Modern research platform for school and work
The Scrible Team was happy to be at ISTE 2018 in Chicago this year! We loved meeting and sharing our vision with educators of all types, including classroom teachers, librarians (a.k.a. media specialists), instructional coaches, tech directors and more. We were excited to see so much interest and enthusiasm for Scrible Edu!
It was also a great opportunity to see and reconnect with friends and partners! We couldn’t walk far without running into someone we knew!
NOTE: New Library Layout applies to all Scrible users, but all other changes apply only to Scrible Edu Pro users.
Out with the old and in with the new! We’ve made major changes to make our Library interface more intuitive, with a better design and layout. We’ve also added powerful new features. Check out our new transition video above to guide you through the changes!
OVERVIEW
Previously, navigating between separate Libraries and the components of a project (i.e. its Library, Bibliography, Legend, Collaborators, etc.) required too many clicks. Based on your feedback, we’ve eliminated much of that and simplified the layout and navigation of Libraries and project components. We took the opportunity to also make other improvements to Libraries. Details are below, but here’s a summary of the changes:
Library Improvements
• Standardized Libraries – All libraries have all of the same features now.
• New Library Layout – The Library fills more of the page, is less boxy, has new/updated buttons and more.
• Projects → Libraries – The Library (vs. a Project) is once again the main, top-level organizing concept.
• Project Dashboard → Library Tabs – Panels in the old Project Dashboard are now tabs atop the Library.
• Projects Page → Libraries List – You now have a Libraries List at the left vs. a separate page of projects.
• Class Library Changes – Class Libraries are no longer special things. You can add classes to any library.
• Annotations List – Click on a source (article) in your library to see a list of annotations for that source.
We’ve also added awesome new features! Again, details are below, but here’s the summary:
New Features
• Annotation Tagging – Organize (tag) your evidence/comments (annotations), not just sources (articles).
• Annotations Tab – View and full-text search your annotations in a new Annotations Tab in the Library.
• Smart Outline – Drag/drop annotations into an outline. It auto numbers and updates your bibliography!
DETAILS
Library Improvements
Standardized Libraries
Previously, My Library lacked some features available in other libraries. Now, libraries are standardized so that all libraries have all the same features. That simplifies things!
New Library Layout
The new Library layout wastes less space since it fills more of the page. It’s also less boxy, with a more modern, continuous layout. It also looks and feels more like a robust desktop application. Nice!
Projects → Libraries
The library (vs. project) is once again the central organizing concept. So, there’s no longer a Projects Tab at the top. The contents of that tab have been absorbed into the new Libraries Tab, which now encompasses all components of a project.
Project Dashboard → Library Tabs
The always visible Library Tabs now provide easy access to the various components of a project (e.g. Bibliography, Legend, Papers) that were previously displayed as panels in the previous (now defunct) Project Dashboard. The old Collaborators Panel is now the Collaborators Tab under Library Settings. Library Settings are accessible via the new gear icon to the right of the library name. Use this to invite/add collaborators to your library.
Projects Page → Libraries List
The Libraries Nub to the left of the library name can be toggled to show/hide the Libraries List, which serves the same purpose as the previous (now defunct) Projects Page. The Libraries List displays all of your libraries, including libraries you own and shared with others as well as libraries others have shared with you. The previous concept of a Project Library is now just a library in this Libraries List. So now, just treat, designate and think of each such library as a separate project.
You can now easily move a source (e.g. article) from the library you’re currently viewing to another one simply by dragging and dropping it to that destination library’s name in the Libraries List. So easy!
Class Library Changes
Since this Libraries List is comprehensive, we’ve done away with the concept of a separate/special Class Library, which previously appeared in the Libraries Tab (now gone) under the top-level Classroom Tab. A Class Library was autogenerated every time you created a class. Instead, now, you can just add a class to any library and it becomes a class library. Magic!
Like before, you can still manage the permissions that a class has for a library.
Annotations List
A new Annotations List feature allows you to see all annotations for a selected source (e.g. article) in the library. Click the arrow at the right end of a source in the Sources Tab of a library to browse its annotations. That slides out the Annotations List from the right, which lists the annotations for that source. From there, you can share an annotation, manage its tags, view it in full form in the Library and open the source (e.g. article) to view the annotation in its original context.
