 My name is Fran, I'm from Hypothesis and I want to thank you for coming today to the, to our panel of social annotations in K-12 Literacy Education that our moderator, Raimi Kahlir, here. He's going to take over in a minute. We also have with us Courtney Clefman, and I hope I pronounced that right, and Joe Dillon, who I know from Lickwood Margins, way back to a couple of weeks ago. And we also should have Morgan Jackson with us today. She was having a bit of trouble with her audio, so hopefully she'll come back on and we can troubleshoot that for her. And so, yeah, we waited a few minutes and a couple of people I'm trickling in, so we'll wait a couple of minutes. But I'm going to set it up now and turn it over to Raimi. So thanks to our panel for being here and thanks, Raimi. Wonderful. Fran, thank you so much and welcome everyone to I Annotate. This is day two. As you know, we are reading together and learning together, and I just want to thank you for joining in today's session. This session is specifically focused on the use of social annotation in K-12 contexts, and we're joined by an expert panel of educators whose practice, whose pedagogy, and whose really practical wisdom about social annotation is really so exemplary that we wanted to make sure that you heard from all of them. And so we have three educators with us today who we will hear from. I'm going to give brief introductions, and then we'll just dive right in. After I give a little bit of context, we're giving just a slightly delayed start here as one of our panelists is having a little bit of an audio problem. So let me begin as some folks trickle in by just mentioning again that my name is Raimi Kahlir. Over the course of the past year, I've been serving as the scholar in residence at Hypothesis, researching the ways in which social annotation supports learning broadly defined and specifically aspects of literacy education. My background is originally as a middle school and then high school teacher. I began my teaching career in New York City and have since gone on to work as a teacher educator. And now day to day, I'm an assistant professor of learning design and technology at the University of Colorado in Denver. So I'm going to introduce our panel slowly. And then I think if it's okay with Courtney, you will kick off with you first. Can I get it? Is that okay? Courtney, awesome. And then hopefully as folks trickle in, we'll also have a chance to get Morgan back into the mix. But let me mention our three panelists today and introduce all of them now. So we're going to first hear from Courtney Clefman. Courtney is a high school English language arts teacher who is passionate about intentionally creating space for student voice through structured interaction. And induction mentor, she's developed professional learning opportunities and supports for new teachers. She's a mentor teacher in her district. She's with the San Diego area writing project. That's a local project of the broader national writing project organization. And we're just really thrilled to have Courtney here. So Courtney, welcome. After Courtney, we're going to hear from Joe Dillon. Joe is an English teacher and an instructional coach at Gateway High School. That's in Aurora, Colorado. He also is a member of the Denver Writing Project. And Joe and I go back a while together organizing projects like the marginal syllabus for a few years. And then we'll also be joined by Morgan Jackson. And Morgan, we're going to mute you for just a moment, but I'm so glad to have you back in here. I'm getting a little bit of an echo. There we go. Morgan is a high school English teacher at Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. She believes in providing her students the opportunity to think and articulate their thoughts through a variety of experiences. And Morgan's goal is to help her students learn and grow and think critically. So it's just really a pleasure to have Courtney and Morgan and Joe with us today for our panel on social annotation in K-12 teaching and learning. So enough rambling from me. I will be doing some Q&A and some follow-up as our presenters move through their talks this morning, but we'll begin with Courtney. And so Courtney, take it away. I know we'll juggle the screen a little bit here, but welcome. Hi, everyone. So good to be here this morning. Yesterday's keynote and the panel presentation were both so thought provoking. I was like taking notes and trying to add to my presentation and as things were going. So as Rami mentioned, I'm a high school English teacher and I was thinking about what I would want to share with you all today in terms of my practice around social annotation. And I really thought about the ways that I engage students in both the pre and post activities surrounding the social annotation and how that establishes both the purpose and works to help develop depth in what occurs during the social annotation process for my students. And so I thought I would share a little bit about that with you today. I wanted to ground it in a little bit of my equity vision. And so really my goal in my classroom is to de-center myself and structure opportunities for my students to really develop their voice through interaction that has a little bit to do with my first 10 years of teaching at a school predominantly on the west side of our district that worked with English learners and thinking about ways that we could use interaction and language in order to develop agency and ownership of the learning. And this quote here from Morrison that I read in her source of self-regard this year really I think sits squarely with that vision of equity that I have where she mentions that listening, assuming sometimes that I have a history, a language of view, an idea, a specificity, assuming that what I know may be useful, may enhance what you know, may extend or complete it. And this idea that memory, my memory is as necessary to yours as your memory is to mine just really reminds me of the importance of establishing the idea of like a discourse community that has a culture of listening, flexibility, open-mindedness are all really important kind of key characteristics of what I want to help develop in my students. And so it's really at the heart of why social annotation resonates with me, I think. So with that in mind, through Twitter actually, I came across this concept of social annotation this year which was like how have I never thought of this before, right? Like I annotate, I'm really about student interaction and developing those discourses. How have I never put those two things together? And so when I heard this idea and Remy kind of stepped in and pointed me towards some resources, I sat down and I really thought about what types of student contributions do I value in the classroom? What is something that I recognize as one of those valuable contributions? And how can we offer students a variety of ways to enter into that conversation? Does it always have to be verbal? Does it, you know, because we often find that the same, you know, more dominant students tend to be the ones that step in and want to say things verbally in the classroom. So what other ways could we look at that? And then lastly, building on that, what role might social annotation play in inviting students to share and develop their thinking within that discourse community that I'm trying to develop? And so I know through, you know, Vygotsky and the whole social-cultural nature of learning and the work that Aida Wauke does with WestEd that for me in my classroom, it's important to engage students in quality interactions. I want to make sure that those interactions sustain language focus by explicitly developing disciplinary language and that oftentimes we learn when we're in conversation with others. And so this idea of social annotation was really interesting when I first heard about it. I also read Goldie Muhammad's Cultivating Genius this year. And her naming this idea of having a literary presence was really interesting to me. Like, how do I help students develop that literary presence? This idea of staking a claim and making oneself visible within the intellectual community through acts of literacy is an important consideration in the development of student voice within that learning community. And so I wanted to engage students in this idea of co-constructing our purpose together. So, I mean, social collaborative annotation was new to me. I'm assuming it was new to them. They were very well-versed in annotating by themselves. And, you know, at some point I started noticing it became kind of a performative act. Like, they were kind of like, oh, I'm going to annotate because the teacher told me to. And I thought, okay, how can I jar that thought? You know, how can I mix this up and get them to own this idea of social annotation? And so I gave them a jam board that was blank. And it just said collaborative annotation in the center. And I had them work with me to construct what might that look like and what might we gain from it? Because if they can name those things, maybe they will be more invested in making it part of their actual literary life, not just in my classroom, right? And so these are the things they came up with. I was quiet. I muted myself and I let them just post. They posted ideas and there was no color to begin with. They changed the colors as they know. They're familiar with affinity mapping in my classroom. And so this idea that we start by posting some ideas and then we begin to group them. If we notice that one person said something that was similar to what I said, we start to group them together. And they came upon this idea starting to change the colors of the sticky notes in order to kind of, you know, group those ideas. And so they touched on things that I expected, right? Like there are different perspectives that might be offered if we annotate collaboratively. I might see something from a different world view than I'm familiar with. They touched on this idea of deepening or expanding ideas that, you know, maybe I post an idea and someone builds on it. Making meaning, of course. And then I was actually kind of surprised that in this I was hoping because we've been working on this this year. But this idea of like metacognitive reflection, right? I might see something else. And then I might realize that my learning is changing or my understanding is changing is really interesting to me. And then this other idea of like feedback. I might gain feedback by seeing what other people have to say in