Blog – Page 4

October 8, 2018 By Scrible

Scrible Expands Support for Books and Print Sources

Scrible Edu Pro has long offered the ability to add books and print sources to your bibliography via the Add Offline Source feature. We’ve now taken this to the next level! The Add Offline Source option has been replaced with two new options: Add Book and Add Print Source.

Working with Books

When you add a book, as you enter its title, we suggest potentially matching books and automatically populate the citation details. You can also enter a book’s ISBN to search by that instead.

Once you’ve selected the book and clicked the Create Button, the book is added to your Library as a new source.

When you open it, you’re brought into our new Book and Print Source Editor. It allows you to enter passages and annotations from these sources into Scrible. Simply click the Add Passage Button to show the Passage Editor and then type in a passage and enter its corresponding page number in the book. Page numbers are optional but encouraged because passages are grouped by page to help keep them ordered correctly. The Editor displays each page with the all of passages you’ve entered for that page. By default, passages are added to a page in the order you enter them, but you can drag and drop them within a page to reorder.

While editing a passage, a mini annotation toolbar appears atop the Passage Editor with options to set the color and style of the passage. You can apply an annotation type and color to each passage so you can maintain a consistent annotation style across all of your digital sources (e.g. webpages and PDFs) and print sources (e.g. print books, magazines, newspapers, etc.).

Once entered, as with annotated text in digital sources (e.g. webpages and PDFs), you can apply tags to annotated passages and add comments to them using the icons appearing to the left of each passage when you hover over it.

As with webpages and PDFs, all annotations and tags for book and print sources flow through the system and appear in the Sources Sidebar in the Outline Editor in your Library and the Scrible Writer Google Docs Add-on.

Working with Print Sources

The screenshots shown here are for the example of working with a book, but what about print sources like a print magazine or newspaper? Similar story. When you choose Add Print Source in a Library, the print source you enter is added to that Library. Opening the source brings you into our Book and Print Source Editor. As with books, you can add a page number and passage so that your entered passages are grouped and ordered by page. You can apply annotation styles/colors, attach comments and add tags to the passage. In this case, however, the icons are a bit different. Instead of the book icon in your Library, the print source appears as a newspaper icon and the Add Passage Button is similar . As with the book annotations and tags, everything for a print source flows through the system and appears in the Sources Sidebar in the Outline Editor in your Library and the Scrible Writer Google Docs Add-on.

We’d love to hear your feedback on these capabilities. Let us know!

— The Scrible Team

October 8, 2018 By Scrible

Scrible Improves Tagging System

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We’ve revamped Scrible’s tagging system to make it easier and more intuitive to create, apply and manage tags for your sources and annotations!

Add/Remove Tags to/from Sources and Annotations

When hovering over a source (under the Sources Tab) or annotation (under the Annotations Tab) in your Library, an Actions Drawer appears at the far right end of the source/annotation with various options for that source/annotation. One of those options is the ability to edit the tags for that source/annotation.

Just click on the tags icon to display the Add/Remove Tags Window, which allows you to view the tags already applied to the source/annotation. Start typing to see matching tags that already exist in the Library. Select one of those or type a new tag and apply it the source/annotation. Hovering over an already-applied tag reveals a red x at the right end of the tag. Clicking the x removes the tag from the source/annotation.

Edit and Delete Tags

The ability to edit tag names and delete tags from a Library is now right in the Tags Sidebar at the left side of the Library. When hovering over a tag in the Sidebar, options to edit and delete the tag appear to its right.

Bulk Adding/Removing Tags

Applying/removing tags to/from multiple sources/annotations in a Library can be accomplished by selecting the sources/annotations and clicking the Tags Button atop the Library.

This displays the Bulk Add/Remove Tags Window, which contains a list of all tags in the Library. Simply check or uncheck multiple tags to apply or remove them from the selected sources/annotations. A horizontal line through the checkbox for a tag indicates that the tag is applied to some – but not all – of the selected sources/annotations.

We’d love to hear your feedback on these capabilities. Let us know!

— The Scrible Team

October 8, 2018 By Scrible

Scrible Gets Design Upgrade

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We recently launched long overdue updates to improve Scrible’s UI/UX (user interface and user experience). They improve Scrible’s look and feel, layout and navigation and functionality. Here’s what’s new…

Icons

The icons used across the Library and Toolbar have been updated to a more modern and clean look (see screenshots below).

