New Features

January 30, 2020 By scrible

Scrible Adds Assistive Features for Accessibility and Comprehension

Scrible Edu Plans now include new features to aid reading accessibility and comprehension, including Read Aloud, Dictionary Lookup and Translation!

Why?

Scrible’s annotation tools have always helped students digest articles as they read critically to highlight key points and make comments to capture their thoughts about the text. This is true regardless of whether that reading is tied to a larger project or downstream paper.

Unfortunately, the ability to effectively read and comprehend a text is a vital academic and life skill that many students struggle with due to a learning disability, limited vocabulary or lack of familiarity with a new language.

So, based on educator feedback and requests, we’ve now extended Scrible’s ability to support literacy beyond annotation with 3 new assistive features to support text accessibility and comprehension – Read Aloud (i.e. text-to-speech), Define and Translate!

Not Just for SPED and ELL

While originally designed to support special needs and ELL (English language learner) students, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) taught us that designing for students with particular challenges actually benefits all students, including those without the challenges. So, these new features can actually help a broad range of students. For example, the Translate feature helps native English speakers digest a foreign language text.

What’s Different?

You might’ve seen these kinds of features elsewhere. So, what’s different here? Well, building them atop our existing platform and alongside our annotation system allowed us to combine them with that system to offer unique capabilities and enable novel teaching and learning experiences.

For example, a teacher can pre-annotate an article to indicate which parts a student should focus on. The student can later have just those annotated portions read aloud to help them better absorb the content. In this way, the teacher is able to support the student in a more engaging way than in other systems where the student might use a standalone read-aloud feature.

Furthermore, our Define and Translate features take advantage of the Sidebar concept underlying our Comments Sidebar, Citation Sidebar, etc. So, we now have a Definitions & Translations Sidebar where definitions and translations are displayed and retained. Why does that matter? Because a student can later revisit the Sidebar to review the words and phrases they found challenging. In contrast, in some other products, definitions and translations are ephemeral… displayed temporarily and inaccessible later.

Where to Find the New Stuff

Each of the new features has its own new button in the Scrible Toolbar. In each case, you can select text and click the button to have the text read aloud, defined or translated. Alternatively, you can click the button to toggle it on and then select the text to be read aloud, defined or translated. As described above, definitions and translations appear in a new Definitions & Translations Sidebar and are saved there for later.

New assistive features in the Scrible Toolbar and the new *Definitions & Translations Sidebar*

Read Aloud

Read Aloud Selected Text

Select passages and click the Read Aloud Button in the Toolbar to have the passages read aloud in a voice of your choice.* Alternatively, you can toggle the Button on first to enter Read Aloud Mode and then select the passage.

**Toggling on the *Read Aloud Button* and selecting text to be read aloud**

In this case, every text selection you make with the modified mouse cursor is read aloud. The selected text is underlined orange and each word is underlined green as it’s spoken. The reading can be paused or cancelled via the Read Aloud Context Menu that appears over the selection.

**Selected text shown as it’s read aloud**

Read Aloud Annotations

Click on an annotation to see its Annotation Context Menu and then click the Read Aloud icon in it to have the annotated text read aloud.

You’ll see the annotated text underlined orange and each word in it is underlined green as it’s spoken.

Choose a Voice, Pitch and Speed

Choose Read Aloud Settings from the Read Aloud Button dropdown in the Toolbar to see options to change the voice to a different gender or accent and to change the speed and pitch of the voice.

Define

Use the Define feature to find the definition for an unfamiliar word. When you select the word and click the Define Button in the Toolbar (or toggle the Button on and then select the word), the definition appears in the Definitions & Translations Sidebar, where it’s saved and remembered for later. So, if you’re later re-reading a passage and need to see its definition again, it’s right there for you.

Translate

Use the Translate feature to translate to/from 50 different languages. Click the Translate Button Dropdown to see and select the to/from language options. Like with definition results, translations are shown in the Definitions & Translations Sidebar, where they’re saved and remembered for later.

Our Edu Plan users can translate single words. Edu Pro Plan users can also translate a phrase or longer passage.

When translating a word to/from English, you’ll see a translation dictionary type list of possible translations for the word, including the part of speech and back translations for each of the possible translations.

* Available voices for Read Aloud and the ability to highlight the words as they are spoken will vary based on browser, operating system and the voice selected.

October 8, 2018 By scrible

Scrible Now Supports Co-Teaching

(Image credit: Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction)

Educators whose school, district or campus subscribes to Scrible Edu Pro can now add co-teachers to their classes. A co-teacher has the same access to all sections, student assignments and class libraries as the teacher who created the class. For those who sync their classes to Scrible from Google Classroom, we now automatically sync co-teachers in Google Classroom into their classes in Scrible.

You can view the co-teachers for a class by going to your Classroom page in Scrible and choosing your class from the list. This will open the Class Page, which lists the sections of that class. Click the edit icon to the right of the class title to edit the class details.

On the subsequent Edit Class Page, you’ll see a new section for Co-Teachers displaying the current list of co-teachers for the class.

If you’re using Google Classroom, you won’t have the Add Co-Teacher Button. You’ll need to add co-teachers in Google Classroom and let them sync over to Scrible via our Google Classroom Sync.

For classes that aren’t being sync’d from Google Classroom or other applications (like a learning management system (LMS)), click the Add Co-Teacher Button and enter your co-teacher’s email address to invite them.

After they’re invited, when they’re in their Classroom page, they’ll see a pop up notice alerting them of their pending co-teaching invites. When they click on this alert, it’ll pop up a list of co-teaching invites that allows them to accept or decline each invite.

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

— The Scrible Team

October 8, 2018 By scrible

Scrible Expands Support for Books and Print Sources

(Image credit)

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

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

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.