I was first introduced to digital textbooks back in business school. After registering for an Advertising and Sales class, I got a notice that I could purchase a digital textbook in lieu of the standard hardcopy. Hoping to take a load off my shoulders (literally! My daily commuter bag could get very heavy as I was toting around my work materials, my laptop, and school materials each day!), I decided to enter the digital age and select the e-book, which was available via a web page. All was well with my new book, until I wanted to take notes. After using physical books for the first 25+ years of my life, my urge to highlight and write notes in the margins was overwhelming, almost making me regret opting for the digital text.

For those of you who, like me, grew up using the traditional textbook, a shift to digital can be difficult. For me, one thing that could make that transition a bit easier would be an easy application to highlight digital texts and make notes directly on web pages. Keeping this in mind, I searched high and low for such an application to help out our Saylor students – and I think I’ve found it!

The Awesome Highlighter (available for FREE at www.awesomehighlighter.com) is fairly self-explanatory, easy-to-use, and bound to help you remain organized as you work through your online courses.

There are a few different ways to use Awesome Highlighter. To get started, simply go to www.awesomehighlighter.com and enter the url where you’d like to highlight and click “highlight page”.  Your web page will pop up and will include a toolbar at the top there you can choose to highlight text (and change the color of your highlighter). You can also opt to add a note anywhere on the page and, if you’re working through the course with friends – or if you’ve just found something really cool, you can share any highlighted portions with your friends and social media outlets. Highlights aren’t only limited to text: you can also highlight pictures and video found online. Creating an account allows you to save each of your highlights, where you can search, sort, and tag them for easy access. Other ways to highlight include bookmarking the highlighter tool bar (so you won’t have to visit the application website each time you want to begin highlighting) and downloading the Firefox toolbar.

And, don’t just take my word for it: the Awesome Highlighter has received many favorable reviews. Click here and here to read more about it.

Happy highlighting!

Have you come across a resource or tool that you’d like to share with us or think we should blog about? Let us know by leaving a comment or sending an email to [email protected].

 

Photo Credit, katerha