New Features
Annotation Tagging
You can now tag specific annotations (e.g. highlighted evidence and comments), not just sources (e.g. articles). When you’ve annotated a source (e.g. a webpage or PDF), you can tag the annotations right then and there. For highlights, underlines and other text style annotations, click on the annotation to view its Annotation Context Menu and then click the tag icon in the Menu. For comments, just click the tag icon shown below the timestamp in the title area of the comment.
This brings up the Annotation Tags Window, which you can use to add and remove tags for the selected annotation.
Tags applied to annotations roll up to the encompassing source. So, in the example shown here, where the tag Report, is added to the pink highlight in the article titled, ‘Millions missing out’: aid fails…, viewing the article in the Library later shows the same tag applied to the article as a whole.
Annotations Tab
Under the new Annotations Tab in the Library, you can view, browse, full-text search, tag and filter all of your annotations across all sources in your library. This gives you more granularity in organizing your information… at the evidence and comment (i.e. annotation) level and not just at the article (i.e. source) level.
Smart Outline
Our new Smart Outline appears under the Outline Tab in the Library. Here, your sources and annotations are accessible via the Library Sidebar on the right hand side. Click on the arrow at the right edge of a source to dig a level deeper and browse its annotations. Alternatively, use the search field to search the library for relevant annotations.
In either case, once annotations are visible in the Library Sidebar, you can drag them leftward and drop them into the body of the outline. Each added item’s corresponding source is automagically added to your bibliography and the corresponding inline parenthetical citation is shown below the item in the outline (not illustrated here).
Each added item is automatically numbered according to its location in the outline hierarchy. Hovering over any item displays icons to the left allowing you to delete the item, add a subsequent item at the same level, indent/outdent the item or drag it to another location in the outline. If you drag it, you’ll see a preview of its new number as it’s being dragged. Whether you indent, outdent or drag and drop an item, its number in the outline is automatically updated. Sweet!
You can edit/tweak the item’s text as needed. You can also just type your own thoughts into the field for an item in the outline. The outline can later be copied and pasted into a document.
So that’s the new Scrible! You can always refer to the video above to see the changes and new features in action. We’ll be updating our training and support materials to reflect them. If you like the new stuff or if you stumble upon any problems or have any questions, please let us know! We’re always here to help!
– The Scrible Team
Our Scrible Team was thrilled to attend and sponsor the Massachusetts School Library Association (MSLA) 2018 Conference in Worcester, Massachusetts! MSLA works to ensure that every school has a library program that’s integrated across grades and subjects and has a significant, measurable impact on student success. Thanks and congrats to MSLA and the Conference planners for hosting an amazing event that focused on the needs of Massachusetts school libraries and media specialists.
Sponsorship
We were a Silver Sponsor because school librarians are our peops and we’re excited to work with Bay State media specialists!
Mass Librarians
Our CEO, Victor, and Teaching Specialist, Dacey, tag-teamed a booth to demo key features of the Scrible Edu platform. We had meaningful conversations and everyone loved Scrible. It was great to see familiar faces and meet new librarians. We gathered feedback on new features for media specialists and learned how school libraries operate in Massachusetts. We’re looking forward to working with the many folks we met at the Conference!
Speakers and Awardees
Day 1 of the Conference concluded with a dinner, awards ceremony and closing keynote by Jennifer Casa-Todd titled Empowering Students To Be Digital Leaders. The Awards were an opportunity for the Bay State’s school library community to recognize and celebrate its notable advocates, leaders and innovative and impactful librarians. Our CEO was happy to meet Service Awardee Greg Pronevitz, an experienced and widely respected advocate for Massachusetts libraries, and catch up with Opening Keynote Speaker Tom Murray, Director of Innovation for Future Ready Schools.
Library, Technology and Media… OH MY!! We had an awesome time at MSLA and look forward to working with Massachusetts librarians to support research, writing, media literacy and technology skills across the Bay State!
