A Pandemic-Era Dialogue about Literacy, Learning, & Social Annotation
Although we did not get to present the panel discussion on social annotation we’d proposed for NCTE 2020, I’m thrilled to share this article I co-authored with Jeremiah H. Kalir, Michelle L. Sprouse, and Jeremy Dean on literacy, learning, and social annotation (“Foregrounding the Margins: A Dialogue about Literacy, Learning, and Social Annotation”). We joined forces as a group of teacher-researchers who use social annotation in various K-12 and higher education contexts.
When the NCTE convention’s unplanned shift to an all-virtual format resulted in the cancellation of many previously accepted sessions, the editors at Teaching/Writing put out a brilliant call for manuscripts to capture some of the ideas that couldn’t be shared at the conference.
The call inspired us to write a Q&A-style piece to approximate the energy and rhythm of an in-person panel presentation. Though we lost the benefits of live interaction with our audience, this format challenged us to think more deeply about the role of annotation in writing teacher education and in light of the pandemic. We hope this piece will reach an even broader audience than our presentation might have.
Read our article for answers to the following questions, and more:
- How does social annotation create new opportunities for literacy education and, more specifically, the teaching of writing?
- How can social annotation change the instruction and assessment of student writing?
- Why teach social annotation post-pandemic, and why is social annotation important now?