Toolbar

The Scrible (Web) Toolbar that appears when using our Chrome Extension with webpages now defaults to being docked across the bottom of the webpage. Grab it anywhere along the dark gripper area along the sides to undock it and move it around the screen or drag it to the top of the screen to dock it there.

Sidebars

The Toolbar was growing too wide with new buttons as we added new features. So, we moved some previous buttons and features to new tabbed Sidebars appearing at the right of the page. The Sidebar Tabs allow for easy access to all of the Sidebars, which are now consistent across the our Web Toolbar, PDF Viewer and the new Book & Print Source Editor. The exact tabs available to you will vary based on your plan and the type of content you’re viewing (e.g. webpage vs. PDF). Here’s a quick run down of what you can do with the Sidebars:

Comments – View and edit comments and replies anchored to passages in the article (a.k.a. source)
Collaborators – See who’s currently viewing the article and who’s made annotations and comments.
Tags (NEW) – View, create, apply and remove tags for the article
Thumbnails (PDF only) – Quickly find and navigate to pages in a PDF file.
Information – See what Library the article is located in, move or copy it to another Library, edit the article’s title and description and view, copy and navigate to the original URL for the article.
Citation (Edu and Edu Pro Plans only) – Review and edit citation information for the article. For books, quickly capture citation details by searching with the book’s title, ISBN or author name (NEW).
Legend (Edu Pro Plan only) – Add a description to an annotation tool type or color to help consistently annotate across all articles in the Library.

Library

In the Library, an Action Drawer of options now appears at the right edge of each source and annotation when you hover over it. The options allow you to act specifically on that source or annotation and includes the ability to edit the source’s information, set its read-only status (lock/unlock), preview its annotations, open the source/annotation, edit its tags or delete it.

Outline Editor

For Edu Pro users, we’ve improved the drag and drop experience in the Outline Editor when dragging in new items (e.g. highlighted text as a quote) and moving existing ones. When dragging an item around the outline, you’ll see rows appear after each existing item in the outline with Drop Zones indicating the different levels of the outline that the dragged item can be inserted at. When you drag and drop annotations into the outline or move existing items around, the Outline Editor automatically renumbers all impacted items to ensure the outline’s numbering and indentation remain correct. For example, after Roman numeral II, subpoint B, subpoint 3, you can drop a dragged item into the drop zone for subpoint 4, which will insert the item into the outline as subpoint 4 (after subpoint 3). However, dropping the item into the drop zone for Roman numeral III will make the item Roman numeral III and update the previous item that was Roman numeral III to IV.

Papers

Also for Edu Pro users, clicking the name of a paper in the Papers List in the the Papers Tab of the Library will open the paper in an embedded Google Docs Editor right there in the Papers Tab. This provides easy access to the paper and a quick way to review and edit it. To access and use our Scrible Writer Google Docs Add-on, simply click the link in the top right corner of the Doc to pop out of this embedded view and expand to view the paper in full screen mode in the standard Google Docs Editor.

We’d love to hear your feedback on these new changes. Let us know what you think!

— The Scrible Team

July 2, 2018 By Victor Karkar

Scrible at ISTE 2018

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!

May 14, 2018 By Victor Karkar

Scrible Launches Outlining, Annotation Tagging and New Libraries Interface

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

March 28, 2018 By Victor Karkar

Scrible at MSLA 2018 Conference

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!

November 26, 2017 By Victor Karkar

Scrible at NJASL Fall Conference

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!

November 15, 2017 By Victor Karkar

Scrible at AASL Conference

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.

Opening Keynote

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!

Google Booth

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. 🙂

Unconference

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:

Librarian Love

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!

November 2, 2016 By Scrible

Scrible Launches Cloud-Based PDF Viewer/Annotator with Real-Time Collaboration

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.

PDF VIEWER

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

PDF ANNOTATION

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.

AUTO-SAVE

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.

COMMENT REPLIES

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.

REAL-TIME COLLABORATION

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.

WEB BROWSING INTEGRATION

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.

GOOGLE DRIVE INTEGRATION

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.

September 19, 2016 By Scrible

scrible adds Microsoft Office 365 Single Sign-On (SSO)

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!