aware of some features they wished any one of the services would add. With Mem.ai. I would like to have access to a feature that would be a way to share portions of my note collection with others. Mem has a pricing level for teams and a way to share any given note within the team, but this is not a way to share with other audiences.
To create this post, I decided I would try to describe this interest and how other services approach this goal. I have previously described these services in detail and I have tried to embed links here that will take you to these descriptions. Here, what I have in mind is emphasizing a way for users of note-taking and organization tools to offer parts of their total collection to others and ideally others who have not invested in the same service. For example, a university history professor might have a massive collection of notes and she may find it valuable to share selected notes with students in different classes. Could this be done efficiently without the students having to purchase the same service?
Hypothes.is
I became personally familiar with the sharing of notes using the free service Hypothes.is. Hypothes.is allows the sharing of notes to designated groups and the sharing of public annotations to other users who happen on the same online source document. Users add a free extension to any one of several different browsers to create personal annotations for personal use or to participate in groups. This is a base-level product with fewer features than my interests require (e.g., linking, AI analysis), but this service is a great application for classroom use. I first wrote about Hypothes.is in 2017. Here is a more recent description (here is a video).
Diigo
Diigo has also been around for some time and I originally thought of Diigo as a social bookmarking site. I have written a lengthy description of Diigo so I will not describe in detail here. My public Diigo account is still active and available if you want to take a look. There is a limited free version of Diigo and a free version for educators (pricing chart). The version for educators has a few limitations (e.g., the number of pdfs that can be annotated), but should work well if what you want is to share annotations and links to source sites with students. Diigo is beginning to show its age and does not offer newer features found in Personal Knowledge Management systems such as links among notes or direct access to AI.
Obsidian
Technically, Obsidian stores its data on your machine. Great for security, but a challenge if you want to get at your content from a different machine. I make use of Apple’s iCloud which functions as online external storage to get at my content from multiple devices. I know others use DropBox in the same way. I also know that you can share a DropBox folder with others and this would allow others with access to work with your notes, but this is not the way Obsidian is intended to work and there certainly are security issues. I want to offer read-only access to a designated subset of my notes.
Obsidian does offer an approved way to allow others access. Obsidian Publish is an $8-a-month add-on that would do pretty much what I want to do. Given the infrastructure requirements of providing this approach, the price is certainly reasonable and I should just add publish to the list of my subscriptions. As I write this resistance seems futile, but I wonder if there would be much interest.
Mem.AI
Mem.AI is an online knowledge management system. The price for an individual user is $8.33 a month for the yearly subscription plan (pricing options). There is a team option for a higher price that is designed for collaborative work (see my initial comments). Mem.ai is a great product for personal use but does not offer the public sharing I would like to see. There is a way to share an individual mem (example), but this is not what I am focusing on here.
MEMEX Garden
For those who follow the personal knowledge management space, MEMEX Garden (Memex Go for portable devices) is a service they probably missed. I paid upfront with a promise of a couple of years fee forgiveness, but I think the monthly subscription price is $6 a month for the yearly plan. MEMEX is positioned within that workflow space before a tool such as Obsidian and can be set up to feed highlights and annotations into Obsidian and some other PKM tools. I mention MEMEX here because it has a sharing capability close to what I would like to see included in my perfect product.
When you take notes or highlight while reading with this tool, the resulting online entry consists of your notes, highlights, tags, and a link to the source. You can also add notes to a theme. A theme can be shared. The image below shows what a theme looks like and another user would experience when making use of a shared theme.
When someone accesses a shared theme, they can link to the original article, view notes/highlights (first image that follows), or get an AI-generated summary of the article (second image that follows).
The way I imagine this being useful to others is to first construct themes to share. Then, offer the link to these theme to others. Those individuals could scan the titles listed within a theme and then use the AI feature to identify sources they might find useful. Finally, they would access the selected source documents for their detailed reading.
I have generated an example of what this looks like based on several themes I follow. Note: the AI summaries use OpenAI and will hit a limit. The summarization gets shut off when the limit I have set is reached. If you do not see the AI tool and want to give it a try, try a different browser. For example, it shows up for me in Chrome, but not Brave.
Summary
I get to the end of this post and upon rereading I find that I have mixed two similar potential social services – social bookmarking and whatever Obsidian and Mem.ai are. Both allow the sharing of highlights and notes, but the ideas differentiated from the original content should be different. In Ahern’s book Smart Notes, he proposed that the notes saved in Obsidian or in Luhman’s Zettelkasten be sufficient to be a meaningful representation of an idea on their own. I interpreted this idea as having sufficient information it was not necessary to have the original context to communicate a useful idea. Highlights and margin notes do not meet this standard and are more likely what is produced when using a tool that both presents the original content and accepts the additions of a reader (e.g., Diigo, Hypothes.is, Memex).
