[Building Sakai] new Sakai document discussion/annotation tool

[Dan Doernberg]

My partners at UVA suggested I introduce NowComment to the list, so...

NowComment is a high-end cloud-based tool that the University of Virginia (UVA) has tested over several years and just finished integrating into Sakai via Shibboleth authentication. A wide variety of classes at UVA and elsewhere have used it for large group discussions, small workgroup projects, and 1:1 teacher-student feedback.

Fairness.com LLC is a public interest group that's making NowComment freely available; you can have a free account to check it out in about 30 seconds:
http://nowcomment.com/signup

Our online demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrd6B0N0ymw

In a nutshell:

NowComment <http://nowcomment.com> is the most sophisticated group collaboration app available for discussion, annotation, and close reading of online documents. Its many unique features include a user interface that encourages rich, in-depth conversations by showing threaded comments "in context" with the original document. Students start or join conversations on whatever passages they find interesting and important, intellectually engaging with a text (and with each other) in ways that can extend or take the place of face-to-face class discussion. Instructors can join in to steer the discussion or correct errors if desired, and a transcript is automatically created for grading and student review. NowComment has been tested at and licensed by the University of Virginia, whose SHANTI office integrated it into UVA's Sakai LMS as a core instructional tool.

More information is available at:
http://nowcomment.com/education 

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or feedback.

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Dan Doernberg
President, Fairness.com LLC
dan at fairness.com
434-975-0780
NowComment® : Turning Documents into Conversations®
http://nowcomment.com/  
http://www.facebook.com/NowComment 
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