real time. And so we work together to kind of construct what social annotation might look like in our classroom. And based on that, I kind of took them into their first experience with social annotation. I wanted to keep it kind of open. I didn't want to, I don't know. I guess I wanted to create kind of a low stakes, non-evaluated situation where they could enter into this conversation in ways that were authentic to their own meaning making process. So while one student might step in and highlight some things and comment on that, another might, I don't know, have more analytical understanding of the author's structure. And I didn't want to control too much of that. And so the initial annotations that they did were very self-centered. They were very like, here's what I notice. Here's my connection and here's what I wonder. And the first time around that we did it, they really stuck with those sentence like starters. So they kind of just said, I noticed, I wonder. And they were very kind of like repetitive about that. And so here are a couple of examples. And this is our, I would say like our third or fourth kind of attempt at what this could look like across different platforms. We played around a little bit on Jamboard with some social annotation. And then this is an example from Google Docs as well. But students were in small groups of four. I try not to go bigger than that because it gets a bit cluttered. And I wanted to make sure that students felt heard within their groups. And so this is an example of two students. And I don't know if one influenced the other or not, but they both interestingly enough commented on structural choices the author was making. So even though I had barely introduced this idea of charting or descriptive outlining, they were using rhetorically active verbs to describe what the author was doing. Here's a different group. They did something very different. So one student chose to enter into conversation with the author, right? This idea of asking a question based on what the author had to say. And then the two girls down below was really interesting, kind of interacted with each other's ideas right off the bat without even direction from me to respond to one another. And so they moved into kind of questions of author credibility and kind of rhetorical analysis which was very different than what the first group did. So as I noticed these things happening and as at the same time I was kind of leading some professional development with the writing project at the time, I spoke with one of our co-directors, Christine Conne and she kind of said, well, wouldn't it be cool if we put them in conversation with each other, right? Like one group did one very distinctive thing. This other group did something else. They should see what, you know, what the other people are doing. And so we kind of together came up with this idea of inviting groups to listen to one another. And so, you know, some groups really focused on content and paraphrasing while others dove into rhetorical analysis or structural analysis and even others still had personal reactions that were equally valid because they were all topics that I was going to have them kind of make arguments about later. And so I wanted them to see each other's ideas and so I invited them to visit other group's annotations and then return to their own in order to add follow-up comments or maybe more developed ideas if they wanted to post their own. And so this was kind of something that I was trying out this year for the first time. It was really interesting process. And then as a result of that, we as a class developed kind of a, I would say less of a, it's not a rubric. I would say it's more of a resource that we can then go to later on and hyperlink examples of what these things could look like. And so we thought about the different things that we called out on that initial Jamboard, the Affinity Mac and Jamboard. And we worked together to think about different reasons why you might annotate together or what you might gain from that. And then we hyperlinked examples of student, you know, of student annotations and what those would look like so that they could see maybe what a quality example of students discussing word choice would look like and interaction with each other. And so I don't know what happens. Can you, Rami, can you see this when I click on something different? Okay, I wasn't sure if I would only stick with that one tab that I was in. You've got something loading now, Courtney. Yeah, I didn't take a moment. Yeah, so I think what was really interesting and this is just the teacher view. This is not directly on the text. This is the notification I get from Google Docs on my Envia email. But what was kind of cool is I noticed like a student would make an initial comment about, you know, this reference to a hawk in the text. And then the second student added on kind of a more in-depth analysis of what that hawk could represent, talking about what hawks are and how, you know, how that might be viewed, you know, interpreted in the text. And then the third student, while they all agree with each other, you notice that their language is like, I also or I agree with. They add more complexity and depth to the initial comment and they walk away from grade level. This would be English 10. Would be this example. And so it was really interesting and they knew, I think in this particular situation that they were headed toward a literary analysis type of thing. So I think that that's what was, you know, the lens that they were looking at this through. But I thought it was really interesting that they built together kind of a deeper analysis than what the original poster kind of had. So we worked together in order to develop this kind of set of expectations of what social annotation could look like or moves they might make during that process. And then as a result of all that, and Remy, you can kind of let me know about timing. I kind of lost track of where I am in terms of my 10 minutes. But this is great. Just keep rolling. Cool. So as a result of all that, they're familiar with the practice of metacognitive reflection. I often like build in some kind of Google form as a result of what they, their interactions that they do because I don't grade the interactions. I want them to find value in those interactions. I want them to understand that they've gained something through it and then it leads to something else, right? And so here's one of the questions that I post to them post social annotation is, you know, consider the interactions you had during the activity. Which of these are true for you? You know, and so the top two were the first two actually that I learned new ideas or ways of interpreting the text as a result of this interaction or that I saw different perspectives other than my own. Which is, you know, again, one of like kind of the key things that I'm trying to develop in my classroom anyway, which is wonderful. And then, you know, they selected some other options as well about developing language, extending their ideas, things like that. And so getting them to think about how the interaction helped their own thinking was important to me. And then I also follow that up with like a Likert scale type of question where I ask them to what extent do you think this social annotation interaction helped, you know, improve your understanding of the text and they kind of, you know, rate themselves on a scale. And then I followed up with an open-ended question about how that, you know, interaction helped them improve their thinking. And so some of their comments were I like seeing others process and highlighting and what they found important. So it was interesting seeing it happen real time. You notice like highlighting is happening. Comments are popping up. It's all, you know, it's a lot. I found that the teachers I engaged this in were a little bit overwhelmed by that but students are not phased. Like this is part of their everyday like natural interaction kind of process. And so for them, they liked seeing what others found important as they were highlighting and doing things. It helped give them different perspectives but then also created space for their own voice which was really important. Another student said that writing things out before I say them helps me develop my thinking which then gives me kind of a thought process of, okay, how could social annotation work in connection with speaking, right? Could a class discussion occur after the social annotation occurs or, you know, what order might that happen? He says it helps him expand his thinking, makes him more aware of details he didn't notice. This was happening in a completely online setting. I asked him at the end of the year, would you want to do this like next year? Like we're all going back fully in person next year according to our district and so is this something you'd want to continue doing? And a lot of them said yes. It doesn't replace classroom discussion. However, they felt they found value in the process. Another student said that it's much more engaging because you see other people's thoughts developing real time where you can trace it back to the text which was another major takeaway is that oftentimes in English classrooms as teachers pull out quotes and we have them do something on a chart or somewhere else, this in context annotation activity was so much more valuable. It helped develop depth and nuance that didn't happen when I had them do something on a chart somewhere else away from the text. And so this idea of gaining feedback in real time was really interesting to me. And then the last student said the collaborative annotation forced me to read the text through different lenses and communicate my ideas with people who didn't always think similarly. So this idea of like that whole rhetorical situation of speaker, audience, purpose it's all live and happening as you're engaging in this kind of activity in real time. So I thought that that was another kind of interesting takeaway. And then kind of just to kind of sum it up I found I really valued social annotation because it democratized the student talk time. It wasn't just me calling on a student asking them to speak or someone voluntarily raising their hand and speaking. Everyone was interacting, speaking and listening, speaking, you know through writing and listening to each other, you know, together. And it was all happening live and I could see who was doing what and it could happen asynchronously as well. It did give students the