The idea of sharing the ideas generated while reading appeals to me whatever the form the shared information takes. Here, I made an attempt to comment on several services/tools suited to this goal. I use several of these tools and have not found one that matches what I would like to see in a single tool. Perhaps you will find one that fits your interests.
I feel comfortable writing about learning in educational environments. I have reviewed many instructional and learning strategies, read applied studies intended to evaluate the efficacy of these strategies, and read a substantial amount of the basic cognitive research potentially explaining the why of the applied investigations. In a small way, I have contributed to some of this research.
As my life circumstances have changed, I have begun exploring related, but unfamiliar topics. In retirement, I am by definition no longer playing an active role as a salaried educator or researcher. I retain the opportunity to access the scholarly literature as an emeritus faculty member, but I can no longer engage as a researcher. These changes led to a different perspective. I have become more interested in other folks like me who are still interested in learning and how they go about responding to such interests.
As I have contemplated this situation, it has become clear that this situation is not a matter of age. While it was very important for me to constantly learn while I was working, I don’t think I spent much time considering how I should best go about it. There was work to be done and despite my own focus on education, I did little to consider the strategies of my own learning.
I began to think more deeply about self-directed learning, adult learning, or whatever else might be the current way to describe this situation when I began participating in a book club that has as one interest Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and the technology tools that can be applied when committed to implementing this concept. For those who are unfamiliar with PKM, one way to gain insight would be to read a couple of the self-help books explaining views on this topic and describing techniques argued to be useful in achieving goals consistent with the general idea of Personal Knowledge Management.
There is plenty of specific information available from such books and other online resources regarding how to study topics for understanding and retention. It is easy to locate tutorials for online services and apps to implement these strategies. There seem to be hundreds of posts on Medium, Substack, and YouTube with titles like “My Obsidium Workflow”, “I Switched From OneNote to Notion and Can’t Believe My New Productivity”, and “All of the Notetaking Apps in One Post”. There must be something people want to understand and evaluate here. When i dig deeper there are some logical arguments proposed to justify techniques digital tools enable such as the creation of permanent and atomic notes, linking notes, and progressive summarization and I can sometimes associate these techniques with cognitive concepts I knew such as generative learning, spaced repetition, and retrieval practice.
What I finally decided I was missing was the type of applied research I found readily available when specific study techniques are proposed for classroom use. Learning and studying over time is not really what is studied in K12 and postsecondary education. What students know is studied over time, but not frequently how different methods of study influence the development of skills and knowledge. Differences in what studies can do on the next exam or at the end of a course are typically the focus. This seems different from the goal of evaluating learner-guided activities to develop knowledge and skills over many years.
The time frame is not the only difference. Some of the strategies for school and adult independent note-taking are similar on the surface but different enough to warrant additional research. Note-taking, sometimes even described as note-making to differentiate the processes by advocates of some PKM methods, is a good example. In the Smart Note approach, isolating specific concepts such as individual notes written with enough context to be interpretable over time and then linking these individual notes to other notes by way of multiple links is quite different from how students take and make use of notes. The note-taking tools are different, the goals are different, and the mechanisms of creating and then acting on the written record are different. I want to know if the mechanics of these differences are actually useful. Controlled comparisons would be interesting, but so would studies examining how adults familiar with these approaches make use of what the tools allow over time, if they actually do. Do learners working for their own purposes stick with what the logic proposed for the use of a learning tool or do they modify the ideal approach to something that is simpler and less cognitively demanding? Formal research methods have proven useful in understanding study strategies proposed for classroom-associated use but should be repeated in evaluating self-directed adult learning.
I don’t think much if any of the type of formal research I propose exists. At least, I have not been able to locate this work. Maybe the payoff for such effort just is not there. Maybe there is a lack of grant support to fund academic research, but we academics are still interested in topics that seldom bring funding. There is a payoff available to those who develop tools and services in the form of subscriptions and for those writing self-help books that attract attention in the form of sales.
As I consider what it would take to work on these topics, I can imagine the challenges researchers would face. How would you collect data and how would you assure privacy when the tools used are often associated with work? How would you get individuals to participate in studies? What would individuals be willing to provide if you wanted to evaluate the effectiveness of the technique employed? I at least would hope individuals might be willing to provide information about the tools they used, how long they have used these tools, and how they have used the tools and perhaps changed their patterns of use over time.
