Social Text Annotation with Hypothes.is
Jeffrey C. Witt (Loyola University Maryland)
https://jeffreycwitt.com | jcwitt@loyola.edu
@jeffreycwitt
Teaching Enhancement Workshop
September 1st, 2021, Loyola University Maryland
## Outline
1. What is Social Annotation and Why You Might be Interested
2. Some Examples
3. Let's Try it!
4. Discussions: Strengths and Weaknesses, Pros and Cons
1. What is Social Annotation and Why You Might be Interested
Some advantages over the traditional "discussion board"
Threaded discussions around precise and granular text selections
Discussions around granular texts remain embedded in their larger context
Discussions can be distributed (discussions can happen anywhere!) and connected (discussions happening anywhere can be connected and discovered by everyone!)
Student/teacher comments on a passage within Pdf Reading
Linking out to comments on one granular text passage to a conversation on another granular text passage
Aggregating and collecting student discussion and discoveries with "tags"
1. Create Hypothesis Account
Sign Up
### Start annotating
1) Let's start by everyone adding an annotation or two to my [sample course content](https://jeffreycwitt.com/pl339/docs/02-the-medium-is-the-message.html).
Browse around. Look for something of interest and then add an annotation.
2) Try responding to someone else's comment.
3) Try creating a "page" annotation.
4) Try searching for annotations by others.
4) As you make a comment, let's also add some agreed upon tags to help group our distributed discussions.
* "nd" ("needs discussion"),
* "important" (any passage that seems "important" to our class discussion),
* "gc" (glossary candidate / a word or phrase that needs definition).
* "glossary" (provide a definition for the class of a important technical word or phrase)
Either create a new comment or practicing editing one of your pre-existing comments.
5) Now, let's start expanding our discussion beyond this web page. The text includes a link to a chapter by Marshall McLuhan. Let's start annotating this text with questions and comments.
* Again, let's use tags to allow our distributed discussion to be collected.
* Let's also start creating links: try to copy a link to one of your annotations on the McLuhan text and paste that link in another annotation on the course content page.
7) Finally, let's start expanding and exploring.
Start looking around at the other course content pages and add new annotations. Try creating tags or links to connect these annotations.
Start googling for other cool resources on the web that connect to our discussion. Can you add tags or links to the things you've found?
### 4. Discussion
What are some of the strengths or pros of using this tool?
What are some of the weaknesses or potential cons?
What other questions do you have?