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welcome to liquid margins we have some great guests today we have katie cotton she's a history teacher at st george's school we also have justin serenzia he's the director of the merck center
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for teaching he's a history teacher and the dean of teaching and learning also at st george's school and then our moderator today is jeremy dean the vp of education at hypothesis
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and with that i'm going to turn it over to jeremy actually wait sorry mess up it's friday um i would like to give our guests a chance to say something about
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themselves thanks great hi everyone um my name is katie cotton and i am a history teacher mainly at st george's though we just um became a
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humanities department and i've been spearheading our first true humanities class which is um humanities one for a freshman which is a place based class that looks at um the school's
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history and the history of the island that we're on and a few other things in addition to teaching i'm the curriculum coordinator
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for the humanities department as well as the director of our summer programs and i've been using hypothesis primarily in my american studies class this is going on my fourth year for
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those of you who are in here earlier um i just said my class this morning used hypothesis for the first time this year and i'm very excited about it um justin and i teach the same american studies course
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um so he definitely brought me into the fold and i've been a huge hypothesis kind of advocate um in fanatics since then so thank you for having me today thanks katie um hi everybody i'm justin
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sorensia dean of teaching and learning at st georgia school this is year number eight for me back at the school and while i do a lot of administrative stuff these days i find that i find my most positive
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experiences working with students in the classroom so um came upon hypothesis about five years ago was just as a an act of serendipity in lots of ways um and have really started to run with it in really
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fun and interesting ways as we sort of scratched the surface of digital humanities at st george's at the secondary level so excited to be here today and and to chat with you all hi folks uh jeremy dean uh vice
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president of education hypothesis i've been in about an hypothesis for about five years um and was at a company called rap genius before that for four years um and before that i was a high school
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english teacher um and i was actually uh teaching high school english when i first discovered rap genius which is a collaborative annotation platform for song lyrics um students told me about it because i
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was always talking about annotation in the classroom and they're like you should end rap music so they told me to uh check out rap genius um and i dropped everything i was doing at the time digitally and just said okay this semester just
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sign up for rap genius it was a little of a weird thing to say to the kids um and that's what we're gonna use as our sort of digital tool no more twitter facebook wiki uh whatever else we were using um
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and so that is how i got into cloud orientation and uh i was offered a job by rap genius because uh the the folks there were interested in this use case of students using their technology to
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annotate i wasn't just rap lyrics i was doing it with literature and other things or you know canonical literature i'd say um and that's how i got into this game so i want to uh
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talk i want to start off by asking you to elaborate justin on the discovery of hypothesis or your discovery of collaborative annotation technologies and tell me a little bit about the serendipity there and you know tell me your story about
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discovery um so when i i sort of i was teaching ap us history around a really standard sort of college board oriented curriculum and then had the opportunity to shift away from that and that was
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exciting for a variety of reasons primarily because of the rich history that our school has on our island which katie alluded to moments ago so i started to explore many different textbook options um and again through just a matter of
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luck and just a lot of research and probably being on twitter at the right time came upon the american yacht which is a collaboratively built online open source textbook and said wow this looks like a great resource to use in my us history class but i know
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students are going to bristle against reading an electronic text and not being able to mark it up or to physically hold it in their hands i just i you know i just was hoping or wishing
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for some form of annotation and and i don't know how i don't remember but i just i came upon hypothesis sort of simultaneously parallel to the discovery of the american yacht and and just ran with it that summer and
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rolled it out five years ago um and was really really heartened by the types of learning and what i was seeing in the classroom so that's the short version of it
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don't worry about being short we've got plenty of time here um and so one one question i have as a follow-up to that justin is you know you were talking about they normally have a paper book right so maybe
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you were talking about with them have you talked to them about annotation before this discovery of this tool and the need for it in this sort of digital environment i didn't but
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since this class was primarily for juniors i sort of made the decision late in the spring to prepare for the next year and they they're certainly familiar as 11th graders in high school with the concept of annotation but only in really the
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physical sense by that point um i think maybe in some instances they had seen some you know like a new york times annotation of an inaugural address or a state of the union but they were never able to create the annotations layered on top of a digital text
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so that was the one way that i i felt confident that i'd be able to sell them on this digital text it also helped that it was a free text and was open resource um i knew that that would be the thing that could give me the inroads to
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having them commit to the experience there's a joke amongst high school history teachers that when you give them a reading you know the book just simply becomes a doorstop for them and they're not really going to do the reading and maybe you quiz them and i just wanted to get beyond that like