space to revisit the annotations. And so I thought that that was kind of a great takeaway as well. It made student thinking visible not only to their fellow students but also to me. So, you know, while they're not all in muting or turning on their cameras that's okay because I can see your thinking here. They really love that it created a living record of the thinking and interaction that occurred which often gets lost in a classroom discussion unless you're taking copious notes, right? Like that moment where someone said something really interesting sometimes just is gone once you step out of the classroom. So, I often found that students were their little icons were hovering, you know, in the corner. If I opened up a doc, they were still there. They were there two weeks from now or, you know, they would revisit the text and continue building on ideas long after the class was over. Students increasingly saw value. So, I noticed that while they initially posted their required number of posts in that last example, they really owned it and they they responded as many times as they wanted. So, that'd be interesting to chart over the course of a year is the ownership of it. And then it seemed like, like I said before, they made deeper and more nuanced interpretations because it was in context. The text was right there and they could see it all and make connections. So, I found that that was really great as well. So, I think, I don't know, again, timing. Sorry about that. Thank you. No, this is fantastic. We really appreciate the deep dive into your classroom and I've been taking notes and sharing some things on Twitter. But yes, indeed, much, much, much appreciation. We will circle back Courtney to you as we move through our presentations. But let's see, Morgan, if we can bring you into the conversation now. Awesome. All right. We're going to try and share. It's going to be interesting because I have to admit that we have a very similar philosophy and a very similar usage. Oh, let's go to the very beginning. So, I am Morgan Jackson. I use she her pronouns. I'm an English teacher at Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. And very similarly to how it was discussed previously, the biggest part for me using social annotations is the egalitarian aspect that it provides to my classroom. I'm a high school English teacher. I primarily teach juniors and seniors. And so, when I talk about egalitarianism, it's at ability level. I have students who aren't comfortable speaking or they don't think that, you know, someone else said it better than them. So, you'll get to keep on the same thing. Well, when you're writing simultaneously, there is no I was going to say the same thing or they took my idea because you're not sharing them, you know, out loud. You're all right at the same time. And if you're working on yours, you don't really know if someone's highlighted the same concept or talked about the same thing as you're going through. Learning style, I have some students who just are not a fan of sharing out loud or they consider themselves a slower reader and or slower thinker. And so they're like, I don't know what to say or how to say it. I find that gender and race also play a part. Can you guys hear me all right? I'm getting dingy on my side. Okay. I find that gender and race sometimes play a role depending on what we're talking about. From a gender perspective, I think one of the biggest things that shows up is when I'm going to go ahead and present that. Maybe it'll make it a little bit better is when I'm having class discussions. I find that in my classes, they're very heavily boy. But a lot of times my female students will take over conversations or my boy students don't have a response right away. They need a moment to kind of think through their thoughts. And so this allows for an egalitarian approach to that I don't get kind of that, the person who dominates the conversation. In my school, we are fairly racially diverse and I find that some students who have discomfort discussing racial implications or things that are a little bit more uncomfortable in class are far more comfortable putting it in writing because they can stop and think about it for a moment and really come up with what they're going to say. From a perspective of exposure, there is an exposure to a couple of things. One is each other's thoughts. I find that when we're sharing our thoughts verbally, the student whose hand is raised isn't listening to the student who's speaking. In part because they're formulating their opinion and they're trying not to forget what they want to say. So there's that like, I know what I want to say. I know what I want to say. And then they either wind up repeating something or it changes the topic entirely because they weren't really listening to what someone was saying. Whereas when you're writing it, you're writing your thoughts but you're able to go back and read what other people wrote without the need to kind of hold on to how you want to participate or what you want to say next. There's also no need to wait. So if you're reading someone's comments and whether we use hypothesis annotate, they also use Google docs and it's to say the Google suite of things. So whether it's Excel or docs or Jamboard, the idea that you can comment immediately upon reading someone's comment as opposed to having to wait to get back around to you. I also have where students will forget what they want to say or it goes back to a previously talked about topic and they don't want to revert the conversation. So they'll say nevermind. So this allows them to focus on their thoughts when they're writing, but also really take the time to understand and listen to what other students are saying. It also brings in topics outside of the curriculum to an extent. If I'm using something like hypothesis, I can bring in a topic or an article that is tangentially related to what we're doing or not related at all just for them to focus on the concept of speaking and listening. Going through deciding what they want to say, coming up with an idea and writing it down, which is often a skill my students have but they don't necessarily transfer it directly into the classroom. So this is a way to kind of demonstrate that you have the ability to think critically about something, write an idea about it and then discuss it academically. So I think that's also a very important aspect of being able to expose into those things. Additionally, and when you talk about reader response theory, something like social annotations helps to anchor the reader response theory in the text as opposed to directly into their lives. A lot of times my students will get off track if we're just having a conversation or a discussion and they want to have a conversation about how it relates to them or this reminds them of this one thing they did this summer and the conversations kind of derailed by these side stories whereas social annotations requires that they're rooting their conversation and their comment in the text itself and that really helps to focus their reader response back to the actual text and what the author was saying. These are examples that I pulled from my students just from hypothesis articles that we've used. I will say one of the things because it's open and much like Courtney said, students can go back to it. I find that my students actually go a lot deeper in their social annotations but then they do in class discussions because they don't have the time to necessarily pull things together or they're going really quickly to kind of get done with it but this allows them to read what other people have written and to think about it and kind of go back and have this back and forth that doesn't really exist or isn't really allotted for in a classroom discussion where you only have a set amount of time and a lot of that time is used trying to kind of put it together. I have students that have filler words. They know what they want to say. They aren't sure how to say it. This eliminates all of that and so for me, I find that this is a great lead-in honestly when we're talking social and I'm going to go ahead and stop here on my screen now but it's a great lead-in when we're talking about class discussions when they can socially annotate and get all their ideas out and they know what they want to say and then we come back together and we have a discussion. I find that those students who maybe wouldn't have shared normally are okay sharing now because they've had a chance to think through their ideas. They've had a chance to realize they're not the only person who thinks that and so they're more confident in raising their hand after a social annotation to be like, actually, oh, and I just realized that because now they've got it out. It's open. They don't have to be the first person to speak. Everyone has ideas and either the stigma of being different is no longer there or it's the idea that they they're just comfortable not being that first one to share. So for me, I find that social annotations much like Courtney said actually really helps to kind of start that conversation or that discussion piece in a classroom because we've kind of already pushed it in a very comfortable boundary. It also builds a really great community in my classroom. So I think that's a that's a really interesting piece for me is just the way it allows my students to kind of open up and come together. They do also, I think unless the Courtney we have a very similar philosophy and how we're running social annotations in our classrooms. But I think it's good even for this. It's good to see that it's working for other people and kind of how other people are doing it. Bramie, I see your finger. I'm I'm I'm I've got too much going on. Morgan, we lost your slides at one point. First of all, Morgan, just thank you so much. And so as you continue to cut your off. Let's make sure that we curate everyone's slides after the session. But Morgan, you were saying something about community right now and I wanted knowing that we've spoken about this relationship before. Maybe can you just say a little bit more if you don't mind about how you see social annotation really deepening your students sense of community. There's two parts there. One social annotation takes the focus off of me as the teacher. When they're socially annotating, I'm not a part of that. Here's the text annotate. What are your thoughts? What are you thinking? Reply to each other. I'm I'm a bystander. I'm watching. I'm listening. I'm going. Ooh, that sounds really