Adults continually have learning tasks to keep up with vocational demands and for personal growth. We are told that rapid advancements in so many areas and so many information sources learning and learning to learn using technology would seem of increasing value. Perhaps by explaining my observations I can interest those still involved as active researchers. It is also possible I am missing a body of research that would address my interests. If this is the case, I would welcome suggestions.
In reviewing the various ways I might use AI, I am starting to see a pattern. There are uses others are excited about that are not relevant to my life. There are possible uses that are relevant, but I prefer to continue doing these things myself because I either enjoy the activity or feel there is some personal benefit beyond the completion of a given project. Finally, there are some tasks for which AI serves a role that augments my capabilities and improves the quality or quantity of projects I am working on.
At this time, the most beneficial way I use AI is to engage an AI tool in discussing a body of content I have curated or created as notes and highlights in service of a writing project I have taken on. There are two capabilities here that are important. First, I value the language skills of an AI service, but I want the service to use this capability only as a way to communicate with me about the content I designate. I am not certain I know exactly what this means as it would be similar to saying to an expert with whom I was interacting tell me about these specific sources without adding in ideas from sources I have not asked you to explore. Use your general background, but use this background only as a way to explain what these specific sources are proposing. What I mean is don’t add in stuff to address my prompt that does not exist within the sources I gave you.
Second, if I ask an AI service about the content I have provided, I want the service to be able to identify the source and possibly the specific material within a source that was the basis for a given position taken. Think of this expectation as similar to the expectation one might have in reading a scientific article to which the author provides citations for specific claims made. My desire here is to be able to evaluate such claims myself. I have a concern in simply basing a claim on the language of sources not knowing the methodology responsible for producing data used as a basis for a claim. For serious work, you need to read more than the abstract. Requiring a precise methodology section in research papers is important because the methodology establishes the context responsible for the generation of the data and ultimately the conclusions that are reached. Especially in situations in which I disagree with such conclusions, I often wonder if the methodology applied may explain the differences between my expectations and the conclusions reached by the author. Human behavior is complex and variables that influence behavior are hardly ever completely accounted for in research. Researchers do not really lie with statistics, but they can mislead by broad conclusions they share based on a less-than-perfect research method. There are no perfect research methods hence the constant suggestion that more research is needed.
Several services approximate the characteristics I am looking for. I will identify three such services. I had hoped to add a fourth, but I intended to subscribe to the new OpenAI applications recently announced, but the $20 a month subscription fee necessary to use these functions was recently suspended so I will have to wait to explore these functions until OpenAI decides to expand the user base.
The three services I have worked with include NotebookLM, Mem.ai, and Smart Connections with Obisidan. I have written about Mem.ai and Smart Connections in previous posts, so I will use NotebookLM for extended comments and then offer quick examples produced by the other two services.
NotebookLM
NotebookLM recently was made available to me so I have had less experience using this tool than the other two I have included.
At this time you can create a notebook based on 5 pdfs or 10 text segments. There is a limit to how much content these units of information can total, but the pdfs I used were research articles so this is a lot of content. In the following image, icons for the 5 pdfs appear in the column on the left of the screen. All of the pdfs have been selected for the interaction I intend with the AI tool and a check beside each pdf indicates this is the case. The window for submitting my prompts appears at the bottom of the image.
The second image shows the results from the prompt I have submitted (I will explain my interest in interacting with these pdfs following this description). The response to this query is provided above the prompt window (I will share the text) and below this window you will see that the summary was based on 10 “citations”. Selecting one of these citations brings up the content that now appears in the left-hand column. This window shows the content of the pdf and some summary comments about that document generated by the AI. The AI also proposes additional prompts a user might want to apply to that content.
The task I asked all three services to address was related to a recent post I wrote describing generative cognitive tasks and comparisons among the impacts of these generative activities. The pdfs were research studies I had reviewed and were the basis for that post. I had detailed familiarity with this content from both reviewing and annotating this material and writing the previous post and I use this approach of first engaging a process without AI to provide a basis for commenting on what the AI provides. The prompt that follows is what I submitted to NotebookLM to see what would be generated. I will use a similar prompt with the other two AI services/
Prompt: Use only my notes, generate a 400 word summary of generative learning activities and include what is known about the relative effectiveness of different activities.
NoteBook response
Generative learning is a type of learning in which students are actively engaged in creating new knowledge by interacting with the material. This is in contrast to passive learning, in which students simply listen to a lecture or read a textbook.
Generative learning activities are designed to encourage students to think critically about the material and to make connections between new information and their existing knowledge.
There is a significant body of research evidence that supports the effectiveness of generative learning activities. A meta-analysis of 500 studies found that generative learning activities resulted in better learning outcomes than traditional, passive learning methods (Coffey et al., 2003).
