Digital Information Critiques: Footnote

Footnote is a tool that allows teachers to upload primary source images with expired copyright restrictions to their account. The teacher can share any uploaded image with students by inputting their email addresses. Students click the URLs they receive via email to access images where they can leave several types of reflections: comments that are general to the entire document; spotlights that allow reflection on a pertinent selection of highlighted text; and annotations of the document's author, date, place, and text. Footnote users can also digitally connect images by indicating one of several possible connection types: from the same document, includes the same person/family/thing/place/event, was part of or influenced, and more. Students can also enter written details pertaining to the connections they make. This connecting feature supports more in-depth analysis of a teacher's document collection as students read and explicate both basic and higher-level thematic relationships across multiple shared resources. If teachers lack their own digital images, a quick search of Footnote reveals multiple public images that may be used in support of lessons (e.g., currently 8500 images related to the topic of "slavery"). Likewise, students may search to identify relevant public images for use in their own digital reports. Footnote includes a feature called "story pages" that allows a user to build and share an online report with imported images and written narrative.