interesting, but I'm not like, Hey, Miss Jackson, what do you think of this? Is this supposed to mean this? It's really them coming together and finding that they can be their own experts. And so someone has a question. Someone else gets to come and go, Hey, I think it means and they get to kind of build that amongst themselves. But also it's similar to they're learning how to interact with each other. They're learning how to balance. I hear your opinion. I see your opinion. What do I agree with this? What do I disagree with this and it's done and because it's written there is no heat of the moment, so to speak. And so they really learn to respectfully respond to each other and you get a very civil dialogue of, Well, I see that, but I still think that and that's something that they really don't. They don't get in a lot of times in a discussion. You get a couple of people going back and forth, but if you were in the bathroom, you missed it or you weren't paying attention because you were thinking about what you wanted to say. This is a way where it's there for everyone to see and you go back to it and someone mentioned earlier hybrid or online. I did hybrid this year and it's amazing because it doesn't matter where you are. I will admit social annotation was a godsend for me when we went online in March because I didn't have to stop the collaboration. We didn't have to stop the discussion. It was something we knew how to do and it was a tool we were already using and it works just as well physically in class as it does at home. It works well if you're present as a teacher. It works well if there's a sub. It's something that really they take ownership of it. It's all of them and there's no wrong way to do it really. So long as you're anchoring it back to the text, it really helps them understand that idea of there's not a wrong way to read this so long as it's anchored to the text. So the, can I say this? I don't know, can you say that? Highlight it and tell me why you think that and it really does deepen us as a classroom to kind of come together and this is theirs. This is what they created at the end of it. It's not my teacher said this is what it means. It's we wrote down our ideas and after coming together, this is what we collectively came up with and it really doesn't have anything to do with me other than I set up the groups or I gave them the document. You're muted. No, thanks. Sorry, I was gonna try to jump back and forth. Yeah, I think I had a question from Bodong and it's Bodong. So lovely to have you here. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. Bodong Chen and associate professor at the University of Minnesota has researched social annotation pretty extensively. I think that his question is for you, Morgan. He asks, can you share more about the sentence starters that you used to scaffold student annotation? I think that was actually for Courtney when she was talking about her notice, wonder, connect. Okay, okay. Because I don't actually because my students are juniors and seniors and I was able to loop with quite a few of them. I really don't give them starters just because of their 11th and 12th graders for the most part. We're at that like generate with where you are. So I think that was for Courtney. Courtney, can we bring you back in? Then I'm sorry that I'm juggling a few different pieces here and then we'll continue on. Thanks, Courtney. Yeah, that's okay. So the initial sentence starters so with my 10th graders I don't do as much scaffolding as I do with my nine co-teach class. So I would say that the sentence starters are pretty simple for the initial posts, right? A lot of them stuck with like the I notice kind of I wonder and then posing questions. I did give them and I can I'm looking for the resource that I have as well. But I definitely did give them frames for responding to one another. Like Morgan was saying, knowing how to not just say good idea or I disagree or you know, like how to kind of weigh in academically or politely is something that the ninth graders needed a lot of work on. And so I'll post that in the chat. I have like a resource that I use that came from an initial I can't remember the exact person that you pointed me toward but there was a really great resource that you shared with me on Twitter. And I took that and I kind of modified it for like a high school audience and I added sentence frames that weren't there before that I can share in the chat in just a moment when I find it. And so the initial starters were fairly simple. Like I said, they were kind of like I notice I wonder types of things. And then the follow up ones were kind of derived from what I had seen previously from classroom discussions where oftentimes even in like Socratic seminar you especially the first time you do it a student will say something and then lots of students will do the I agree, I agree, I agree. And there's just a lot of head nodding that occurs without any novel things added or slight nuances to differentiate one's perspective from another. And so I anticipated that happening and created a resource that I'll share with you all in the chat. I love Project Zero's making thinking visible stuff. It's awesome. So I have to check that out. Thank you, Becky. Hopefully that answers your question. Thanks folks who are hanging in there as we juggle the tech here and work with some new platforms. I appreciate that. And that's for me too. Morgan, thank you so much. Courtney, thank you so much. Let's bring Joe into the conversation here from him and then we'll continue to open this up for people's responses and just continue to Q&A. Joe, welcome. Thanks, Raimi. And it was great to hear both Courtney and Morgan's perspective on social annotation and how it works in both your classrooms. And I think this probably will add a little will be a little bit complimentary. Let me share my screen and make sure I've got that cooking before I get too far into this. So I'm going to share notes with you on annotation and praxis. I'm Joe Dillon. I'm an English teacher at Gateway High School in Aurora, Colorado. And this last year was my 16th year as a literacy teacher. So my background for many years was in middle school classrooms and for about 13 years I've been a literacy coach as well as a teacher. So that's afforded me the privilege of going into other teachers' classrooms even as young as teaching students as young as kindergarten. And so I've had an opportunity to look at literacy instruction from across lots of different grades. And I do think about myself as a somebody who's trying to support literacy skill and development and also naming and noticing the literacies our students have. And there's a little bit of tension for me in terms of how English is traditionally taught in high school. So I like to kind of push back on the notion of what we expect an English class to do. And I think social annotation probably helps with that. So the last thing here on this initial slide is I think that the concept of praxis is really important for me. And so the idea that most people's teaching reflective practitioners, their practice isn't a static thing. It's not the kind of thing you do the same every year after year. Probably heard Morgan and Courtney share epiphanies from trying new things. And I think that's really sort of the lifeblood of good teaching and learning and good sort of literacy literacy development. So just as I get started here, I want to think about a quote that was what came from Christopher M. Dean in an article that he wrote for the Atlantic magazine. So teaching isn't about managing behavior. It's about reaching students where they really are. That's the sub headline. And the quote is the best teachers don't just keep teaching. Instead, they use their pedagogy as protest. They disrupt teaching norms that harm vulnerable students. So I share this quote not because, you know, I think my teaching really well exemplifies this, but it's something that pushes on my practice and moves me into a space of praxis when I think about what's happening in the world and what's happening in terms of where my students really are and how we might, you know, sort of learn as much as we can in community. At the same time, I like to try to think about ways to disrupt teaching norms that can harm vulnerable students. So hopefully that some of this comes out in what I share, but that is something that sort of drives my thinking. I think annotation has lots of promise. Of course, there's a tool for literacy instruction. I think Morgan and Courtney have shared quite a bit about that. This is a photograph, obviously, of some social annotation that actually happened in a professional learning with teachers years ago, but a lot of the social annotation happens in my classroom looks like this, right? There's sort of like, you know, a central text on a piece of chart paper. There's young people milling around the room, walking around, writing on the chart. And what happens is an invisible process, what can be an invisible process becomes visible, right? If you're curious about what was striking, you know, the other readers in the classroom, now you have arrows that show you what was standing out to them or underlines that indicate that for them. And so to me, this is a lot of the social annotation that happens in my classroom is kind of constructed with charts and markers and pieces of paper to also, you know, beyond making something that's invisible, really visible, we can make something that can feel like an independent activity that you want to do, right? Something social that there's really no way to do wrong. This is a book that has sort of informed my teaching for years, the literature workshop I shared in Blau. He's at Columbia University. He's a professor of practice and he's really influential in the National Writing Project. But some of the key ideas that, you know, again, shape my practice and practice are ideas that I think you've heard Morgan and Courtney share which are meaning as socially constructed. It's really important to me to ask students to write about lines. So writing happens while students are reading and then readings like writings developing drafts and so social annotation can make visible the way a really like developed reading of a text maybe started with a lot of question marks and then this important question at the bottom of this slide is, you know, as opposed to a teacher sort of reading a student's notes or reading what they've they've written about a text and, you know, assigning value to the