Some of the most effective generative learning activities include:
Summarizing: Students are asked to summarize a text in their own words. This activity helps students to identify the main ideas of the text and to understand the relationships between them.
Questioning: Students are asked to generate questions about a text. This activity helps students to think critically about the text and to engage with the material in a deeper way.
Discussion: Students are asked to discuss a text with their classmates. This activity helps students to share their understanding of the text and to learn from each other.
The relative effectiveness of different generative learning activities depends on the specific learning goals. For example, summarizing is a good activity for helping students to remember information, while questioning is a good activity for helping students to understand the material in a deeper way.
Generative learning activities can be used in a variety of settings, including K-12 classrooms, higher education, and corporate training. They are a valuable tool for helping students to learn and remember new information in a more effective way.
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You will note in this material that NoteBook included a reference. This was not one of the pdfs I provided for review so I thought it might have been included in the reference section of one of the pdfs. I asked Notebook to provide a full citation and it generated the following.
Coffey, J. E., & McDonald, J. (2003). The effects of generative learning activities on student achievement: A meta-analysis. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 28(4), 240-263. doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2003.09.001
While this citation looks authentic and has the proper APA format, it is made up. I tried searching Google Scholar and used my library online access to search the location in Contemporary Educational Psychology and no such article exists. Google asks for user feedback and I provided the fake citation in my evaluation.
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Mem.AI
My use of Mem.ai and Smart Connections require a little different approach. The content stored in these services results from my exporting notes and highlights from the research articles I read. Both services are directed at my entire collection of notes so this is different from what NotebookLM could access. However, the citations indicated that the output was based on very similar source material.
Prompt: Use only my notes, generate a 400 word summary of generative learning activities and include what is known about the relative effectiveness of different activities.
Mem.ai response
Generative learning is a process where learners actively engage with material, creating new knowledge and connections. This approach involves strategies such as summarization, teaching, self-testing, and self-explaining, which require learners to select and organize relevant information, elaborate on the material based on personal knowledge, and integrate new information with existing knowledge 1^.
Fiorella and Mayer (2016) identified eight strategies that promote generative learning, including summarization, mapping, drawing, imagining, self-testing, self-explaining, teaching, and enacting. These strategies help learners to create a product based on existing knowledge 1^.
Brod (2021) focused on age differences in generative learning strategies and emphasized the importance of producing a meaningful product that goes beyond simple paraphrasing or retelling. For instance, highlighting does not result in new content, but summarization does. Brod’s review suggests that summarizing becomes useful from high school onwards, while testing is beneficial for all ages 2^.
Chi’s (2009) framework differentiates learning activities into active, constructive, and interactive categories. Active engagement with the material can activate existing knowledge and store new input, while constructive activities involve creating a product based on existing knowledge. Interactive activities involve engaging with others to produce a product that integrates external input with personal knowledge 1^.
Fiorella (2023) proposed a new framework of sense-making that distinguishes among three sense-making modes—explaining, visualizing, and enacting—that serve unique and complementary cognitive functions. The explaining mode generalizes knowledge, the visualizing mode organizes knowledge, and the enacting mode simulates knowledge 3^.
In conclusion, generative learning involves actively engaging with the material to create new connections and deeper understanding. The effectiveness of different generative learning activities can vary based on factors such as age and the specific learning context. However, strategies such as summarization, teaching, self-testing, and notetaking with revision and elaboration can promote generative learning and enhance understanding of the material.
Summarize my notes on generative learning Tue 4/18
At the end of each paragraph in this output, you see a number. The number corresponds to the citation at the bottom. About the three links that take a user to that note, you see the names of the notes. So, this output is carefully linked to sources. I will provide an example of what my notes look like in association with the output from Smart Connections, but each note contains a citation of the article from which I created that note.
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Smart Connections (within Obsidian)
Obsidian contains my notes from research articles I have read and also highlights from other sources provided to Obsidian through Readwise. I tell you this again because I do not have a comparison among AI services based on exactly the same base of resources. However, again, you will note similar sources are found. Note also that the prompt is a little different to get Smart Connections to include citations.
Prompt: Use only my notes, generate a 400 word summary of generative learning activities and include what is known about the relative effectiveness of different activities. Include links to the individual source notes within your summary
Response:
Based on your notes, generative learning involves actively making sense of new information by mentally reorganizing and integrating it with one’s prior knowledge (Fiorella and Mayer, 2016). It is a constructive process that requires learners to select important information, reorganize it, and relate it to what they already know (Fiorellaetal2016).
