I find this event sadly relevant to America's Capitol Riots where bloggers have pieced together the transpiring events by analyzing various social media platforms. One can only admire the collaborative effort made by coders to map out the truth.

The "Goldilocks effect" in reading has been demonstrated in a research setting. Although the MRI does make some constraints on studying brain activity during "dialogical reading," the constraints of the MRI also rule out "dialogical reading" as a confounding variable in the "Goldilocks effect."

So we know that there is a "Goldilocks effect" when reading illustrated books and that there is another whole level of benefits added on by the "dialogical reading" process.

I wonder if there are any longitudinal studies looking at the relationship between reading comprehension and screen time.

This is an excellent blend of ZPD's and neuroscience coming together.

It seems as though the information, received only in an auditory format was insufficient. Children have to take auditory queues and visualize them, all while more information is coming at them in the same format.

I love the idea of using annotation as a creative exercise

This would be a great way to teach students to question what they read, to determine whether it could be "fake news" and discuss with one another.

We recently had a lesson on collecting vocabulary words in my 5th grade class. It would have been helpful to integrate annotation in this way so the students could share their definitions. I wonder what annotation methods, if any, are available on Epic.

This made me consider how digital annotation could be a fun way for students to enforce their learning of literary devices when physical class time is not a possibility, or as a way to integrate technology into the classroom in new ways.

I really like this idea of employing specific cultural or persuasive strategies.

Good example of gradual release.

For students who might find it daunting to read and annotate an article independently, or for age groups and other considerations, I think the idea of a teacher annotating with guided reading questions could be such a helpful tool to reduce that overwhelming feeling.

This is so clever!

Providing students with the opportunity to practice annotating with a small group of peers is an effective way to ensure that learners are gaining the necessary tools needed to develop meaningful annotations.

Maybe one day hypothesis or another annotating website can provide options search through emojis/icons for younger students especially to interact with the work!

I could see students having a fantastic time inserting memes to annotate a piece!

Yes! Often students misconceive annotation as a final thought about a text when really it is just the beginning. Posing a question (whether close or open-ended) allows students to consider what they wonder about a text. Foregrounding these curiosities in instruction is invaluable.

I feel like this is always how I think of annotation. I do enjoy taking written notes but struggle with digital annotation.

I love the idea that students can use digital annotation as a class discussion in and of itself. Annotation could be a way for students to join a broader discussion, or to see how their own thoughts while reading a text might relate to, or diverge from, the thoughts of their peers.

Students can develop their higher order thinking skills as they respond to questions posted on a specific reading.

Posing questions for students to respond to as they read provides a structure to their learning. They are encouraged to pause on the important/essential/significant moments in a text and consider what they mean. This can provide structure to above grade-level or challenging works, as the questions will support students comprehension of the most salient information or ideas.

I think it's also important to model/have samples of what responses could look like to the questions posed in the doc

Would it also be useful to if kids used their readings and highlighted words they struggled with to go over in class? This would be to promote their own research and create peer help for others. (But I do think it is probably best for teachers to give the vocabular already to make text easier for them to understand :) )

And this can be a great way to activate students' varied prior knowledge!

Yes, annotation (when done effectively) provides opportunities for critical thinking. They are not just seeing words on a page, but thinking about what they mean, how they mean.

I think this is a very interesting tactic. I do believe that a question mark can allow students to generate discussion.

This is a brilliant use of annotating, especially at an elementary level. Providing pre-populated questions to a text can not only guide participation and answering, but also to kickstart higher level thinking.

It is important to model how to annotate in our discipline for students.

This is a great way to provide structure and to scaffold students to think and respond a certain way to guide thinking for a text. It gives students more clarity on what is being asked for and how they could respond

I definitely think this is a cool idea and can help students practice necessary skills like rephrasing research material and using appropriate citations.

Yes!

I'd go further and say it's a bit like reading their minds (I did a blog post on this LOL)

This is the key idea that stuck out to me in this paragraph. Annotation allows for the instructor to create an engaging and engaged community of readers.

I love this idea. I have done that before but not always.

This conversation/article makes me think about how we can help students realize annotation just doesn't apply to books - articles and media can also be annotated using tools like hypothesis!

This is something that I have found extremely useful with Hypothes.is. Being able to link content from other digital texts helps us to relate concepts and develop a deeper understanding of what we are reading. Step 1 is to identify what they're talking about, step 2 is to be able to find common ground.

