Social Reading and Writing

Are you looking for ways to improve your studentsโ€™ close reading skills or to kickstart class discussion by asking students to annotate readings online as a group before they come to class? Are you trying to find (new) strategies for peer review or collaborative writing projects? Or are you designing a hybrid or online course and looking for ways to move reading and writing online?

This workshop was offered in Spring 2016 and Spring 2017 as an in-person workshop at the Graduate Center, CUNY. The workshop and materials were developed by Anke Geertsma and Elizabeth Decker.

Outreach

Are you looking for ways to improve your studentsโ€™ close reading skills or to kickstart class discussion by asking students to annotate readings online as a group before they come to class? Are you trying to find (new) strategies for peer review or collaborative writing projects? Or are you designing a hybrid or online course and looking for ways to move reading and writing online?

Please join the Teaching and Learning Center for a workshop on Social Reading and Writing with Online Annotation Tools. In this workshop, weโ€™ll look at various Social Annotation (SA) tools and ways in which we can integrate them in our course design. SA tools allow instructors and students to move away from reading and writing as one-dimensional, solitary activities by instead sharing observations, questions, and (multimedia) contextual information in the margins of an online text. SA tools can make texts come alive for students, create community, increase participation and comprehension, and, as a result, improve learning.

We will look at various SA tools such as Hypothes.is, Annotation Studio, and Lacuna, and show the many ways in which you can use them by looking at some samples from CUNY instructors who have already taught with them. Weโ€™ll also discuss criteria for selecting tools and consider issues such as privacy, accessibility, and possible drawbacks. Finally, weโ€™ll consider how you can use SA tools in your own classes.

This workshop is the last in a series on Educational Technology, following our previous workshops on Hybrid and Online Instruction and Demystifying Edtech.

Materials

All materials on this page and in the linked google folder are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) 4.0 International Public License.

This folder contains outreach materials, workshop plans and resources on online social annotation tools.

Materials Folder: Social Reading and Writing Workshop

Workshop Plan

Overview of Time

1:00-1:15 Introductions

1:15-1:30 Activity I (collaborative annotation of Widemanโ€™s โ€œStoriesโ€)

1:30-1:40 Discussion of activity I

1:40-2:00 Showcase samples / tools

2:00-2:30 Discussion social reading/writing with annotation tools

2:30-2:45 Activity II (design activity for own course or browse/annotate site & list of tools)

2:45-3:00 Questions and survey

Introductions

  • ย what/where participants teach
  • what their reasons/goals are for wanting to annotate online with their students
  • anything specific to discuss?

Sample Intro Activityย 

Widemanโ€™s Stories: Read, annotate, and then pass on to next participant to share annotations and experience what itโ€™s like to share โ€œdrafts of reading.โ€

Showcase Examples

Before we start the discussion, show some examples of what annotation tools are – briefly showcase a few tools and show some possibilities and limitations.

Discussion of Social Reading/ Writing with Online Social Annotation (SA) Tools

What are SA tools, benefits/drawbacks, criteria for selecting them, including discussion of accessibility (some data from Smale/Regalado), then on to practical: how can you use for your classes? Reference site.

Activity II

Ask participants to formulate for what purposes they want to use an annotation tool in the course(s) they teach, then draft a list of main criteria, and with that explore the list of options, ultimately working toward a draft plan of an assignment or other way in which they want to use annotation tools in their class.

Work in pairs or groups and share findings afterwards. If theyโ€™re not there yet (not ready to draft their own activity/assignment) and just want to explore tools, they can experience what itโ€™s like to annotate by using hypothes.is on the site.