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quizzing can have real value but i wanted it to be more organic and i wanted it to feel like the conversation was happening in the text in a way that a discussion board in an lms typically doesn't recreate so thinking about use cases in
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that regard i started to you know just just think about all the possibilities that existed and then committed to it over the summer knowing that it could you know it could fall on its face but luckily had a good group of students in
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that first year and that sort of sold me on the experience as well and katie before you were introduced to hypothesis was an annotation something you talked to uh students about either an analog or
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digital context or was it a practice you tried to instill yeah it definitely was and i can i can feel myself doing that with my freshman right now whose um texts are are analog they they do have
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paper in front of them for the most part right now though i do plan on introducing hypothesis so um i think definitely i think justin and i have similar language around how we talk about annotations whether it's on paper
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or online about having a conversation with the text talking to the text things like that but i think what's great about hypothesis is that that thinking becomes
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public or public to our group and it's it's you aren't just talking to the text you're talking to the text and talking to your classmates at the same time so um i certainly still
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teach analog annotation and i think there is something to be said about doing those basics of how to identify the the key importance of a text that's going to translate from um pen and paper to to the internet but
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i think the um collaborative and communal component of it is what elevates it because i think otherwise it's just a silo and i would often have kids say well i why
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why do i need to underline or or right in the margins or ask questions like it's just for me can i just do that in my notebook um something like that and this then speaks to a a larger
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um purpose for that which is um that that communal and i have two separate sections of the same class but i have them all in one hypothesis group together so i have 25 um minds on one text at the same time
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which is great that's awesome do you guys ever get any pushback around that sort of transition right between either from students or from parents i'd ask or maybe even from colleagues around
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that transition from like annotation as a kind of private act that's for the you know individual versus something uh shared i'll just this is maybe ancient you know history but i know i look quite
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young but when i was teaching 15 years ago in high school i remember like introducing discussion forums um and i had to have a meeting with a parent once because i was like i think the assignment was like you know share your thesis idea for your paper
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in a discussion board and a parent actually called a meeting with me to say you know this is johnny's ideas and his individual work and he shouldn't have to share it with his classmates maybe that's again
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ancient history but do you ever have pushed back against that idea of sort of socializing making it more public you're you're thinking justin wants to sir yeah i'll start i mean this is i'm generalizing here but i feel
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like in terms of generations they have been more publicly facing for more of their lives than we have and i think it also speaks to like what is the nature of the assignment if it's just a closed loop between teacher and student
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that's one form of writing or one form of learning that they might express but if we lead with the the assignment the activity the learning being more publicly facing i think that's one way to get beyond
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that and i'll say like i have experienced some resistance but i think it's just resistance from not knowing and the second you start to illuminate and describe possibilities and and for me like hypothesis has
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become a feedback for my own teaching if i go in and check out the annotations from a text that can inform what i'm doing in class that day that week what didn't land well and it makes me a more efficient and effective teacher for their learning um so i when i say
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that to parents like that immediately goes oh i get this i mean i'll be honest i use hypothesis on the parent you know parents family weekend when they come in like i will show them some of the hypothesis some of the annotations that their um sons or daughters are making on the
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text and it's this moment of like making this really powerful thinking visible that simply doesn't exist in a traditional text and when you show that back to them they get really excited and then they see the conversations that are taking place
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that then continue into the lunch table beyond the classroom and into the dorm rooms later that night and it sort of becomes not romanticized but it does demonstrate the power and the extension of classroom opportunities
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that exist through this sort of medium so i'll kick it to katie there yeah i would um i've never faced any um pushback from parents i think like justin said i think when when
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parents and and other colleagues learn about it they're excited about it i think from the colleague's standpoint um i've never had anyone criticize it but i'd had people not want to get on board with it
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or be like like that's not something i want to kind of like touch and play with um but since covid and how we've all been how education has just moved to this digital space
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so quickly um so many of our teachers have hopped on board and i was creating little videos for them last year about signing up for hypothesis and how to use it and and showing them um what my kids were capable of
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um with it so um so with parent with parents and colleagues it hasn't been pushed back against it but either an indifference or a hey that's cool i don't know what you're doing over there
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um kind of thing but um with students i would say the only time that i've really received pushback is more when a student doesn't feel like they are learning as an individual from annotating on
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hypothesis i get sometimes comments that kids are like it it makes me stop while i'm reading and i i it and it's not so much hypothesis that it is just that the annotation process in general i have to stop and i have to