reading students have done. They can ask the question as a as a member of a community of readers. Why am I reading this differently than the way you're reading it and invite students to ask that same question, right? Like, why is my reading not the same as everyone else's the idea that the answer is, you know, aren't necessarily where the teachers teacher always has the best reading but instead readings might be informed by different identities or different perspectives particularly where students may be representing perspective or an often unconsidered perspective. And then really important and probably what I'll be talking about here is we can collaboratively construct critical lenses using social annotation and I think that's really important because a lot of times in the teaching of traditional English we think about like asking students to, you know, attempt literary criticism from a traditional framework like Marxism or feminism, et cetera. So how might collaboratively constructing those be a way to to invite more perspective perspectives into critical thinking about the text we encounter? So here's a text that I read most I ask my students to read most every year. It's a short fiction story called Cell One by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi and it was published in the New Yorker. It was also published as part of a collection of short stories that she wrote in a collection called The Thing Around Your Neck and I used hypothesis. I use it periodically in my class to model my own note-taking process and like I might talk to them about why do I use a tool like this? Why do I sometimes make my annotations public? But this one probably exemplifies like how I ask them to think about reading sort of in drafts, right? The first time through they might read a section of this text and they might just put question marks, exclamation part, exclamation marks and ellipses in the margins. And then as a follow-up they might be thinking through a framework we use in my class called Says Means Matters. And so the idea that giving them a support for social annotation can lead to a developed collaborative readings of texts. And so there's lots of these types of note-takers in my class and this one you can see it it's in a Google Docs format. And so students are asked to find a line, right? And then they can write what that line means to them or what they think it means and then why it matters maybe why it matters in the text, maybe why it matters to them, maybe why it matters in the world. It can be as open in it as we like but the idea that if they're unsure about what to write they're asked to they're asked to identify the parts of the text that they think have value or importance or maybe are puzzling and they think about what does this mean and why is this matter? This I originally borrowed this from Ellen Levy who does a lot of work with curriculum for English language learners and I would say that it's fascinating to me how students approach approach annotation when they're learning the English language and they're struggling with what something means in a text or you know the actual meaning in English and similarly when students are sort of like traditionally high performing in schools find that this structure works pretty well as a scaffold and yeah so the class the class at some point becomes sort of filled with these charts written on paper and students can sometimes have them they're writing them together in Google Docs and then we can put them on those chart papers on the walls and again we're highlighting different parts of the text and again this this also affords you know if you're not sure what to write in the margins you can return to the says means matter structure so we get a lot of mileage out of that it's a flexible tool and then the thing I think that is important for me is how essential questions can frame what we make note of in a text so the idea that we start really in open-ended ways and students are finding what they they say is important in a text or what they say is puzzling in a text but I might ask a question like you know what is feminism in 2021 after reading informational texts about feminism and women's roles in society can write an essay or create a podcast in which you define contemporary feminism and explain how your definition updates or corrects historical connotations of the word to support your discussion with evidence from the text you've read so this kind of assignment you know it starts with that big question what is feminism in 2021 it also sort of sets everybody on a trajectory where they're going to have to make something or write something and and then it starts to frame how we read things socially together to mamanda and goes the aditchie we might watch her Ted talk and and annotate that transcript we might read in glamour magazine what president Barack Obama says feminism looks like we might read dykes to watch out for by Allison Bechtel read about the Bechtel test there or we might read an essay penned by pop star Ariana Grande where she reflects on the you know the way women are treated in her work and then moving forward once we've constructed that critical lens together as as opposed to feminism being something the teacher understands and it's something we we've come to understand together and we have new definitions for it and so I think social annotation has has you know then there are new avenues we can go towards when we've constructed something like that we can say oh now what do we think a feminist would say and we can socially annotate in kind of that literary criticism tradition with new definitions and new perspectives considered and then as we think about you know more justice-oriented teaching we can develop other critical lens in similar ways and social ways that encounter all that encompass and use all kinds of multimedia texts Joe thank you there's a immediate question here there's a lot to begin to synthesize so first of all thank you but there's an immediate question here I think from Karen about how you're annotating video and I'm wondering if you might speak to that kind of brief more technical question and then we'll start to synthesize across all through yeah I think well let's see in the past I have used a tool called viologs so I think that's that's a real thing that you can try with students the way we annotate Ted talks is by looking at the transcripts so we watch those and and we annotate the transcripts and sometimes we make copies of the transcripts in Google Docs and other times you know students are have the option to use hypothesis as well Joe thank you for that so I'd like to bring all three of our our expert panelists together because I'm so impressed by the detail that you've all shared concerning your attention to instructional ability to really understand these rich disciplinary practices of meaning making of textual analysis of close reading a text something that stands out to me though across all three of your presentations is how social annotation that seems for all of you is a way of providing students with a really strong sense of agency that they have some of you mentioned ideas of ownership Morgan began there's been a kind of strong emphasis perhaps on the teacher not having the singular right reading of a text and I think for some of us as educators whether or not we've just begun our careers or we've perhaps been teaching long enough to get stuck in certain ruts it's always a good reminder that students can be kind of owners of their learning trajectories and it seems as though you've all found social annotation to be a particularly useful way of having students chart their own direction as learners morning if you might all perhaps speak to this idea of student agency of students as experts and how social annotation in your classrooms allows students to really own their learning Morgan you want to you want to start I will I will say something like Google Docs and I use hypothesis regularly as well for me I find that my students are far more familiar with and it's far more comfortable to them because it relates back to their use of social media they're very familiar with the idea of taking a piece of text which is what we would call a post or a link of some sort and comment on that and then engage in a dialogue of a reply back and forth that's very natural of them they're native to that so when you take that and you apply it to an academic setting it's tapping into a skill that they don't normally bring into the classroom but teaching high schoolers I would tell them all the time you you analyze all the time you will spend five minutes trying to decide which emoji to send like you are very well versed in the idea of nuances and analysis but they don't necessarily bring it into the classroom with them so I find that doing and reply mirrors something they're already very familiar with so now they're just having to tap into the academic side of it not necessarily the formatting and the they already know that part it's just bring it to the academic side so that helps with that piece for Mike still yeah I think it's I think back to your book I mean when I was you know digging into annotating a social notation and thinking about what it could look like I think there was a part we look at these the author as the the the knower the expert and they kind of because they're in print you know like they live as this play on this pedestal right and the teacher often kind of gets placed in in some in similar proximity and so I think as opposed to classroom discussion where again oftentimes the teachers in the front or you know in this like set up that communicate something about who is a value and whose voice notation disrupts that it it gives them a space where they can interact with the text and the ideas where they can respond back to not just the author but each other it was really interesting because I tried it out on on jam board as well as Google Docs and while I as the teacher like the formatting of Google Docs and I like the it just seems a little bit more professional for some reason or academic they really they preferred Jamboard which ended the keynote yesterday with the Library of Congress and that new tool that they have and it really it's very similar like this idea that you can play with different shapes and move things around and it really resonated with students so anytime that I ask them like how would you like to continue doing this their answer was always Jamboard like they always preferred the ability to the manipulative flexible