I've used Comment Bubble to promote active viewing in my film studies class. Students must identify and react to the film clip by "tagging" or annotating the video by clicking one of the five personalized comment buttons I've created for them; they can select and click any of the comment buttons at any moment where they think any of the comment button options might apply. This feature teaches students how to annotate video just as they might annotate a literary text, enabling students to practice close-viewing and critical thinking skills. They can also type comments after they have clicked one of the comment buttons to justify or explain their thinking.
One successful lesson which used CommentBubble required students to watch movie trailers and tag the trailer (by clicking one of the comment buttons) to identify genre conventions and story structure. In another lesson, students were asked to identify character traits, mood, and connections by clicking the comment buttons--"grandiose self-worth" (character trait), "superficial charm" (character trait) "obsessive compulsive" (character trait), "mood" and "connections I'm making to unit texts"--wherever the traits, mood, or connections appeared.
Students like having specific guides about what to look for as they watch clips (reading/viewing with a purpose), and to be able to immediately share their reactions to certain moments WHILE watching a video clip.
Often students have not learned what active close-viewing of visual media entails and this tool allows them to hone this skill. There are numerous options for using Comment Bubble in lessons. Teachers can select videos and create customized comment buttons for students to select from and click while the video is playing. This tool can be used to reinforce related unit skills and concepts. For example, students could tag videos at certain moments for the director's purpose, identify claims, persuasive evidence, etc. if they are in the middle of an argumentative reading/writing unit. If teachers create comment buttons which don't encourage students to think critically about the video, or the comment buttons don't correlate well with the selected video, students will not get much out of this tool. The power of this tool lies in the selection of video clips and what the teacher has students identifying, evaluating, critiquing, analyzing, etc. through the comment buttons she or he has created.
It's extremely useful to be able to pinpoint patterns and trends across the class and also identify student misunderstanding via the graphing feature. I recommend making sure students are also required to type additional comments by at least one or two of the moments they've tagged to ensure they are using the buttons thoughtfully and can explain and analyze their choices.
I found it useful to revisit the tagged video with the whole class to prompt detailed discussion by clicking into portions where students have tagged the video and asking them to share their thinking with the class; students are generally willing to discuss their comments because they have been given enough think time to closely view and react to the video clip on their own first, so they are coming to the discussion prepared.
Some of the issues I've encountered so far: Occasionally students found it frustrating that there was a bit of a lag time between when they hit one of the comment buttons and the moment it officially registered on the video. Additionally, some YouTube videos I uploaded had been removed by the YouTube user, and I had to find another video altogether.