To encourage deeper, more critical annotation and close-reading consider and incorporating a social annotation tool in your course.
hypothes.is
A web browser plug-in for Chrome and FireFox that allows you to annotate PDFs and Web pages remotely and collaboratively. Hypothes.is, allows for embedding of images and hyperlinks, as well as commenting functions to reply to previous annotations.
Getting Started with hypothes.is – Slides by Jeremy Dean
Introduction to hypothes.is for education by Jeremy Dean
10 Ways to Annotate with Students by Jeremy Dean
Genius
Formerly known as Rap Genius, which originally allowed fans to annotate rap songs with text, images, video, and gifs, now has an educational team that will help you teach using Genius.com. Though primarily limited to Public Domain texts, students can annotate in an attractive media-rich environment.
Google Docs
Whittier College Students have access to Google Tools through the institution and can collaboratively take notes and annotate texts using Google Tools. For a sample prompt and accompanying Problem Paper activity, designed for “Transcultural Literature” by Jonathan Burton.
Sample Prompt – Social Annotation Assignment – ENG 270, Jonathan Burton
TitanPad or Etherpad
Free and open source tools for collaborative note-taking. Imagine this as an activity for producing official course documents, establishing rubrics and goals, ground rules, and of course documenting course discussions and lectures. Read the following account by former HASTAC Scholar about her experiment in anonymous collaborative note-taking and addressing trolls in the classroom.
“An experiment in trolling: a teaching moment” by Jade Davis
