Use Marqueed to Annotate Images

One skill that I have noticed receiving renewed interest in education is the process of annotating.  When most educators think about annotation, they have nightmares of dusty college textbooks bleeding yellow highlighter.  But, annotating is a much more focused and useful process than that when it is done well.  Today, I am going to introduce a tool for annotating images.  Tomorrow, I will review a tool for annotating text.

Educators tend to think about text instead of image when analyzing persuasion, purpose, and audience.  But, images are much more persuasive on an instinctual level than text.  Students need to learn to evaluate the messages in images that their TVs, smartphones, high school hallways, etc. present them on a daily basis.  So, I wanted to introduce you to a tool that focuses only on annotating images.  

Marqueed

Marqueed is a web app created to allow graphic design professionals a way to collaborate electronically.  But, it also makes for an amazing and simple to use annotation web app for students. It allows students and teachers to upload a variety of images that everyone can then markup in a collaborative environment.  

Getting Started

Once you establish an account with Marqueed, you are able to create collections or groups.  A collection is a catalog of images that the user uploads.  The collection can be made collaborative by inviting user by email address.  A group consists of multiple people who can see and annotate the collections belonging to the group.

Home screen

Inside of a collection, you are able to click on an image and then draw freehand with the cursor or use boxing tools to highlight specific areas of the image.  You are then able to comment on the selected area.  A list of comments made by any collaborating users is displayed to the right of the image.

Annotating screen

The entire app is very intuitive and simple.  One use will allow teacher and student to become very familiar with the functions and processes used within the app.

Suggestions for Educational Use

To use this app in the classroom, I would suggest creating a group.  I would add all of my students to the group and create a different collection for each student/group of students to work in.

In these collections, the students could either:

1.  Annotate a group of images that the teacher has placed in the collection.  For instance, you might have multiple pictures that show the effects of acid rain.  The students could highlight parts of the image and explain what effect was caused by acid rain (e.g. pitting on a stone statue).

or

2.  Allow students to collect images for their collection and upload them and annotate the images.  For instance, students might collect advertisements that objectify women.  They would upload these advertisements and annotate the specific ways the ads objectify women.

Because you, the teacher, would be the owner of the group.  You would become part of the conversation in the annotations.  Go into each collection and add a comment to the image.  Point out something the students are missing.  Encourage them.  Be a part of the learning.