Teach your students to annotate the web with Hypothes.is

Submitted 4 years ago
My Rating
Pedagogy
Supports

My Take

What Works - When the extension functioned properly, students could highlight and take notes on websites, see each other's comments (with a hashtag), and reply to each other.

What Needs Improvement - There are several glitches. The extension was not reliably functional. Also, when multiple users annotate a site, the other people's annotations are distracting. There's an "eye" button to turn them on/off, but sometimes they turned on automatically. Most importantly, there should be an easier way to export/share/view someone else's annotations without needed a Hypothes.is account.

How I Use It

I used Hypothes.is to teach students how to annotate websites. They installed the Chrome extension.

When it worked, it worked beautifully. I shared a link, and students went to the site and created their own, in-line annotations and highlights. When we used a tag, they could see each other's and make comments.

However, some glitch prevented a few students from activating the extension, even after restarting. This quickly led to frustration for the unlucky few who couldn't get on. (Even the next day, some students whose extension worked the previous day stopped working.)