I'm wondering how I could potentially use other websites, like Genius, to annotate artworks? Are there any apps or programs used to annotate visuals or digital images? And if so, how can we get students to engage in conversations such as those on Genius?

Making tasks like annotating authentic is going to bring students to the conclusion that these 21st century skills can be applied across content and in their life.

I think this section makes a very important connection to institutional racism and the idea that it is so deeply embedded into our culture and therefore into our very foundations of education. It makes me wonder about how often standards should be revisited and revised in order to stay current and up to date. Tradition is not always a bad thing but there need to be opportunities for growth within convention as well.

Young adult literature can be incredibly powerful and is targeted for our students. It should not be ignored in favor of "more sophisticated" canonical literature.

This reminds me of the site we use at my student teaching placement, Epic! Check out this link if you are interested in accessing a virtual library of books- https://www.getepic.com/app/

I am wondering how else we can provide social annotations opportunities for our students that become overstimulated due to the 'messy' orientation? Is the answer smaller groups or how can we differentiate?

I find that a few of my students prefer using a Google Doc to annotate instead of a tool like Kami. Reading this article makes me think about if they prefer Google because they never have been taught how to use a tool like Kami

I am using EdPuzzle for the first time next week with my students!

as noted, Hypothesis is having issues with the Gutenberg site (according to an email I have from them Dec. 7.)

Are there any specific apps you might recommend? Are they all Hypothesis compatible?

This can be a problem with discussion boards too, unless you have the option for students not to be able to reply unless they've posted first.

And also they are being presented with models for improving future annotations.

MSU uses a program called Perusall; I found it clunky in some ways, but it was stable

I remember reading research on how physically writing something down is better for understanding and remembering than typing. So I would be interested in whether or not it is a significant benefit for students to have access to a touch screen and stylus for physically writing during digital annotation.

How can we convince students that annotation is not a superfluous practice?

I have felt that this process of being able to hyperlink resources to your annotations to be especially helpful when students are learning how to compare and connect ideas from different sources under the same theme.

Never thought about annotating in our daily life like this, good inspiration to tell my students and possibly even use a platform like Instagram for projects

This is a really nice feature of it

That is a great way of looking at it!

Hypothesis has an issue with the Gutenberg site, however, I discovered last semester. Since a lot of open-source books and plays exist there, that is a problem. (Constant crashes)

I really like this idea, asking students with what their familiarity is. Get their perspectives to see how they can become successful!

Social digital annotation is a great way to differentiate instruction for learners who are more hesitant to communicate verbally or to participate in full class discussions.

A benefit I have noticed to digital annotation is the collaborative component that sometimes gets lost in annotating. If we think about the way we are using Hypothes.is right now is collaborative and students can use this as a way to connect, challenge, change, and engage with each others ideas.

It would be cool if down the line hypothesis or kami gave options for students to use stickers/illustrations to annotate! Might be super useful for younger students :)

I just learned about the application "Mote" today, which allows you to attach audio comments to any Google Doc/Slide/Assignment of your choice. There are so many different tech tools out in the world!

It is interesting to note that digital annotation provides an opportunity for discussion whereas the traditional method is a lot more individualistic.

I think these would be very beneficial for students as they are aren't limited to one thing. They can pick and choose what they like.

I think this would be a super cool way for students to "talk" with the text, especially younger students just learning to annotate.

This is an ongoing issue, even when schools give out Chrome books. Wifi connection affects everyone.

Interesting; I wouldn't have thought of this immediately as annotating!

This is a cool word that I think students would get a kick out of using in a sentence.

hey can u read this hehe

I think this is definitely more of the reality in high school at least. We don't usually have 5-6 people teaching the same class as us, but there might be 1 other teacher teaching a few sections of your class or who's teaching the honors/CP version of your class. I think this is why HS teachers often find co-planning difficult, but you can effectively co-plan with just one other person and still split your workload in half.

Yes!! My teacher and I had been doing this this year and it's such a relief. One week it was my job to do the copies and the next week it was hers. We never had to worry about having enough copies for all of our classes, because we knew they would all be done on Monday!

Plus, once the final copy is "done" each person can make their own personal copy and make whatever tweaks or adjustments they want to make it fit their particular style.

Funny how we ask our students to do this all the time but as teachers we sometimes don't listen to our own advice!!