ability of Jamboard as opposed to Google Docs which is a little bit more structured and stagnant the right word in the way that they could interact and so I thought it was really interesting especially yes like it like I said yesterday's keynote that and Morgan's comment about emojis different ways that it can allow students to express their thinking and respond that is not the five paragraph essay you know that is something you know some other way of doing that and I think social annotation allows for that the other thing I think it that I personally want to help demystify for students is just like a knowledge of the reading process right so to take for example that that short story that I use quite a bit because I just love that short story sell one by a DG right now when I read it though what I have to be honest with with my students about is I've read it about right and so and what I want them to be aware of that I you know I'm sure my you know my fellow panelists understand but I what I want to be clear about is like when that short story is published there's no there's no answer key that comes with that right it's really about you know the inferences we make about where why the author wrote it the way she did and what and then what impact it has on us and the idea that we can I have some quote-unquote expertise that I've gained with that short story because I've just read it so many a ridiculous number of times but you know the story will have importance for for young people when they can think about like what it means to them what it means to the other people in the room that they're interested in and maybe what it means you know in the world it has it has resonance and we can sort of get lost we can being the one that everybody's trying to approximate and I think that you know making the process visible so it's more it's more important that I be sort of like really really conversant about my process I'm really curious about students processes and their experts in their own processes and the idea that they've read certain things you know they have literacies that they've developed by being immersed in different areas than so the idea that that reading community is really you know it's bolstered when we're talking about process as opposed to trying to approximate maybe the guy at the front of the room who has the benefit of having read the yeah can I can I add really quickly onto that and I thought about it I find that my students when we don't socially annotate social annotate things they wait to the end and they come up with this idea at the end whereas when you're doing social annotation you're working throughout and so you catch these snags of you know that's that no no no I think you're we're missing something somewhere as opposed to getting to the end of a short story or the end of a chapter or the end of a novel and realizing we've missed things or it's like well what does this mean and they they didn't pay attention to the hawk so they don't know the bird symbolism in Jane air because they didn't pay attention to any of the birds in Jane air as opposed to when you're doing it throughout you do have to stop and kind of pay attention as you're going and that forces them to kind of create some thoughts as we're reading as opposed to getting to the end and thinking of the text as one giant piece so it's more it's more there's a more proximal nuanced reading in that sense Morgan and it's precessual and that respect as opposed to only summative I really appreciate that you know I have a whole list of questions that I'm really eager to ask all of you and I'm going to just save one because I noticed that we've got a pretty lively chat we also had a few questions that are appearing there's a Q and A section of this session that we're all in together of folks want to use that but I do want to make sure that we hear from folks who've joined us today and again thank you to everybody who's here live so we got a question again from Karen this is a little bit broader in terms of how we understand the idea of social annotation in relationship to the standards quote unquote teaching the standards and I know having learned so much from the three of you in a variety of capacities in some cases over years or at least many months that you all have again deep expertise to kind of perhaps creatively subvert while simultaneously attending to the formal requirements of being literacies educators and I'm wondering how particularly for literacy educators who may be hearing about social annotation for the first time or who are curious about how this approach to reading together and to writing together in this kind of rough draft way how does this allow you to say yes I am teaching to the standards and my students and their learning is aligned with the kind of formal curriculum that may come from again you know other administrative you know needs of formal schooling does that does that question resonate and how do you well navigate that I think social annotation can most definitely hit I mean I'm thinking specifically ELA because that's you know the world that I'm in but you know they're they're reading writing listening and speaking and you know a variety of different types of standards that I've considered as I was kind of putting this in front of students I ultimately made the decision that social notation was not something I was grading it was something that I wanted students to value for the process and what they got out of it however then you'd make you know you think about you know holding students accountable for engaging in it right and I think I saw some somebody asked the question in the chat about you know what affordances would have to be made for middle schoolers you know as you go down and you know different grade levels I think about what comes like I said before interaction that occurs in my classroom whether it be social notation or something else isn't the thing I grade but students come out of it and individually produce something whether it be writing or something else as a result of it and those that engaged in the interaction find value in that in as they walk away right and have to you know do something else I've definitely made connections between there's some reading and writings I'm sorry listening and speaking standards that definitely get hit with social notation that have to do with listening to the perspectives of others and being able to weigh in and respond and thinking about to what extent those people's ideas align with or conflict with your own thinking there I would definitely say reading standards that can be hit through social notation because students are you know identified sometimes summarizing and paraphrasing and making meaning of the arguments being made or whatever is being said they're also doing things like I showed in some of the examples where they're pulling apart structure and those are all reading standards touching on rhetorical analysis or literary analysis in their noticings and so all of those get touched on I think for for right in terms of writing there are certain writing standards that have to do with like digitally hyperlinking things that relate to the text and I think that's what's great about social notation as students can bring in links to outside sources or connections to other texts it's just so multimodal that you can do lots of things that we don't often hit we don't often hit that writing standard I feel like that's one of the ones that we as English teachers tend to overlook and I think social notation is great for that you know if you wanted it to really hit some of those other writing standards then maybe you might want to add in some set instruction you know starters or supports that would like lead students in that direction if you had one you know standard in particular but I think it hits just about all of it I don't know about you Joe and Morgan how you've approached looking at standards in relation to all of this but I think it supports the development of all so I'll just jump in thank you Courtney I'll just jump in to say that I think that we talk a lot in my in my school district and in my state about priority standards and what standards ought to be prioritized right and I think that you know social annotation can act as sort of like a counter counter that are frightening right so for example there's a new curriculum that's being adopted and ours in our district that you know teachers are wary of because of because they've home practices over time and they don't want to be they don't want to have their teaching prescribed to them and I've heard second hand that this digital tool the district has adopted um gives students a host of multiple choice questions to answer after they do a first read and so the literacy educator that I've heard this from second hand said you know that's not really an authentic first read the a first read wouldn't you know be asking students a lot of questions that would have a right or wrong answer I think that that's consistent with a lot of what we've heard Courtney and Morgan say and certainly I hope what you've heard me say is that some of the some of the curricular trends are really trying to force you know notions of correctness and proficiency onto teachers and so I think that certain tools the flexibility as designers to say what ought to be a priority standard and I think that this old document that was created when the common core was released was created in the national writing project by Joe Wood from the area three writing project and what he did was he just went through and found all the standards that were highlighted there he highlighted any standard that made reference to digital writing what I would say is you know over the years those because you know teachers are maybe unfamiliar with how somebody would use digital tools for writing right and so tradition made us D prioritize standards that we probably wanted to be prioritizing and certainly when everybody is forced to do a lot of digital writing and collaborative work online during a pandemic we can see why a standard like one that asks us to I'll just choose the top one it says you know in 12th grade students should use technology including the internet to produce publish and to update individual or shared writing projects in response to ongoing feedback including new arguments and information so I would argue that that standard is really you know it's should have a high priority priority the idea that we're using technology tools in the internet to write collaboratively