The Marginal Syllabus

This case study examines educator learning as mediated by open web annotation among sociopolitical texts and contexts. The chapter introduces annotation practices and conceptualizes intertextuality to describe how open web annotation creates dialogic spaces which gather together people and texts, coordinates meaning-making, and encourages political agency. This perspective on texts-as-contexts is used to present and analyze educator participation in the Marginal Syllabus, a social design experiment that leverages open web annotation to foster conversation about educational equity. One conversation from the Marginal Syllabus is analyzed using mixed method approaches to data collection, analysis, and the presentation of findings. Learning analytics and discourse analysis detail how open web annotation mediated educator participation among sociopolitical texts and contexts of professional relevance. The chapter concludes by discussing open web annotation as a means of coordinating educator participation in public conversations about sociopolitical issues related to educational equity.

Synthesizing What Was Learned

Browser-based social annotation was integrated with concept mapping for assessing graduate teacher education students' learning in lieu of a final exam. Documents annotated online were required readings of three case studies and three chapters. Concept maps were organized around the theoretical framework that underpinned all coursework. Students chose whether to work individually or cooperatively and whether to use browser-based or hand-drawn concept maps. Most students did exemplary jobs synthesizing what they had learned, representing this knowledge and understanding in their concept maps, and explaining their thinking to the class. The results suggest that this is an effective, authentic, alternative assessment approach for summative evaluation. The uniqueness and complexity of this project led to a variety of recommendations for future implementations and research.

The Role of Annotations in Summarization

In today's reading education, the importance of explicit instruction of specific cognitive literacy strategy that promotes readers' active participation in the reading process is highly recognized. This active participation is synonymous with readers' interaction with the text, the context, and himself/herself. Hence, this study was conducted to investigate the role of annotations in the ability of the students to write a summary. This chapter considered teacher-modelling as an important factor in the students' annotations. Explicit instruction and modelling gave the students' opportunity to learn the skill until they could independently apply the strategy without the guidance of the teacher. A qualitative analysis of the students' annotations revealed that those who have both verbal and non-verbal glosses had better output in their summary. This implies that annotations provide students better interaction with the text, themselves, and the world.

How to Encourage Reflective Practice With the Help of Collaborative Video Annotation

The concept of Social Video Learning (SVL) marks the shift from a passive-receptive to an active-productive or active-constructive exploration of video material in learning groups and emphasizes the sharing of experiences and knowledge in a situational context. The objective of this chapter is to give a brief overview of this phenomenon within an EU-funded project. It is the intention of the authors to, on the one hand, provide some initial orientation and deeper insight into the complex subject matter of collaborative video annotation exemplified by SVL. On the other hand, based on quantitative and qualitative data from two case studies, they try to explore its potential for teacher education.

Talking Back to Texts

Every moment of reading offers readers the opportunity to enter into the text as part of a larger conversation, one that likely started long before the reader encountered the text. Yet there remains the myth that reading is about encountering a text ossified in time rather than bringing an idea into a dialogue. Recognizing that a text is lively, that it invites voices to intervene and disrupt a conversation, is critical to the creative development of new thought. The Social Web offers opportunities in college classrooms to make the ongoing conversation that begins in a reading visible so that students can enter into a conversation in shared textual spaces. This chapter offers a broad understanding of what social annotation is and why it is important by offering the benefits and challenges of social annotation while briefly reviewing the empirical literature on social annotation from a variety of disciplines.

Practical Issues With Modern Marginalia

This chapter concludes the book and presents issues apropos to marginalia and annotation that warrant further consideration. In particular, the chapter addresses privacy concerns surrounding public annotation and other related ethical problematizations that accompany the use of web annotators. The chapter discusses the dilemma posed by the use of web annotation over digital writing spaces, such as blogs and personal websites, and its encroachment on the right to public and private discourse on the web.

Addressing FYC Instructors' Lack of Technological Expertise in Implementing Multimodal Assignments

The chapter argues that teacher training should focus on providing guidelines to instructors on how to use technology and on the skills necessary to implement multimodal assignments. It uses UTEP's first-year writing program as a case study to investigate the multimodal assignments as part of the syllabus given to first-year students. It presents an analysis of interviews with current first-year composition instructors regarding their experience teaching multimodal projects and examines current first-year composition courses and teacher training practices at the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) to gauge the effective implementation of multimodal assignments. Finally, it offers recommendations to address the obstacles and lack of expertise of instructors in employing multimodality in the classroom.

Google Docs Motivates Creative Inspiration and Constructive Interaction

The value of constructive annotation during the creative writing process will be examined in this chapter. Specifically, two case studies will be considered. The first study investigates the constructive role Google Docs played in a creative writing class at Elizabeth City State University (ECSU). The second study reveals the power annotative feedback through Google Docs provided during the editing process of a novel earmarked for publication. This chapter will outline the method used in establishing a constructive venue implementing an annotative review procedure. Then the authors will detail the beneficial role annotation provided when implemented by both peers/instructor and by writer/editor while working within Google Docs.

Students' Uses of a Private Margin on Public Online Discussions

For centuries, marginal notes have been integral to the acts of reading and studying. In the print realm, margins provide a private space where readers can record their initial reactions to text. Today many postsecondary students use online discussion forums as a prescribed part of course activities; yet these forums typically provide no private space for students to record their initial reactions to one another's posts. The authors added a private margin to the online discussion environment used in two graduate courses and examined students' uses of it. Without any specific instruction or encouragement, students used this margin as an integral part of how they participated in the discussion forum over the entire semester. The most common uses of the Virtual Margin were to privately record opinions on other students' posts, to create summaries of others' posts for personal study, and to create private drafts of notes to post publicly later. Overall, the results suggest that a private margin has potential to assist students in their learning and in developing public forum contributions.