I think this so true! Even if you all teach the same subject/level you aren't going to do it the same way. Another option would be to come up with a general sketch of what needs to be done that week from the curriculum (what main materials you want to use, what content/topics need to be covered, what assessment will be given at the end) and then each person tweaks it to their liking.

I've found this to be a very effective strategy during my student teacher. My CT and I teach the same classes, so I have an idea of how the lesson could go but when it's my turn to take the class I can put my own ideas in there without changing the core/integrity of what we need to be doing that day.

So true! Sometimes my CT will give me an idea even for just a singular activity that she's used for years and saves me hours of planning. The rest of the lesson unfold organically from that one activity and I get to add my own spin to it without reinventing the entire wheel.

This is a really good idea! Especially because it can presented to students at the beginning of the year and then the different "domains" of each teacher sort of run themselves.

Sometimes the ways that we teach students to interact with each other are lessons that we need to revisit ourselves!

I feel like this is sooo hard!!! You really have to have a good relationship and to have worked together for many years to make this arrangment seamless. Even in undergrad I've had "team taught" courses and the professors, more often than not, just split the weeks/classes based on what content was their specialty and they would teach those classes/topics while the other assisted. I would like to really see an example of this working really well and have the opportunity to learn about how to cultivate a partnership where this could really work.

I think that sometimes this balance can be difficult. I remember being in classrooms in elementary school where one teacher felt like the "lead teacher" and the others were just "helpers" rather than equal professionals. I know my teacher did a good job of making it clear that I was just as much a teacher as she was. She gave me my own desk and asked me to do important things that made me seem like an integral part of the classroom.

This strategy sounds interesting, but I wonder about interference? Especially in a high school classroom, just logistically and spatially how can you split the class in half and not have interference between the two groups?

This is the arrangement that we had been using for most of the year, especially in the classes that I didn't "take over." I think this is a really great setup and I think that most teachers could actually use an arrangement like this. Especially in some of our bigger classes (27 students), it can be really useful to have multiple people helping students out at a time. It also allows for a better and easier flow of classroom management.

This is definitely the arrangement that we had at the beginning of the year. We never thought of having me monitor a specific student and try to come up with new strategies for them, though. This is a really good idea and I can already think of a few students who this strategy might be really helpful for.

My student teaching relationship definitely mirrors this! We have always gotten along super well, but finding the rhythm of how we would manage the classroom together took some time and work.

A goal for all of education not just technology in higher ed!

I think we can see a similar thing happening at the K-12 level.

The elephant in the room this entire time.

Again, I don't mean to be pessimistic but never have a been part of an online discussion platform for a class where I felt like I was "actively learning". Is it just because of my own preferences? Not sure.

This sounds great in theory, but most of the flipped classes that I and my peers have taken have NOT worked out like this. I think the question is, who learns best in blended and flipped classrooms? Who has the resources to work through difficult concepts on their own and who just ends up more confused?

But is access enough?

I think what he means here then is that through this "digital blackface" we can participate in this culture, use these signifiers for our own benefit without going through the work of grappling with traumatic history.

Which is to say, that white people are often excused from truly examining and grappling with the traumas of our history because they feel so removed from it.

History repeats itself. We have the opportunity here to make a choice and not perpetuate these stereotypes.

While the songs that accompanied these stereotypes might be in the past, these stereotypes live on. I can think of so many characters that would fit this description.

Also learned about this in African American Music History. What is the most disturbing is that there are so many songs out there for elementary and middle school bands that are based on this. Look for lower grade music that is upbeat and you're bound to find a Cakewalk or two. I know I played quite a few in band growing up, but never learned the context until college.

While this seems ridiculous to me, it's an idea that has not left us. Recently Barnes & Noble released a new line of covers for their "classics", this time featuring the faces of POC. Simple portrayal or visibility doesn't do anything if it isn't backed by actual investment in the true lives of those it represents.

Jim Crow as a somewhat "mobile" figure, a transracial figure even who is, nonetheless, codified as black.

So few people know that "Jim Crow" originated in minstrelsy. I learned a lot about this in my African American Music History course and it was interesting, yet appalling. This article is backing up one of my major takeaways from that course, though: Most of American culture has been co-opted from black people and other minorities.

This is so true. More often than not the images associated with popular memes feature black people prominently. Scroll through Twitter and you'll see many a Real Housewives of Atlanta GIF as a reaction.