Scrible was just at the New Jersey Association of School Librarians (NJASL) Fall Conference at the Ocean Place Resort and Spa in Long Branch the week before Thanksgiving!
Our Cofounder/CEO Victor loved meeting and hanging out with librarians and attendees from all over New Jersey. He chatted with and showed them Scrible at our booth.
We were excited to see that our session was well attended, with 50 engaged librarians attending and asking questions! The session was title and description were:
Scrible + Google = Personalized Learning for Research and Writing!
50% of secondary students struggle with research and aren’t ready for college writing. Using Scrible with G Suite instills strong research/writing skills. Scrible lets students curate, annotate and collaborate on articles and offers citations/bibliographies and Google Docs integration, helping students organize their work. Real-time analytics enable teachers to track student progress and personalize interventions.
Conference attendees loved Scrible. So, we’re excited to have them try Scrible at their schools!
The Scrible Team was excited to be at the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) National Conference in Phoenix last week! We had a blast hanging out with school librarians from all over the country.
We were off to a great start on Day 1 when Google’s Global Education Evangelist, Jaime Casap, gave us a shout out during his Opening Keynote for being in Google’s Media Literacy App Bundle!
Following his speech, Jaime went to the Google booth to hang out with throngs of engaged librarians… And that’s where we were! As a Google for Education Partner, we were stationed there next to Google’s Connor Regan, who was there representing Be Internet Awesome (BIA), Google’s initiative on digital safety and citizenship for kids. BIA was a great complement to our discussions about media literacy. We loved neighboring and partnering with Connor! He told folks about us and we returned the favor. 🙂
We were excited to be invited by Joyce Valenza – a leading voice and thought leader on school librarianship – to present Scrible at the Unconference at the end of Day 1. It was fun and the highlight was the passionate, funny and boisterous Nancy Jo Lambert – a leading teacher librarian from Frisco ISD – interjecting her enthusiastic support for Scrible to Unconference participants during our presentation! Check it out here:
We were happy to demo Scrible for school librarians from across the country. We were excited to see they loved Scrible! We look forward to them trying Scrible at their schools with their teachers and students!
You spoke and we listened! PDF annotation is one of our most requested features. Well, it’s here now, along with a new way of working with PDFs! We’re proud to announce the new Scrible PDF Viewer/Annotator.
Wait. PDFs? Does anyone read PDFs anymore? It’s 2016. Isn’t everything on websites these days?
You’d think so. So much of the world’s knowledge has moved to webpages, but Phil Ydens, VP of Engineering at Adobe, reports 1.6 billion PDFs are on the Web and 73M new PDFs are saved to Google Drive/Gmail daily. Obviously, 
you’re not reading news in PDFs, but research studies, business reports and white papers, academic and scholarly articles and the like are all still published, shared and consumed in PDF… And that’s just the new stuff. There’s a treasure trove of legacy PDFs. Altogether, Phil estimates 2.5 trillion PDFs in the world. That’s with a t. Whoa.
OK, but a PDF app? Isn’t that retro? Haven’t there been a million PDF viewers since the 90s?
Yeah, but times have changed. We spend way more time in browsers and using cloud-based apps like Google Apps these days. Legacy PDF viewers were built for the Desktop Era. It’s time to go back to the future with a modern way to work with a legacy file format. Our new PDF Viewer/Annotator is browser-based, auto-saves your PDFs and annotations to the cloud, enables real-time collaboration, fits seamlessly into your Web browsing experience and integrates with Google Drive. Welcome to the future.
Enough with the prologue. Let’s show you the new hotness… Oh, but first… If you’re new to Scrible, sign up and add our Chrome Extension (strongly recommended) or Bookmarklet first.
Opening a PDF in your Scrible Library now opens it in our new PDF Viewer/Annotator. That’s in Chrome, Firefox and Safari (Sorry IE/Edge users). Here’s an example, showing brilliant comments by Elon Tusk on a NASA paper about Mars missions:
Menu of Options/Tools
The menu of options/tools shown atop the PDF is magnified here:
Each option/tool should be self-evident. If not, hover over each one to display a tooltip that’ll clarify its purpose.