Fiorella and Mayer (2016) identified eight strategies that promote generative learning: summarizing, mapping, drawing, imagining, self-testing, self-explaining, teaching, and enacting. Summarizing involves selecting the main ideas, organizing them into a logical structure, and integrating new information with prior knowledge (Fiorellaetal2016). It is more effective for relatively simple concepts and requires training to use effectively (Fiorellaetal2016).
Mapping and drawing also involve transforming information into different forms of representation (Fiorellaetal2016). These strategies help learners build connections and organize the material (Fiorellaetal2016).
Self-testing, or retrieval-based learning, requires learners to actively retrieve information from memory without access to the provided materials (Fiorellaetal2016). It strengthens memory and makes it more accessible in the future (EndresHigh).
Self-explaining involves explaining the content of a lesson to oneself during learning (Fiorellaetal2016). It promotes meaningful learning outcomes when learners engage in reflective knowledge building (Fiorellaetal2016).
Teaching, on the other hand, involves selecting relevant information, organizing it into a coherent structure, and elaborating on it by incorporating existing knowledge (Fiorellaetal2016). It sets itself apart from other generative strategies by focusing on helping others learn (Fiorellaetal2016).
Based on the research by Fiorella and Mayer (2016), it is more appropriate to consider each generative strategy as suitable for certain types of learning and learning contexts rather than regarding one strategy as the most effective (Fiorellaetal2016).
In a study by Koh, Lee, and Lim (2018), the learning benefits of teaching were investigated. The results showed that teaching improved learning outcomes when it involved retrieval practice, but not when learners used a prepared script (Generative > TeachingAsRetrieval). This supports the idea that retrieval practice is an effective generative learning activity.
Overall, generative learning activities have been shown to be effective in promoting meaningful learning outcomes. However, the effectiveness of each activity may vary depending on the complexity of the material and the training provided to learners. It is important to consider the specific learning goals and contexts when selecting and implementing generative learning strategies (Fiorellaetal2016).
Based on your notes, here are the individual notes that provide more information on each generative learning activity:
– [[Generate1]]: Provides an overview of generative learning theory and the eight strategies identified by Fiorella and Mayer (2016).
– [[Summarizing]]: Describes the summarizing strategy and its effectiveness in selecting main ideas and creating quality summaries.
– [[Teaching]]: Discusses the goal of teaching and its distinction from other generative strategies.
– [[Self-Testing]]: Explains the self-testing strategy and its role in retrieval-based learning.
– [[Promote generative learning]]: Provides a link to the article by Fiorella and Mayer (2016) that identifies the eight strategies and discusses their effectiveness.
– [[Fiorellaetal2016]]: Summarizes the key points from Fiorella and Mayer’s (2016) article on generative learning strategies.
– [[EndresHigh]]: Discusses the importance of task differences in retrieval practice and the effects of different types of recall tasks.
– [[Yang2021]]: Highlights a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of retrieval practice in classroom learning and raises questions about the mechanism and student perception of its benefits.
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Note: The output of Smart Connections is in markdown and the terms included in double parentheses are links that connect to the source note. So, if the summary above was opened in an app that would interpret markdown, the text within the double parentheses would appear as a link and the link would take me to a file stored on my computer. The file is named Generate1.
Here is an example of one of the original notes that was identified as source material.
Generative learning makes sense of new information by reorganizing it and relating it to existing knowledge. This position comes from Wittrock, but is similar to other theorists (Mayer, Piaget). This specific article identified eight learning strategies that promote generative learning and provides a review of research relevant to each strategy.
[[Summarizing]]
Mapping
Drawing
Imagining
[[Self-Testing]]
Self-Explaining
[[Teaching]]
Enacting
The first four strategies (summarizing, mapping, drawing, and imagining) involve changing the input into a different form of representation.
The final four strategies (self-testing, self-explaining, teaching, and answering practice questions) require additional elaboration.
Fiorella, L., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). Eight ways to promote generative learning. _Educational Psychology Review, 28(4), 717-741.
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Summary
Keeping in mind my recognition that the AI of the three AI services was applied to slightly different content, I would argue that Smart Connections and Mem.ai are presently more advanced than NotebookLM. Eventually, I assume a user will be able to direct NotebookLM at a folder of files so the volume of content would be identical. Google does acknowledge that Notebook is still in the early stages and access is limited to a limited number of individuals willing to test and provide feedback. The content generated by all of the services was reasonable, but NoteBook did hallucinate a reference.
My experience in comparing services indicates it is worth trying several in the completion of a given task. I have found it productive to keep both Smart Connections and Mem.ai around as the one I find most useful seems to vary. I do pay to use both services.
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