CROWDLAAERS

CROWDLAAERS (crowd layers) is an online tool for examining the annotation data generated by Hyposthes.is. Hypothes.is is a tool for highlighting and annotating online pages as an individual or as a member of a group. CROWDLAAERS, a service developed and maintained by Francisco Perez and Remi Kalir, allows researchers or educators to examine the annotations attached (I call this layering) to web pages – what were the initial comments, what was the context to which the annotations were attached, what were the replies to the original annotations, etc.

These data are available by entering the URL [red box below] for the annotated page into CROWDLAAERS.

If you are unfamiliar with public (or group) annotation, I would recommend a web page I have developed that explains what I call layering and offers examples of tools for layering (Hypothes.is is included). My concept of layering is broader than annotation and includes other additions to content such as highlighting, inserted questions, and inserted discussion invitations.

My interest in layering has been focused on the use within a given class, but some of the applications also include public annotation of important documents (e.g., the platforms of the Presidential candidates in the 2016 election). You might imagine how different individuals would have different things to say about such documents. You probably also imagine how a tool like CROWDLAAERS might be useful in examining these comments.

My interest is more in how layering tools might be used by teachers and students. As more and more educators abandon traditional textbooks and make use of freely available web content, the opportunity to add elements that modify the original content into an instructional resource has great potential. The additions of students for each other and as a by-product of their content processing that might be examined by a teacher also has potential value.

Just to be clear, these additions to an existing web page are not actually part of the page and are not available unless one is using a tool designed to add these elements. Because these additions are separate from the original content, I use the concept of layering to describe this type of service.

CROWDLAAERS is described in a useful post by Kalir and Perez and their description of applications should also be useful if my comments have encouraged further examination.