Last updated on 12 May 2026
You know the situation. You are preparing a sequence on the French Revolution. You open an article from Le Monde, a YouTube video, a Twitter feed from a historian, a PDF found on Éduscol. Four tabs. Then eight. Then fifteen. You think you'll come back tomorrow to sort this out.
This problem is called infertility. A solution? Collabwriting which I propose you to discover.
What Collabwriting does, concretely
Close your 87 tabs, keep your discoveries. Collabwriting is a tool designed to save, organize and collaborate on the information you find online. Instead of keeping dozens of tabs open or losing links in scattered notes, you capture articles, social media posts, PDFs and even YouTube videos – all centralised in one place.
The tool is an extension for your browser. To install it 30 seconds is enough. Go to the Chrome Web Store, click "Add to Chrome", confirm. It has been done. For those who do not use Chrome, the extension also exists for Edge, Firefox, and even Edge mobile.
Its principle: you read something online, a passage hits you, you highlight it. This passage is captured. You add a note to it – your reflection, your interpretation, your idea of how to use it in class. Everything is stored in a personal space.
How does it work?
The Scoreboard
Once logged in, you access your dashboard. This is the command centre where everything you save lands automatically.
The content is organised on two levels:
- The clusters (or projects ): These are your big projects or your teams. A ‘First World War’ cluster, another ‘4th Writing Workshop’, a third ‘Pedagogical Watch’.
- The topics (or keywords): within each cluster, topics function as folders. In your "First World War" cluster, you create a topic "Testimonials of Hairy", another "Maps and Battles", a third "Video Resources".
This simple architecture saves you the chaos of classic bookmarks.
Smart highlighting
You are reading an article online. A sentence strikes you. You highlight it directly in the page, as you would with a stabilo on paper. The passage is instantly saved in the topic of your choice.
You can vary the highlighting colours to distinguish between different types of information: yellow for quotes, green for encrypted data, pink for ideas to dig. Your system, your rules.
PDFs too
Collabwriting is not limited to web pages. You can highlight an online PDF Just like an article. Better: you can upload your own files directly into the application. Reports, research papers, institutional documents – everything becomes annotable and organizeable.
Once your work is done, you export the entire topic in PDF or you print it for offline use.
Integrated social networks
You scroll on LinkedIn and come across a relevant post. With the extension enabled, a small ‘save’ button appears under each publication. One click, and the post joins your dashboard. Same principle on X (ex-Twitter), Reddit, Quora. Gone are the screenshots lost in your photo film.
The key asset: collaboration
Collabwriting is not just a monitoring tool personal. It is a space of work-sharing.
With Collabwriting, you set up a common workspace. Each teacher drops off his finds. Everyone sees everything, in real time. You comment on the resources of others. You build a common base without additional meeting.
How Collaboration Works in Collabwriting, Step by Step
Invite and set permissions
You can create public links and customize permissions. Specifically: you invite your history/geography colleague to edit mode – he or she can add his or her own finds. You invite a lecturer to comment – she can react to sources, suggest leads, report a reliability issue. You share a link in "consultation" mode with your students — they see the resources without being able to modify them.
Mention and notify
Directly under a highlight, you can mention a colleague and assign him a role. The person receives an instant notification. She sees exactly what you highlighted, in her context. No need to send an email with “look at the third paragraph of the article I told you about yesterday”.
Comment to build together
The ability to leave comments on highlighted sections takes collaboration to another level. You annotate an article, your colleague responds to your annotation, a third adds a complementary source. The discussion is built around the content itself.
Reuse without losing context
You write your course in Google Docs. You need a text that you saved a week ago. You take this text in Collabwriting and you put it in your document. You also keep important information: where this text came from, who found it, and when.
What it changes for a teacher
This tool can meet many uses, I have identified four obvious ones where it brings real added value:
First use: preparation of courses. You accumulate resources for weeks. An article read in the subway. A video watched on a Sunday night. A PDF downloaded six months ago. Everything is there, organized by theme, with your thoughts attached. When it comes time to build your sequence, you open your topic. Your findings are in front of you.
Second use: teamwork. You prepare a sequence with a colleague from another discipline. You share a topic. Everyone deposits their discoveries there. You're commenting on his. He's commenting on yours. Intellectual ping-pong is done without a meeting, without email, without a shared document that swells until it becomes unreadable.
Third use: professional watch. You're reading articles on pedagogy, digital tools, changes in the profession. You highlight what matters. In six months, you find this passage that had marked you. Your note then reminds you why.
Fourth use: with the students. For a TPE, a great oral, a research project. You create a shared topic. The students drop off their finds. You see what they read, what they remember, what they think about it. You're commenting. You're orienting. You correct false leads before they become certainties.
The price of better organisation?
Free. The basic account gives access to unlimited highlights, unlimited topics, unlimited hashtags, unlimited storage, 5 guests, 5 clusters, and unlimited PDF uploads (up to 5 MB per file).
A Pro version exists for more intensive uses. A Guardian programme offers the Pro version free of charge in exchange for participation in the fact-checking system.
Limits to Know
The tool requires discipline. It is necessary to make a habit of highlighting and annotating. Without this regularity, Collabwriting becomes one more repository, as crowded as your current favorites.
The browser extension is required for capture. On a tablet or phone, use is less fluid. Too bad.
The learning curve is short, but it exists. Allow a small hour to understand the logic of topics, clusters, exports.
For whom, really?
For the teacher who reads a lot online. For those who prepare their courses from multiple sources. For the one who works as a team on projects. For those who supervise students in research work.
If you never open more than five tabs, if your resources fit in a manual and three photocopies, Collabwriting will not help you specifically.
If your browser looks like a battlefield, if you have already lost an item you would have liked to find, if you collaborate with scattered colleagues – then yes, this tool deserves your 30 minutes of testing.
Link Collabwriting : https://collabwriting.com/
Collabwriting is a browser extension that allows you to highlight, annotate and organize everything you read online, alone or in a team. Articles, PDFs, social media posts or videos: your findings are captured, categorized by project and shareable with your colleagues or students. Enough to turn your 87 open tabs into a truly class-ready resource base.
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