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break it up and i have to think about it and comment on it but then i think i i go to where where justin's kind of um saying hey that's the whole point um and and b i try really hard in my
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classes to make everything we we do um a collaborative experience we will learn better if we are all learning together and um that might be an inconvenience for you
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but you also sometimes don't want to talk in class but you do it because that's benefiting the discussion and conversation there so um i tried to move it past the individual's
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benefit or lack thereof and talk about it in again that kind of communal sense thanks um i want to sort of start talking a little bit about what kinds of directions and assignments you guys give to students
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at the secondary level with annotation but i want to start with something that justin said the difference between writing and assignments that are um for or inclusive of others you
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know public or social writing assignments versus what you described uh justin as kind of the closed loop assignment right um and i frankly i'm asking for some help for
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when i talk to folks because almost in every presentation i've given over the past few months since we've onboarded a lot of schools somebody always inevitably asks me um
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can i make it so that the students annotations are just visible to me and so that i would just see justin's annotations on say love song of jail for proof rock and just katie's annotations on proofrock not in discussion with each
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other um and just frannie's in isolation that again i think that's that closed-loop model um and i guess i'm just interested in hearing your thoughts i i will sometimes say when people ask me that i
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will say that sort of seems to me like a more of a secondary level uh pedagogical uh value or interest right because for example if i was teaching the great gatsby at the secondary level i probably do need to know
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you know what frannie thinks of the green light and how she formulates some thinking about a particular symbol in a class um and you know if nate comes in and kind of hogs the space and sort of gives a the definition
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or a you know full answer like it makes it harder for others or something like that um it would probably be the reverse as as nate is uh suggesting in the chat that he would he would be the one at a loss for words and franny would have taken up the
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you know gotten the answer right but in any case um i don't know i'm just interested in having you riff on the knee for kind of closed loopness uh in these in annotation versus the messiness and difficulty of open
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looseness and this is just something that's a reality i think you know once for any has an annotation on the green light it is harder it is a different thing um to talk about once somebody has already
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kind of provided an answer either you find other real estate just to find your voice or you have to build on her thinking and that's a much more higher order uh activity but nonetheless i constantly get pushback people want i
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want the closed loop version of annotation anyway riff on that katie i'd be curious to have you start here particularly around the y-par stuff that you did um and just how publicly facing that well like the youth
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participatory action research with you that you did with your class last year like i have some ideas and and certainly some comments there but i i know you do a better job in american studies and often being like very publicly facing in
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the learning like i think for me when i hear you ask that question jeremy i would ask the educators like what is the purpose of this learning like what do we do what is the purpose of the social experience in a classroom like why are we gathering together if that's
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only the case if we're only going to have that close loop this then we never need to really gather in a social setting either like so i'd go to that level but i'll defer to katie and then and then tag in because i think katie might have some good ideas there
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yeah so for me um it definitely boils down to classroom culture from day one so i'm on day three right now in class and um i can think of every day something
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i've talked about how like we're not competing with one another like we're all trying to learn from this um it's not about quantity it's about quality like it's really emphasizing those things that i think um
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our education system and the broadest of generalizations um can sometimes hinder in kids that i need to do more and more is better and and all of those things so
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um for me in that sense that if if someone got to that annotation about the green light first then my other students are still learning from that annotation in some way and they might have a different example
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or instance to reply to that or um they might be able to elaborate or link to something or bring in a piece of art which are all functionalities of hypothesis which are also um wonderful as well or they might throw
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in a light bulb gif or something like that which justin loves to play with gifs and i know he calls them gifts and that was our first fight as colleagues um but um
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i do really strive to be very externally focused as a teacher in a i try not to make things only for my own consumption as an educator so in american studies like justin said um
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we did a whole youth participatory action project a couple years ago with newport interviewing different locals identifying challenges in the community doing research about those and then
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creating some type of resource for the community one of my final projects for the year is often um writing a letter to a local business owner or politician about some kind of topic
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and and making it a historically informed um uh plea to them so i try to make sure that we know what we can do with the history that we are learning so
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um in a very like circular way i think that the i see the benefit to the closed loop and i understand that but i think that can also be accomplished in different ways give
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kids five checkpoint questions um after they read a homework assignment and ask them what their understanding of a green light is i don't think that necessarily has to be um the space that hypothesis
