Learners write time-tagged personal notes while they watch, mark the moments that matter, and export a personal journal of the whole course. Nothing they write is visible to anyone else.
Works inside Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, Brightspace and Open edX, on the video player you already use.
Most video learning splits into two windows: the lecture in one, and notes in a document that never links back.
Every note carries a time-tag, and clicking it reopens the video at that second.
Personal notes are visible only to the person who wrote them.
The video pauses automatically while a learner types.
Export per video or as a single course journal to keep.
A second tab in the Annoto widget. Switch from Comments to Personal notes and the interactive timeline under the video shows only your own entries, so the shape of the lecture becomes the shape of your notebook.
Writing in your own words is what turns watching into studying, and the time-tag keeps the source one click away.
opens a private, time-tagged notebook beside the player and pauses playback while the learner writes.
summarises the last segment in their own words, lists the key terms, or explains the idea back to themselves.
a notes count per learner and per video in the dashboard, never the content.
attaches a time-tag to every note and lets learners export notes per video or the entire course as a journal.
reads notes back before a quiz, tries to recall the answer, then clicks the time-tag to check only the segments that still feel weak.
which videos attract the most notes, a signal for where revision effort concentrates.
keeps notes visible only to their author and lets each note carry a sentiment.
marks doubts and questions honestly, builds a list of what to ask in class or office hours, and tracks what has been resolved.
learners with many notes but few comments, the engaged-but-quiet pattern the dashboard guides call out.
stores each note against the frame it refers to, so the written record and the visual explanation stay linked.
writes a short cue instead of a transcript, trusting the click-through to bring the diagram or worked example back.
notes appearing in the analytics alongside watch behaviour, the difference between a play and an active viewing.
Every note records the moment it was written. Click the time-tag and the video jumps back to that second. In the Personal notes tab, the interactive timeline shows only your entries.
Notes are visible only to the person who wrote them. Instructors, moderators and classmates never see the text, which is what makes honest notes possible.
Start typing in "Write a personal note" and playback pauses on its own, so nothing is missed while a thought is captured. Shift + Enter adds a new line.
Numbered and bullet lists, bold, italic, highlight, blockquotes and emoji, all triggered by plain keyboard shortcuts rather than a toolbar.
Each note can carry a sentiment, just like a comment in the shared space, so a doubt looks different from a takeaway when the notes are read back later.
Paste a link to an external video and it embeds in the notebook, useful for keeping a short explainer or a related clip next to the moment it clarifies.
From the Annoto menu, export a video's notes as a document or a spreadsheet. The file carries the course name, video name, link and duration, with notes in time order plus date and sentiment.
From My Space, export every note written across all the videos in a course in one go. Each learner leaves with a personal journal they can edit, print or submit.
Students summarise each recorded lecture as they watch and bookmark the moments they expect on the exam. Before finals they export the course journal, read it back, and replay only the segments their notes flag. The instructor sees notes counts climb in the weeks before the exam and knows which videos are carrying the revision load.
Learners watch the new material at home, summarise it in their Personal Notes and note the questions it raised. They export those notes and bring them to the session, where the instructor asks people to share what they wrote. The instructor keeps their own notes on the same video: examples to add, a point to re-explain next term.
An assignment can be completed inside the Personal Notes space: the learner answers the brief at the relevant moments, exports the notes as a document from the Annoto menu, and submits it through whatever channel the course uses. Each answer keeps its time-tag, so the marker can see exactly what the learner was responding to.
Employees working through compliance or product training keep private notes on the steps they will need again, then export them as a reference they can search later. Facilitators use their own notes to plan follow-up. On Kaltura webcasts, notes taken during a live session carry over to the recording, still in sync with the video.
Personal notes are part of the Annoto widget. Course and video preferences in the dashboard let you enable the full interactive set or only the notes space for a given video, with no extra setup for learners.
Learners open the Personal notes tab and type. The video pauses, the note gets its time-tag and an optional sentiment, and the timeline under the player fills with their own markers as the notebook grows.
Click any time-tag to jump back to the moment. Export a video's notes as a document or spreadsheet from the Annoto menu, or export every note in the course from My Space as a single personal journal.
Instructors work the same way. Their own notes on a video stay private too, which makes the notebook a practical place to record what to re-explain, which example to add, and what to change before the course runs again.
The content of a personal note stays with its author. What reaches the Analytics & Insights Dashboard is the activity around it. The course view reports the total number of personal notes written across all course videos; the video view breaks that down per learner in the Users Activity table, which can be sorted and filtered by the Notes column alongside views, completion, engagement and collaboration.
That column matters because it surfaces a group the discussion tab hides: learners with high engagement, few comments and many notes. They are interacting with the material, just not out loud. Annoto's dashboard guidance treats a large notes count as evidence of meaningful learning, and pairing it with completion metrics in the user view gives a fuller picture than participation alone.
Learners get their own view in My Space: the number of comments and notes they have added across the course, plus the course-level export. Everything in the dashboard can also leave the platform as CSV through analytics export for grading or deeper analysis.
Annoto runs inside Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, Brightspace and Open edX through LTI 1.3, on top of Kaltura, Panopto, Wistia, YouTube and Vimeo players. Notes live with the course, not with a separate app, and Lumo adds a summary layer when a learner wants one.
Because the widget loads with each video through the LMS integration, a learner's notes accumulate across the whole course without any extra login. My Space gathers them for the course-level export.
Lumo, Annoto's AI companion, can summarise a video or explain a concept in plain language on request. Learners pair that recap with their own time-tagged notes and rewatch only the segments that still feel weak. The learner's notes stay theirs.
Notes totals appear in the course, video and user views of the Analytics & Insights Dashboard, and analytics export delivers the same data as CSV files for grading or custom analysis.
“Using Annoto made the material less textual. There was more life in it — much more interactive and rich.”
Comments, quizzes, polls, notes and analytics, all on the video timeline.
How Self Learning, collaboration, assessment and analytics fit together.
Course, video and learner views, including notes and completion metrics.
Prompt learners to pause and write at the moments that matter most.
Book a short demo and watch the notebook, the export and the analytics work inside your LMS, on your content.