Electronic Student Notebook Albert Huang, Thomas Doeppner, Larry Rudolph, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT Department of Computer Science, Brown University ABSTRACT The use of technology as an effective educational tool has been an elusive goal in the past. Specifically, previous attempts at using small personal computers in the classroom to aid students as collaborative and note-taking tools have been met with lukewarm responses. Many of these past attempts were hampered by inferior hardware and the lack of an efficient and user-friendly interface. With the recent introduction of Tablet PC products on the market, however, the limitations imposed on software developers for mobile computing systems have been dramatically lowered. We present a collaborative annotation system that allows students equipped with tablet computers to work cooperatively in either an ad-hoc or a structured wireless classroom setting. Ad-hoc collaboration allows any number of users to share and annotate documents with each other in an ad hoc network. No central application server is required to collaborate, and all communication is done in a peer-to-peer fashion. A group of students could meet in a lounge without a network infrastructure and, using their tablets in ad-hoc mode, collaborate as easily as if they were in class. Documents and annotations are efficiently multicasted to participating users, taking care to minimize redundant traffic. File Annotation Pen annotations provide a natural and intuitive interface for the user to jot down thoughts and notes. The “ink” used can be customized to various widths, colors, and opacities to simulate a range of writing utensils. Historical Context Lookup After jotting down some quick notes, a student might forget what she meant when she drew that cryptic diagram. When reviewing annotations later on at night, she can request context information about a certain note. Information and events related to that note are made available, hopefully triggering her memory. Audio recordings can be integrated into the history. Robust document support A wide variety of documents can be imported into the system and annotated, including Word, PowerPoint, Acrobat, HTML, image files, etc. Students are able to browse to a web page using the built-in browser, import it into the system, and immediately begin annotating the web page. Security guarantees privacy and confidentiality when taking down and exchanging notes. Each user must authenticate with a personal certificate before being given a symmetric key used by all participants to encrypt transmitted messages. Document data and structure preservation As much document data as possible is preserved when documents are imported. Hyperlinks and geometry information are preserved when possible. Future Research  Deployment in a number of science and humanities classes to evaluate effectiveness  Integration with existing Project Oxygen technologies  Collaboration with the ReMarkable Texts, Mobile projects at Brown University