Bridging Time and Space With Social Annotation

Since the launch of the Liquid Margins show in 2020, our guests have imparted volumes of social annotation wisdom. We’re collecting great nuggets to showcase in a series of blog posts composed of video clips you can view for quick gems of practical advice, inspiration, and insight selected from the episodes. Teaching with annotation can be an iterative process, and we hope you find these clips helpful as you version your own approach to using social reading in the classroom.

First in the series was “A Healthy Dose of Social Annotation Advice,” which highlighted great moments from Liquid Margins 26, “Bodies of Knowledge: Teaching Health Professions With Social Annotation.” In this second post, we offer clips from Liquid Margins 24, “Hybrid, Hyflex, F2F: Anchoring Class Community With Social Annotation,” in which guest moderator Jenae Cohn — Director, Academic Technology, California State University, Sacramento — was in conversation with David Serna, Instructional Consultant at the University of DC Center for the Advancement of Learning. As experts in the area of academic technology, both Jenae and David come at social annotation from a teacher’s teacher perspective, focusing on best practices for instructors’ use of technology in the classroom. As the episode title implies, the following clips contain tips for teaching in synchronous or asynchronous face-to-face, remote, or hybrid classrooms.

You say “giff,” I say “jiff”

In this clip, David gives us his perspective on drawing students closer to assigned readings by prompting them with leading questions and having them get creative by visually annotating with GIFs (or “jiffs” — we love them no matter how you say it).

Locating accessibility in annotations

Here, Jenae and David — with input from the live chat — discuss using multimedia in annotations, and talk about the importance not just of teaching in different delivery modes, but of engaging students in the reading by having them craft accessible annotations — enabling deeper readings of the text and making students aware of and well-versed in writing things like alt tags and in-line descriptions.

Planning for choice within limits

In this clip, David and Jenae talk about finding balance between choice and boundaries when designing social annotation activities — and doing so in ways that are likely to be effective while facing that perennial teaching unknown: how lesson plans will resonate with students.

Social annotation and assessment

The question of assessment comes up in this clip, but as two sides of a coin: using social annotation as assessment and assessing actual annotations. Watch as they unpack that!

Sustaining living documents

In this clip, our guests talk about how social annotation can bridge moments in time, with class discussion as a through line — a sort of sustained work in progress that renders a text a living, breathing document which students, working remotely or in person, contribute to synchronously and asynchronously.

Annotation for ever-changing times

Here, Jenae talks about the benefits of teaching with social annotation as the world turns and the old adage “the only constant is change” becomes more and more apt. Whether there’s a pandemic spike or a local climate event, we can use social annotation to reach students wherever they are located.

Got annotation advice?

What has worked for you? Let us know what your annotation tips and best practices are by annotating this page, Tweeting us, or dropping us a line.

See past and upcoming episodes of Liquid Margins.