Lifelong Learning

innovative technology + self-sustainability

Simply boxed – sharing comments, capturing content

A nice way to share a group of URLs is to “box” them together using a service such as Simplybox.

If you are new to Simplybox you can watch this overview here to get an idea of what Simplybox is all about.

Once you’ve added the webpages (you can tag and describe them) then you can choose to share the box publicly via URL or by embedding a widget  – shame this doesn’t seem to work on Moodle or edublogs but it does look great on a wiki!

Embed widget for your wiki- plays as slide show

Embed widget for your wiki- plays as slide show

Another nice feature is the print options. If you select “view as list” then choose print (e.g select pdf) you can create an archived version of the comments on that selection of webadresses.

This is very useful in training or with language learners if they are using sites and need to discuss, the record might be helpful for some who prefer off-screen reading or for showing progression and continuity of comments.

In comparison to using Diigo, I’d say the pros of Simplybox are that the boxing is simple and user-oriented. You can save the part of the website you want to “capture” by dragging your mouse over the area. This can help visitors to see the part you are pointing them to.

Simplybox -capture and share webaddresses

Simplybox -capture and share webaddresses

One of the drawbacks, is the person doing the bookmarking needs to add another bookmarklet to their browser.

What do you think? Have you got any feedback from students/trainees?

6 Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing this! The features do look very useful, but I’m wondering if the sharing ones will become redundant with GoogleWave’s collaborating features.

  2. Hi Tyson,
    Thanks for dropping by, I agree that perhaps quite a lot of tools may well soon seem outdated with the advances that GoogleWave offers to how info is stored, shared and commented on. However, I still think that there will be steps along the way to help new trainees embrace new communication systems that require some “standalone” tools and don’t overwhelm too much on first impact. Depends on their starting points, I guess.
    There’s lots of exploring and thinking to do!

  3. GoogleWave is about collaboration inside the document. SimplyBox is about collaboration around pieces of content from coming from multiple sources. The paid Education version allows for boxing not only from the web, but from documents as well.

  4. Thanks for this additional description and for sharing more details about the paid Edu version, I’ll have to check that out.
    It wasn’t my intention to compare the two as I don’t think that is necessarily helpful, in that GoogleWave was designed to do one thing and SimplyBox another. The point that Tyson made I feel is still valid though, as new tools sometimes do shape our behaviour and lead us to share in new ways. For sure the flow of communication is changing, and from my brief experience of both these tools there’s a lot of thinking outside the box and more opportunities for collaboration. that’s a huge plus for educators.

  5. Wow!! So many tools fly by all the time that I couldn’t bring myself to look into this one. (we do get a bit overwhelmed at times, don’t we). Am so glad you shared this, super useful.

    K

  6. Tell me about it Karenne, sometimes I wonder how we manage to juggle so much . For sure these tools help to access stuff faster but they also open so many doors that it would be nice to have a sabatical year to explore during daytime.
    Glad this was useful, hope you’ll share you carry on sharing your out-of-box findings with us all!
    Thanks for coming by,
    Vale

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

*

© 2024 Lifelong Learning

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑

Skip to toolbar