Video ANT is a free tool developed by Brad Hosack at the University of Minnesota for the purpose of providing a platform on which students and teachers view and annotate videos. Video ANT plays your specified video and while watching you and your students can and marks along a timeline and write comments alongside the video. Annotations are archived and emailed to you when you’ve completed the annotation process. Video ANT works with YouTube videos as well as with some video files that you can upload to the site. Click here to watch a screencast created by Brad Hosack of Video ANT in action.

Thanks to Desert Diver on Twitter for sharing this great resource along with a sample of one of his annotated Video ANT videos.

Applications for Education
In the past I’ve used back-channels while my students are watching videos so that they can discuss the footage as they’re seeing it. Annotating videos with Video ANT could take that process a step further by creating an archive that matches the various points in the footage.

Viddler also allows you to annotate videos, but the drawback to Viddler is that you’re somewhat limited as to the length of comments you can write. Also Viddler may be blocked in some schools. Video ANT provides a clean, easy-to-use interface in which you and your students can annotate and discuss videos.