NowComment: A collaborative document annotation tool

Abstract

With the advancement of technology and its advent in education, various document annotation tools have been developed and widely implemented in educational contexts. Even though annotation might be considered an individual activity in some cases such as applications that provide individual readers with commenting and highlighting features, social annotation, as a genre of learning technology, enables learners to annotate digital resources through social interactions, information sharing, and knowledge construction (Novak et al., 2012). In other words, online social annotation tools provide social platforms in which readers interact with resources and each other, share knowledge, and make meaningful discussions (Cohn, 2019; Kalir et al., 2020). NowComment is a free online platform designed for collaborative document annotation. It provides a digital space where a wide range of users including teachers, educators, learners, researchers, and professionals can interact with different types of documents, share insights, and engage in discussions directly in the context of the document. Although NowComment is not specifically designed for language learning, its interactive and collaborative nature makes it a valuable tool for language teachers, learners, and researchers. It aims to enhance communication skills, critical analysis, and collaborative learning by enabling users to interact with documents and each other in a dynamic and interactive way.