Definition of cachet: the state of being admired or respected; prestige. OR A distinguishing mark or seal

What a profound question. Feel like I'm going to have to print this question up and hang it somewhere that I can see it everyday! As an educator this is a particularly important question to ask ourselves as we know that the education system has, historically, been a huge actor in the "dehumanistion and debasement" of black, indigenous, and POC lives.

These two paragraphs were a little dense for me. Not 100% sure I understand what is being said here. Will come back to this after reading the rest of the article and see if I understand better!

Right. This is not only harmful for white people and non-black POC and their conscious/unconscious view of people. It can also contribute to the stereotype threat that we know black people, particularly black women, face at every turn.

Stratgies help provide students with specific tools and supports in order to engage and act with materials.

This an activity worth doing with you students! Take a survey; have them write down their methods on post-its and have them work as a class to group them.

You get some great ideas for workshops from here.

The act of actively engaging with a text can be mechanical (moving our writing utensils across a page), but these hands on 'simple tasks' help get us thinking more deeply about the specific elements of a text.

Finding ways that don't seem forced help demonstrate the relevancy of these skills. It's not just a 'reading skill' it's a life skill. Active engagement with any media is a 21st Century life skill.

Challenging our pre-conceived notions (model for students how we are constantly thinking, revising, questioning)

I've done this with my students too when I was modeling how to annotate poetry; thinking and indulging in those curiosities as you read, immediately as you experience them, then once you've 'experienced' the text, going back to think more critically about it (they whys and hows that shaped your connections and thoughts)

It's interesting to hear it phrased this way, considering that the traditional definition of text was associated with written words in books. Now, I feel that our understanding of what qualifies a 'text' encompasses more the concepts of creating a work that can be communicated between people (books, film, music, art, etc).

This really opens up choice for teachers and students in the classroom. Allowing students to engage with various texts in different media evaluates how they can isolate the aspects/elements they're thinking about in their work in a far more comprehensive way, synthesizing across multiple platforms, while reflecting on one topic. Evaluating themes and ideas from different perspectives with different contexts requires students to rely on their 'annotating' skills in order to take note of their impressions, reactions, thoughts, and opinions.

It's worth doing both! Annotate individually, interact with the text yourself, get down your ideas and thoughts, first impressions. Annotations are almost like participating in a conversation with the text. The text is written but now you get to respond and use it as a springboard to expand the conversation beyond the page (text to self and text to world).

Responding to others also furthers that dialogue, whether it be raising questions that act as fodder for your own thinking, or even clarifying bits of the text you may have found confusing. In one of my own classes, I've had to make annotations and then respond to others. That active conversation beyond the text also pushes us to think about how we can apply what we've learned beyond the text.

This is a great checklist to use. I would try asking a class to generate a checklist themselves and then compare to this one.

Love this idea especially for students who might be shy, anxious, or simply not feel that analysis and/or close-reading is their strong suit. This tool can help students see that reading, analysis, and close-reading are not tasks that are to be done in a vacuum, but rather can facilitate engaging conversations about a text.

Through digital annotation the processes of reading and discussing almost merge into one which is perhaps what the author means when they say that digital annotation might be an "end within itself"

my elementary class is actually currently working on what to do when confronted with a new word they do not know in their text, and they are taught to write it on a post-it for reference later. This is a great strategy to teach students how to mark the words they do not know

love this idea--not only are you modeling for the students what annotation looks and feels like, you are giving them guidance while they actually read the content and complete the assignment

Great point here! Definitely getting me thinking about more ways that I can have students share their work with each other and with peers outside of our classroom.

Woah. I think this has happened to all of us at one point or another. We are looking for students to simply spit back at us the answers that we're looking for rather than speak with their own minds/their own ideas.

What a powerful statement. I think we often think that we are powerless in these situations of injustice, but truly as teachers we are lucky that we get a space where we can make that noise and hopefully disrupt some systems.

interesting....the conversation will never feel unfinished or cut short

this can be very uncomfortable, giving up control. What if they have questions you cannot answer?

an inquiry based teaching

giving students space to express themselves freely and safely is the foundation of fostering social and emotional learning. We are here to teach students their feelings are valid. The classroom is not confined to four walls...integration of the outside it needed. Students do not stay in our class forever, they need skills to face the world when they are not inside our four walls.

something I am currently grappling with. The student population is mostly black and I am a white woman. How can I as a white woman close that gap? Even if I use teaching as "a window and a mirror"...is that enough?