A.nnotate blog

We’ve just announced a bargain flat-fee server deal for educational use: $1995 per server to use how you want. There are no limits on the number of users or volume of documents allowed. That just depends on the hardware you put it on. In return, we’d like your feedback to help improve the system.

A significant fraction of our inquiries come from colleges and universities that see applications for A.nnotate among their staff and students. Naturally, teachers can use it to provide feedback on student assignments instead of writing on printed copies. But there have been a range of other creative suggestions too. Staff could prepare a folder of annotated websites with comments or questions in particular places, or students could be asked to annotate a particular text.

Some of these fit easily with the present configuration, but others could do with some extensions. For example, to get twenty students separately annotating the same document, you need to make twenty separate copies at present. Most of all though, the current model is based on users who have accounts and can upload documents, and guest annotators who provide feedback on those documents. In a classroom environment though you could sometimes want just one user and 20 annotators, but at other times maybe everyone should be a user. Do you need a single user license or a 20-user one?

We do not want to limit the ways teachers can use A.nnotate, and everyone knows that complicated per-seat pricing models are a real turn-off. Hence the flat-fee deal. You buy the server license outright and do what you like with it. You can probably get a thousand students on one server as long as they don’t all try to upload assignments in the same half hour before a deadline. All we ask is that you let us know from time to time how you’re using it so that we can share the ideas with others, and to let us know if you have any suggestions for new developments.

Happy a.nnotating!