Sidebar
The right-most button toggles a Sidebar on/off with separate tabs for various useful tools/info about the PDF.
Thumbnails Tab in Sidebar Citations Tab in Sidebar
You can annotate PDFs using different colored highlights and comments right in your browser. Awesomeness.
If you’re annotating a shared PDF, your highlights can overlap with others’ highlights without impacting them. So, highlight to your heart’s content. You won’t mess up anyone else’s work.
In PDF Land, comments replace the notes you see in our webpage annotation tools. Don’t worry… We’ll update the Web annotation approach in the future and restore balance to the Force. Comments appear in the Comments Bar and are anchored to text in the PDF so it’s clear what’s being discussed.
We’ll be bringing more annotation tools to PDFs. A few of the Web annotation features loved by our Pro users – like Underline and Legends – aren’t yet in PDF Land, but they’re coming. Hang tight.
PDFs and all annotations made to them are auto-saved to your Scrible Library. (Mic drop)
…(Um. Picking mic back up) When auto-saving is underway, you’ll see a yellow icon spinning next to the Highlight Button. Otherwise, you’ll see a green check mark there like you see above.
In PDF Land, you can reply to someone else’s comment on a shared PDF. Know what that means? You can have discussions right in the margin of the PDF. You comment. Elon replies. You reply. He replies and shuts you down. Well, better luck next time.
We built this Google Docs-style. What’s that mean? You know how multiple people can edit the same Google Doc at the same time? Same deal here. Elon and his team can see each other’s annotations on a shared PDFin real-time as they’re made. So, no waiting for 
Gwynne to send you her comments before you add yours and then send them to Tom. You can all just access, comment and reply whenever you’re free and everyone else can see your comments immediately. You’re welcome.
Let’s say you’re researching on the Web. You find a golden PDF and you’re viewing it in the browser. Just click our Chrome Extension or Bookmarklet* to load the PDF in the Scrible PDF Viewer/Annotator. It’s autosaved and ready to annotate. In 1 click, the file is yours and ready to work with without leaving your Web browsing or online research flow. Nice.
Right click on a PDF file in your Google Drive and select Open with > scrible to open the PDF in the Scrible PDF Viewer/Annotator, which auto-saves the file to your Scrible Library and lets you to annotate it. Easy peasy.
To enable this, authorize us to connect the Scrible PDF Viewer/Annotator to your Google Drive by clicking the Authorize Button next to Annotate PDFs from Google Drive under Settings > Connected Apps when you’re signed into your Scrible account.
This is all new! So, please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions or hit any problems! Thanks!
–The Scrible Team
* – Some folks might need to re-add our Bookmarklet for this to work. If that’s you, right click on the Scrible Toolbar Bookmarklet in your browser’s bookmarks bar, choose Delete and then re-add the Bookmarklet from our Tools Page.
Microsoft users, we’ve heard from you that you want scrible to work with your Microsoft products. Today, we’re happy to announce that anyone with a Microsoft Office 365 account can now sign up and sign into scrible using their Office 365 account instead of creating and managing a separate scrible password.
Just click on the new red Office 365 icon 
along the bottom of our Sign Up or Sign In pages to get started.
Please let us know what you think and if you run into any problems!
We were invited to participate in the the EdSurge Silicon Valley Tech for Schools Summit this past Saturday! It’s our 3rd time! It’s always a competitive to process to be invited, with lots of interesting ed tech companies vying for an chance to meet tech savvy teachers face-to-face to demo powerful new products and get feedback to improve them for classroom use. We’re grateful to EdSurge and the local education leaders who evaluated us and found scrible Edu compelling.
In past years, it was held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. For the first time, this year’s Summit was held in the East Bay at the beautiful, new La Escuelita Elementary School in Oakland, CA. Our CEO was there, along with two great educators who are big believers in our mission and have used scrible in-class with their own students.
Thanks to the great Bay Area teachers and administrators who spent time with us! Your enthusiasm for scrible is awesome! We’re excited to support you as you help your students develop the vital research and writing skills they need for college and beyond.