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takes up in a way so um that might be my approach to that justin do you have anything to add yeah i think that last part is precisely where i sort of land on that like i think of for me hypothesis and and
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katie used the phrase like play and joy like i like annotation as being playful and sort of joyful and a sandbox of of ideas i mean i certainly encourage students to turn off the highlights just to sort of
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click the little eyeball as they're reading so they're not being influenced and informed by the highlights that they may see from um their peers before their reading you know if you think about buying a used text and the entire text is highlighted
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that could inform what your what your eye is drawn to so that's one part of the closed loop piece and i think it also just gets back to the the social nature of learning and and also frankly being in a us history class or
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an american studies class you know it's not just the one text of gatsby right like it's this big tent giant robust history that we might consider around all different sorts of issues and
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periods and concepts so we center a lot of the early learning on some history like historical lenses and frameworks for thinking about the past there's things like space and place and history of violence and production and consumption of culture
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so i want to i want them to see those themes among others and to to come up with their own themes that become more apparent collectively over the course of the year and when we do that socially like it
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inevitably leads to different or new kinds of learning that didn't take place um with previous classes um in years prior so that's where i would say i i just simply it's a bit of a block
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for me i don't understand the need for that closed loop when you can have the closed-loop learning in other formats for me just i don't want hypothesis to be that space i want it to be a lot of voices coming to the forefront it's actually really helpful for me and
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how i'll be able to respond to instructors that ask me that uh in the future um justin since you started five years ago you must have started before we even had private groups right so your students
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were annotating publicly at that time uh can you talk a little bit about actually full public annotation and if correct me if i'm wrong um and also the fact that i my by my memory there were other courses
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uh students as part of other courses uh using american yap and entertain american up at that time so i doubt that you guys are you i don't think you were the only ones there you're you're you're yeah you're absolutely right jeremy i think the private groups came
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in mid-year of our first year and i did switch to it just for like in y'all in particular because so many people are using it it was really sort of hard to navigate and see where my students were aside from you know looking lumping them into a
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particular group even if it was publicly oriented i i will say like there are times when i intentionally have students annotate publicly to have them be a part of the conversation and an example of that like i'm oftentimes
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wanting or lamenting the fact that there aren't more um electronic digital texts for history and there are more coming to the forefront every day there's a really good one in world history right now through the open ed resource project um but an example of
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this like i used a blog post blog post from waldo jaquith talking about the impracticality of a cheeseburger which is sort of an interesting way like how you can't make a cheeseburger on your own you couldn't raise the cattle make the cheese grow
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the lettuce the tomatoes the wheat to make the buns and we were doing it around this concept of you know colombian exchange interconnection of the world brought through what we might consider like an early modern era
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and i had my students annotate publicly and then i tagged waldo on twitter and wouldn't you know it he then saw that and went into the blog post and started commenting on the students posts and sort of pushing
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and prodding them as the author of this initial thing and it was it was just this great little moment of the connectivity that exists when you don't have that closed loop so for me i you know there are times very intentionally when i want them to
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annotate publicly because also if we think about message boards or comments on websites like having them be really thoughtful and intentional digital citizens is also sort of a
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part and parcel to what i'm seeking them to get from an american studies course so if they're annotating publicly they're more likely to be more responsible and intentional with what they're posting and how they're posting and how they're conversing and i think that's i mean
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it's 2020. we can see that playing out in a number of ways in students lives so as somebody who is very publicly facing in their own um sort of social media presence i think it's important for them to get that piece too
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that's great thank you um i'm a student in your class it's day one how do you introduce hypothesis or if you went on whenever the first day you introduced it katie like how do you let me know how do you introduce me to this new thing i'm going
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to be doing assuming i was an injustice course you know last semester it's a new thing to me yeah so i actually when i first started using it i pulled um some of justin's annotations from the
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prior year he had added me to their group after i got hired before i was teaching here to be able to follow along and see the work that they were doing so i actually went in and grabbed some sample annotations that
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i thought were great models one that felt like a good amount of like length and significance um another that was quite kind of elaborate and had
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connected to information that they had already covered in the class or a different section and then a last one that um did some good job like linking to other sources and things like that so i try to grab a few
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um and then i have some bullet points that i definitely stole from justin at one point about like reminding them at this point again they're they're juniors and justin i teach um what's our advanced
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level at our school so one of the higher levels of the class so um i try not to talk too much about like what does it mean to annotate but i really try to emphasize the the quality over quantity and um