while information is sort of being added to a text may I think that that's been deprioritized and it probably should be prioritized and I think most of the standards about digital writing have been have been deprioritized and should be highly prioritized moving forward. I'm actually going to take an opposite approach because I think that sometimes we become adversarial with standards and we have it we have to teach it we can't change it the okay that's that but what I've learned is how can I do what they want me to do using tools I want to use so for me something like social annotation becomes a really good way to introduce the essay or to brainstorm for writing assignment so we have to write about whatever thing we're writing about what we're going to start this article and we're going to socially annotate it and we're going to get all of our ideas together so that was us reading critically and that was looking for textual evidence to support and I think that it's more I I tend to focus less on the things outside of my control there's there's enough crazy in education I can't do anything about that what can I control in my four walls and so I find how can I use this towards this end and that to me has been the the best thing about it is I'm still meeting my standards I'm still having them write this essay it's just so happens that we are working collaboratively on gathering our details for it because once the annotations are done they live there forever and I tell this is time I don't care where you get the quotes for your asset because you're great on how you put those things together so if we go through and we socially annotate four articles and you have to write something that pulls those four articles and you happen have your class annotations and conversations I think it's like I don't make it a separate thing if I don't if I can't I just make it a part of the process you know maybe we're going to annotate our lead in so we're going to build background knowledge using the annotation that's building background knowledge so I think if you're in a place where it's rigorous or where it's very rigid use that system and figure out how the social annotations can fit into the system you're doing because while they tell you you have to do it they don't tell you how you have to do it that's where we get to be creative and do what's in the best range of our kids yes it do students hide each other Morgan I saw Karen's quote question do students hide each other yes if we're doing social annotations and it's coming from that they would cite it as so and so and such and such an article said or in such and such a discussion said that if they're just pulling a quote I've done things where I've had them work together to put in quotes come up if it's that type of thing where there's putting a quote from something they read collaboratively then I don't worry about them citing each other because it's from the book they read but if they're using someone's idea they would cite student whose idea we're using Morgan that's great thank you so much for reminding us that you know it's our responsibility as educators to interpret perhaps these standards or these other types of again curricular requirements and that social annotation is a very again I want to again leave some space for folks who again are attending we've jumped in our attendance from about a dozen folks when we began to well over 40 now so I know that we have some folks who perhaps will revisit aspects of today's presentation we'll make sure that we have slides and resources curated following today's talk but I do want to make sure as we're about 10 to 15 minutes out questions or again other comments from attendees who want to bring those for and again the Q&A is open but I'll just keep rolling and so here's here's did we address the question about middle school students I know we saw and I think Courtney mentioned it briefly in terms of accommodations I will say and I mean this I hope it comes across the way I mean it annotations don't have to be like they're what you want them to be so in terms of accommodations made there's not really an accommodation that needs to be made for middle school students or elementary students it's more so what do you want them to do so like your annotations are directed by you there are sometimes and I'll tell the students you just need to comment you know three annotations there are other times I want them specifically looking for I need one comment that connects this text to something else we've read I kind of dictate what they're dealing sometimes with their annotations so in terms of what you want to do with middle schoolers maybe you do less maybe you do more maybe you give them more sentence starters but I think the biggest part is it's kind of telling your students write about anything and they're like well can I write about this and you're like what write about anything well what about this topic write about anything does that be school related write about anything the annotations are essentially whatever you want your students to do they could read something around an annotation for a memory it reminds them of you know how does it connect them you could do it for you text one text to sell one text world that would still be annotating so like I think that's my biggest thing is like in terms of accommodations you as the educator are completely in control of how you want to do that so accommodate away because I will admit I make accommodations in my classes all the time there are times for first period I'm like okay this works in my third room like actually we're going to do it this way because I've realized that I could just let it let it go and I think that's the great thing about it is you don't have to have any preconceived ideas like just kind of tell them that's the fun of it for me for annotations is to see what they come up with because a lot of times it's not stuff I ever expected Morgan thank you for that I'll just pick up there briefly and and recall a comment from Federico who is in the session now and Federico it's so again lovely to have you here thank you for joining us he had suggested that a question he poses to his students who are not middle school students but I think this question could be you know easily engaged by middle school students is how did you feel while reading this and as a former middle school teacher I think that there are many middle school students who would be able to provide a pretty compelling response to a question how did you feel while reading this text and then be able to use annotation as a way of sharing that response so so again thank you Morgan and again Federico for that suggestion as well I'm looking at the clock and so I want to selfishly my last question into the mix here because I again I just learned so much from all three of you all the time and I just want to on the behalf of the I annotate conference and hypothesis and the 40 now seven folks who are in this session as it keeps growing you know just thank you Courtney and Morgan and Joe for sharing so much with us this year my last question is kind of a bit future focus and it recognizes the fact that you know we've come through that I think any educator has has faced in their career for so many reasons this year for you know reasons related to you know dual pandemics various crises all kinds of challenges has probably been unlike anything that you Courtney and Morgan and Joe have ever experienced and yet here you all are taking you know time out of your you know much needed rest this summer to jump into an academic conference and kind of educate all of us about you know again your wisdom when it comes to social meditation and I'm curious to hear from all three of you about what you will carry forward into this coming academic year as literacy educators I know that you all are kind of critically oriented and I'm interpreting that word critically in a variety of ways but you're all very critically oriented educators I know that you think also very creatively about your pedagogy and that you care very deeply for your students and I would just love to hear from all three of you about what you anticipate this next year might look like for you and what role if any social annotation or these kinds of collaborative meaning making approaches to literacy education what might that look for you and for your students a few months from now as we emerge from this kind of COVID academic year and we move into some new space what what what what sense you have of that right now I'll go we revamped our I teach juniors and seniors we completely revamped our junior curriculum for this upcoming year so we have to I'm at a private Catholic school so over our Tina central questions for the school year what does it mean to be an American and what does it mean to be a Christian I anticipate that social annotations going to become very very popular and use quite heavily just given the scope of those questions I'm going to want to give them time as we read text and relate back to those topics as we read primary sources as a read expository text and relate back to that I'm going to want to give them time to formulate those ideas and really be able to sit with where they are what they're thinking but also be able to see us the semester goes where that I hadn't thought about earlier is if we're socially annotating in the beginning throughout when we get you know we get to that point where they can go back and look at their annotations from August and see how they've changed because a lot of times you give that like well how have you grown as a writer and a reader and a person this semester and a lot of times they don't know like they don't have anything tangible to go back and look at like what was I thinking back in August they don't have that it's like I don't we had discussions but I don't remember what I said I don't remember what my thought process was this will actually give them something tangible to track their development and their thoughts throughout the school year so I'm excited about them having that physical go back and look at these annotations where were you where are you now what accounts for that growth or that change why is it changed why hasn't it changed so that's that's for social annotations going to come into play really heavily for my juniors at least this school year as you're asking that question Rami I was thinking about the transition to this year right where we all had to re-envision and re-think what could our classrooms look like and I remember a lot