Jimmy Fleming from PowerNotes presented at the 2020 Lilly Conference about the use of this software for writing support. I had not heard about PowerNotes before, and use Hypothes.is in several courses for article annotation. PowerNotes is different: users can highlight text, tag/classify it, and summarize it in a PowerNotes project. It also records references to help create accurate bibliographies and promote scholarly citation etiquette. PowerNotes has a browser extension that helps a researcher organize content into outline frameworks that are very flexible. Categorization then leads to annotation with the user making sense of the information. The speaker mentioned that PowerNotes helps students create anchor points to context and corroborate resource material. By incorporating attribution during the process of saving and annotation, PowerNotes can help students keep track of citations. There are also tools to share projects and comment collaboratively. Instructors using PowerNotes talked about how they use it. I found their case studies of literature reviews and sharing notes useful to understand how it works. The software can also export outlines, comments, and references into a spreadsheet. Instructors can also provide feedback, but I didn’t understand if that was based on comments or if there is a way to incorporate rubrics and grades along with feedback. Nonetheless, the software made me think about introducing it to our Delftia team writing a literature review! we already use Hypothes.is and have an organized tag system. PowerNotes includes a work platform for writing and synthesizing the information. This tool may be very useful. I wonder if it can tie into Hypothes.is?
