As we wrap up 2025, we wanted to take a moment to say thank you. We’re grateful for another year working alongside educators who share our mission of building connections with learners through the power of feedback. Your input guided the improvements we made this year, and we’re excited to share what we built together. 

Annotate PRO (AP) added right-click editing to the Chrome Extension, improved accessibility, new Feedback Form features, a Knowledge Base mode to share policies and syllabus snippets, Dynamic Rubrics, toolbar customizations, and individual Library sharing. You can see these new features in action in this 100-second overview video. 

To help you get started, we added four premium Pennington Publishing e-Comments Standards-based comment Libraries, updated our own Motivation Station Edition to include snippets on agency and purpose, and released Rubric Pack Edition to showcase our new approach to rubrics. 

Finally, we continued our commitment to supporting diverse EDU platforms by supporting the use of AP with leading LLMs, like ChatGPT, and social learning platform Perusall, and video learning solution GoReact.

Some of these new features and content require an individual AP+ or Institutional subscription. But you can get a six-month AP+ individual subscription for free if you refer a colleague to AP!

Canopy, our student engagement platform for the Canvas LMS, added Canopy Feedback to dramatically improve the student feedback experience (did you ever check to see how students view SpeedGrader feedback?). We also expanded Canopy Instructor to include free and paid individual accounts.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of some of the biggest updates:

We brought content editing directly into the Chrome Extension with a new free feature. Right-click any favorite button, search result, or Library navigation item to open the editor. Combined with the + button for creating new comments from within the extension, you now have complete control over your feedback without leaving your current task.

In 2025, we prioritized making Annotate PRO more accessible. We improved core components to comply with WCAG 2.1 AA standards.  We’re committed to the idea that great feedback tools should work for everyone. If you encounter accessibility issues, please reach out to accessibility@11trees.com.

Feedback Forms can now stay open as you move through assignments. Create one form with checkboxes and prompts, then keep it alongside your gradebook as you advance student by student. Perfect for in-class essays (Blue Books!), end-of-term grading, or any situation where you’re providing similar feedback with specific customizations for each student.

AP isn’t just for feedback comments—it’s for any information you need quick access to. Knowledge Base mode lets institutions curate and manage school resources, including LibGuides, policy details, facility hours, and contact information. Individual users can use KB mode to quickly copy AP content for use outside Chrome or Word. Whether you’re sharing institutional resources with all faculty or organizing reference materials for yourself, KB mode gives you instant access to curated, reliable information.

You told us rubrics felt rigid, that you wanted to say “yes, and…” when choosing a rubric level. With AP Dynamic Rubrics, you can now create custom rubrics with sub-points, checkboxes, and text prompts for specific feedback. AP handles the math automatically while you focus on providing detailed, actionable guidance. As an added bonus, these rubrics work anywhere AP works—including platforms like Word Online that don’t have built-in rubric tools. Format your rubrics with bold, italics, and bullets, and they stay formatted when inserted into comments or feedback areas (even plain-text ones!).

AP+ and institutional users gained more control over how comments appear in the toolbar. Sort buttons by Library Group to see all related comments together, or show ALL your comments (not just Favorites) for complete access. Toggle small buttons to pack more comments into your sidebar with the same hover-to-preview feature. Mix and match these options to match your workflow.

Institutions have always had the ability to share Comment Libraries. In 2025, we added peer-to-peer sharing so individual instructors can share a Library with named colleagues at their institution.

11trees has always been about helping teachers scale the 1:1 relationship through feedback and dialogue. Whether using AP’s dynamic rubrics or Canopy’s engagement tools for Canvas, our goal is to make personalized feedback efficient and student engagement meaningful.

We all know the headwinds facing educators. Since 2022, LLMs have upended the curriculum, and we are now seeing “agentic” browsers capable of completing entire courses without human intervention. When students find companionship in AI “characters” rather than peers, traditional schooling can feel increasingly disconnected.

But we believe we are entering a golden age for feedback. When AI can draft and grade a five-page paper in seconds, we must admit that our old pathways are no longer sustainable. The late Grant Wiggins often used a cartoon of two kids leaving school for summer break, saying: “School is mostly true-false and multiple choice questions… but real life is all essay questions.” To us, that “essay question” isn’t a writing prompt—it’s the “worthy” intellectual task. It’s the “ill-structured challenge” that prepares students for the ambiguities of adult life. In a world of automated content, the human relationship—built through personalized, timely feedback—is the only strategy that truly scales learning.

11trees is dedicated to building the professional tools this new era requires. AP remains the only platform that allows institutions to publish rubrics and comment banks for use across any EDU platform. In 2026, we are excited to:

• Printable Flexibility: Make it easier to bridge the digital-physical gap by printing traditional grid rubrics from AP’s Dynamic Rubric feature.

• Platform Parity: Bring our native Word and Web apps into full alignment with the AP experience.

• Data Insights: Help educators build actionable insights from the feedback they are already creating.

• Extra-special Canvas capabilities: Stay tuned! 

Wherever you work—LMS, Google Docs, Word, or paper—AP will support you.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the future of AP, or discuss how we can bring these tools to your district or university in the coming year.

See you in 2026,

The 11trees Team