Just in time for the new school year!… This summer, we updated our default MLA citation style format to the new 8th Edition published by the Modern Language Association in April of this year. Edu Pro users can still search for and use the MLA 6th and 7th Edition formats. Please let us know if you have any questions or spot any issues with our update.
Learn about MLA and what’s new in MLA 8 here:
MLA Style
What’s New in the Eighth Edition
Happy citing!
Online research platform provider scrible launches scrible Edu, a new ed tech product that streamlines the student research and writing process with GAFE integrations and gives educators visibility into that workflow with rich data.SAN MATEO, CA – APRIL 13, 2016
scrible, the leading innovator in online research technology and a Google for Education Partner, has launched scrible Edu, a new education product that streamlines the student research and writing process and gives educators unprecedented visibility into that workflow for personalized learning.
scrible offers a Web application that allows Internet users to richly annotate webpages in the browser and manage and collaborate on them online. CEO Victor Karkar explains, “This launch adds a new emphasis on writing. We’re extending the strength of our online research platform into the writing realm. We’re helping students write better papers faster and helping educators support the modern information literacy skills students need for college and career success.”
scrible Edu offers students 1-Click Citations, 1-Click Bibliographies, Google Drive integration and a Google Docs Add-on for free. It also includes free classroom capabilities for educators, including class structure, Class Libraries and Google Classroom Sync. Upgrading to the paid Edu Pro tier offers assignment and analytics features that support personalized learning.
Phil Kim, Innovation Manager at KIPP Bay Area Schools, says, “The integration of Google Docs and Classroom made the process of transition to scrible Edu seamless. Victor and the scrible Team have been exceptionally responsive to the feedback our teachers and students have, and they’ve gone above and beyond to ensure that scrible’s platform is user-centered.”
1-Click Citations and Bibliographies enable simple citation capture and bibliography creation. Google Drive integration and the scrible Writer Google Docs Add-on allow a student to bring their research into a paper as 
they’re writing in Google Docs. They can search their scrible Library for annotations (e.g. notes & highlights) and citations from within a Google Doc and view them alongside the paper. They can click to insert the annotations into the paper as quotes with accompanying in-text citations. The citations and bibliography are automatically managed, compiled and appended to the Doc.
Chad O’Connor, History and English Language Arts (ELA) Teacher at the Kensington Creative and Performing Arts High Shool (KCAPA) in Philadelphia, says, “I am excited for my American History students who will use scrible’s new Google Docs infusion for their Sophomore Research Projects. Because students can export all of their annotations to a Google Doc in their Drive, it creates an efficient process for drafting essays AND facilitates a smoother transition for me in teaching them the key skills of paraphrasing and citing sources.”
Class structure enables activities in scrible Edu to mirror real world courses and sections. Google Classroom Sync lets educators easily sync their class rosters with scrible Edu to get started quickly and without manual student data entry. Each class/section automatically gets a Class Library, which educators and students can use to share curated articles for research sources, close reading exercises and class discussions.
scrible Edu Pro allows educators to create novel research project and paper assignments. Students can annotate and save sources to an assignment-specific Library and submit it for review. As a result, teachers can access a rich collection of student work and see how students organize information (using tags), read closely (using annotations), etc.
Teachers can set goals for those projects and papers (e.g. number of sources to collect or cite, number of words in the paper, etc.) and track student progress toward those goals and overall assignment completion at the class and individual student level using a real-time data dashboard. These analytics empower teachers with data to support each student with personalized guidance and intervention. Educators can see where each student is at any given time in the research and writing process and where they get stuck.
Ann Terry, Librarian at Lone Star High School in Frisco, Texas, explains, “Teachers are thrilled to be able to see the progress of their students as they view and save sources. scribe Edu gives our teachers a window into their students’ research process that they’ve never had before. scrible has changed the way Lone Star High School does online research.”
As a part of the launch, CEO Victor Karkar will present scrible Edu in Southern California this week at the Leadership 3.0 Symposium, an annual gathering of K12 administrators focused on “Educational Leadership for the 21s Century”. The Symposium is hosted by the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA), Computer Using Educators, Inc. (CUE) and Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership (TICAL).
For more information, email press(at)scrible(dot)com or visit https://scrible.wpengine.com