of new teachers in my department coming to me and saying they won't turn on their cameras they won't unmute like kind of freaking out and I was like why am I not freaked out by that why am I not first of all I don't think it's I don't need them to do those things but why is it that I'm comfortable with that but they're not and I think it's because of this idea that I was confident that I could find ways across various platforms to make student thinking visible and it didn't have to be verbal and I think social notation played a major role and me being able to like ask students to do some thinking and then I could pop in and I could see the interactions happening I could see their thinking developing real time if they couldn't be there with us that day they could jump in later and I don't I don't want that to change I would like to carry that over and I think there's a lot of uncertainty still about next year our students know they will be going back full time in person but they're like I just spent a year on my own like you know that that social aspect of being in school like you know it might be awkward it might be strange feeling and so I think using social annotation to kind of ease in as a way to kind of restart some interaction and give students an opportunity to quietly hear and share and you know and be through social annotation is really important I think back to a comment I saw earlier from one of my writing project colleagues Denise Meduli Williams she said like as an introvert I would feel so much more comfortable easing into conversation via social annotation and then maybe it would help me build up I think back to it even one of the student comments I shared build up my that tangle of ideas I had in my head you know and clarify it so that maybe if I do want to speak at some point then then we build on that you know as a result maybe of the social annotation so I think it will play I don't think I will ease off of it you know just because we're not completely online anymore I still see a lot of value in it and I still think it'll be a huge part of our classroom culture and what we do and so that won't change I don't know Yeah for me I think that you know such a such a monumental shift in the way schools operated last year and I think that it's I still personally feel like I'm unpacking like you know what that meant for me like how it sort of like you know reframe my teaching and sort of impacted me as you know certainly a teacher and in my relationships with students but also like how I thought about the school where I work and my job in general like to suddenly have the apple cart upset in the ways it was and then have things like you know concerns about having cameras on et cetera like to me it's it's in it's in concert with concerns about learning loss and the idea that you know so the concerns when their students haven't been going to school for a while face-to-face or you know with learning online has has not been proving to be you know something that students like or responding positively to in many cases but but I do think that you know I bring concerns about deficitizing students during a time where I know students we're learning a lot right and and so the idea that there's there's lots of learning during a pandemic and during the social upheaval we've seen in the last year around issues of social justice so the idea that you know students are always reading reading the world around them and certainly they have new literacies all the time and that there's all you know all kinds of things unpacked together socially and literature can help us make sense of those you know of the way we're you know learning throughout our lives especially in these tumultuous times like we've experienced and are still experiencing so literature is you know is should aid us and the idea of like you know unpacking it together should be social should be fun should be positive for all of us and that we can you know kind of create a counter narrative to sort of the the way we might want to label learners from a with a deficit. Thank you Joe so much and again also Courtney and Morgan and we actually got one more quick question from our dear friend and colleague Sheree Sheree it's so lovely to see you here and and have you pop up in the questions here Sheree's just wanted to ask quickly both I think to Morgan but to everyone and maybe this would be a kind of quick way of withering around and mentioning a few quick platforms and pedagogies as we wrap up the session and then I have a few final little announcements right before we we close today but Sherees was asking are you finding any particular preferences for again the alignment of social annotation platforms to certain pedagogies and you've all mentioned quite a few but maybe we could just kind of quickly whip around one more time and mention some of those tools and pedagogies as you found really helpful and that'll help us to kind of have a final note in today's session before we move we move on and thank everybody once again. Yeah, I can start us off I think I mentioned this a little bit in my presentation but really great because it was already built into their universe right there doing everything across Google so it was one easy place to to go and it allowed me to have access and view everything kind of all in one place students it almost functioned as like a discussion board but on the text which I really appreciated so again like I said not taking the quotes or that the ideas out of context and losing some of the nuance of you know what it's a part of was really important but students self-reported Jamboard being the place that they really really enjoyed they like the flexibility they liked they like the variety of ways they could annotate so not just a commenting but they could add videos or images or you know highlight or circle or put you know they could do a lot of different things along with typing you know a little sticky note or a response and so those were kind of the two places that I focused on and students like I said self-reported they liked Jamboard better for its flexibility and like Morgan spoke to earlier maybe it resonated more with their natural kind of online engaging types of you know ways that they like to in their normal everyday lives like to interact with each other so those were kind of the two places that I focused hypothesis and there was a brief conversation about deficit Joe mentioned I particularly like hypothesis because I tend to see what we look at deficits of ability as deficits of opportunity or deficits of experience so hypothesis allows me to bring in articles to build their background knowledge on things while annotating as a writing in English teacher I find that we say like oh they can't write a piece of statement it's because they don't have enough information in their brains to synthesize they read one text how do you synthesize one text so for me I like hypothesis I like to bring in multiple articles so that when they're when they go to synthesize they have actually been to a variety of text and they have more to pull from so I like it for that aspect that I'm killing two birds with one stone because I really think that you know their deficit comes with opportunity and exposure to things not an ability at all Morgan thank you thank you so much Joe you want to quickly chime in on this and then we're going to sure I would I would just say in the last year I found that that instant because we're you know students were were asked to use Google for so much and they're you know potentially inundated by email messages and messages about being behind right I think that's the worry that I would bring to everything is that if a student had been sort of struggling to attend and they're also struggling to navigate you know this online learning world they'd be getting all these messages about you're behind you're behind and they'd be leading with apologies or explanations about what was going on their lives in my school was highly impacted attendance regular attendance was hard to maintain I really leaned on instant messenger tools that function like chats that could very quickly be put together into chat rooms so that students would have chat rooms where they could you know converse with the three students they were getting along well within class or they happened to attend on the same days and so and also they could check in with me and give me sort of like emoji self assessments on how they're doing to you know to show up and jump back into school or if they're still just kind of processing how their world has been potentially upended so I I appreciate the instant messenger and then the small group opportunity where students wouldn't have the affective concern about well there's 30 students registered for this class only three of whom I know and I'm feeling behind so I'm hesitant to share it's so powerful thank you so much I really so much everything that we've learned today and everything that we will continue to sit with and think about because of again the wisdom shared by by Morgan by Courtney by Joe there's been a lot of commentary here in the chat there's also been a lot of activity on Twitter so I apologize that I've seen a little distracted but somebody tweeted out something like the students and the families you know of all three of you are just so lucky to have educators who are thinking this creatively and this critically about literacy education and leveraging something like social annotation to really make a difference and again in the lives of students and they're learning and so thank you so much for contributing to this you can find Morgan and Courtney and Joe on Twitter pretty easily I think that their handles are actually included their Twitter handles in the I annotate program we will make sure to as long as long as it's okay with them to get access to slide decks so those those slides can be linked through the I annotate program as well again this is kind of the middle of day two of a week long I annotate with education sessions and speakers on all five days and so I hope that if you found this session inspiring that you continue to hang out and I annotate throughout the wink we we look forward to crossing paths in a variety of spaces as we think again about the importance of social reading and social writing as it relates to student learning thank you all so much for joining us today and for being a part of our session and again thank you so much Morgan and Courtney and Joe be well everybody and enjoy your time at I annotate take care