Re: feedback on the Annotea Project

> Okay — I think I have the general idea of this annotation concept —
> basically like using MS Word review comments function with encryption,
> so you'd have to unencrypt the code to reference the footnotes —
> right?

Well, I suppose you can say that it's *like using MS Word review
comments*, but annotation is a technology-independent concept. One of the
original inspirations is the Talmud.

I don't know where encryption enters the picture, though it might be
mentioned as an optional feature. Annotea, and other web-based
annotation tools, have a number of very useful features which break free 
from the "single-document" model (which both Word, and for that model,
the Talmud, suffer).  I thought that the Overview statement for Annotea
quite clear (and I'm not even associated with it):

"By annotations we mean comments, notes, explanations, or other types of
external remarks that can be attached to any Web document or a selected
part of the document without actually needing to touch the document. When
the user gets the document he or she can also load the annotations
attached to it from a selected annotation server or several servers and
see what his peer group thinks."

I can't comment on this rest of the documents. I have some writings on
annotation which touch more on application needs.

> The big controversy on listservs is how we (teachers) harp on our
> students about plagiarism only to find ourselves inadvertedly doing
> exactly that.   Now that everyone is sensitive to the issue, an idea
> like yours is ripe for implementation (if I understand your idea...) —
> but it has to be accessible for the low-techy.  What do you think?

On what listserve? I assume one for teachers.

I don't know how annotation helps (fight) plagiarism. One way of thinking
is that you can start to think about avoiding the conditions which might
subtly encourage plagiarism. Maybe one cause is assigning the
same paper to all the students. Instead they might be encouraged to engage
in a Talmudic collaboration: appending to original texts, not copying
them.

Jon

Received on Wednesday, 6 March 2002 16:12:58 UTC