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i try to say that they're like not allowed to work use the word interesting ever because it doesn't mean anything and it's a huge cop-out um so that one i try to avoid right from the start but um
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really show them those examples and show them how to reply and say that that counts as counts as an annotation um too to continue that dialogue and um and then i try to tweak from there i
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think going to your point before about i really just want to see one kid's annotations yeah they're all in one group but you can go in the hypothesis group click on the user name and see what that student has contributed to that text so
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um we just had our first ones today so later tonight i'll go through and just see if there's any feedback i want to give them in terms of depth or quantity or anything like that but
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um i just think exemplars in this case and reminding them what the point is to annotate one last thing i'll say is i also try to be really transparent about how i'm going to use the annotations and i think this is something that justin
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um alluded to earlier i'm a big fan of scanning annotations before class and i tend to pull out particular passages that kids really like honed in on
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or i will grab discussion questions right out of the questions that kids pose on there um and i do that to make sure that we're on the same page about what is what is interesting and um
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holding their attention but i also use it as a type of ownership too so i could say hey justin last night on that reading you asked this question can you tell me like why that came up for you and can you say a little more does anyone have a
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thought about that so i'm also then putting it on the students to bring i i really try to um shape it as a pre-conversation so i
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really try to like own that when i bring it to the room and carry on the conversation from there yeah i for me having done this for five years now like i've i don't like to spend a ton of classroom time like walking through the logistics
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of how to get on and how to like create your account and what your username should be like i will say this is the first year in five years where every student did it correctly like got their account logged into the group so i feel good about my workflows
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there i love the hypothesis um animation on the intro that that exists on the website you know sitting around a campfire in the beginning like i just love that as a quick little introduction
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uh and then i i borrowed this from remy clear i just i have them annotate their syllabus on really the first assignment with hypothesis um and have them think about what that means so i give them some scaffolded instructions like one thing
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you like one thing that's unclear and then one thing that you could change because i'm trying to get them have some ownership and agency in their own learning and the idea that they might be able to change something in a syllabus is oftentimes really like foreign to
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them it's new um and then that leads to a really interesting conversation about what their learning should look like and could be in our class for the year um and we we typically spend a lot of time in the second or
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third class talking about that because they've never really been asked that question before and wouldn't you know it like one thing you liked about the syllabus the word that the word that katie alluded to interesting oh i thought this was interesting and then we talk about what
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that means and really what it means to be additive in annotations so we do we do a lot of time early on really trying to onboard them around what a good annotation could look like um so for tomorrow they're doing
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langston hughes's palm let america be america again and they're using sir um they're using some of the frameworks some of the tags i'm gonna go heavy into tags this year um around like the lenses that we might
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consider often appearing in our class so i'm asking them to pick out some of the experiences that we've alluded to in the first few days together but really just a lot of like practice and and hands-on for lack of a better word but in a way that
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is really meaningful to them can you talk more justin and then i want to hear the same from katie in terms of building on this idea of lessons right in terms of or lenses sorry um uh
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and you know more than just say say something smart and additive how you direct students to be structured in their um in their discussion of and commentary on a text lenses is one way
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using the tags um you can elaborate more on that particular like what kind of lenses you're bringing in but are there other uses of tags or other ways to structure the sort of annotation exercise that you
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deploy i you know so often in history class it's simply been like on this date this thing happened or this white guy spoke and this person died and we weren't really particularly in american studies class
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looking at the history side of things we want to get beyond that and look to like textual cultural lenses and just a different again the phrases big tent history trying to get them to think about the big picture but there are there are certainly themes that
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routinely pop up regardless of the text that you're using whether it's yap or phone or give me liberty like there are trend lines in american history around narratives that are that are critical of the past
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or that are promotional of america's past um i use a number of them that are that are largely informed by just sort of the american a more traditional american studies approach around things like race ethnicity and indigeneity um
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democracy activism in class space and place production and consumption of culture like america in the world so all of these no matter what we're looking at in in
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the past we can oftentimes find multiple layers or lenses that we might consider to be defining that experience that event those instances but it's what i really like is when the students start to come up with their own collectively when they start to find new
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trend lines or they start to connect the dots across time and space i have found that those sort of tags and those lenses help them to see the bigger picture and not simply just go okay we are now 1491-1607 it's pre-contact
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to jamestown and now we're done with that unit well no no like the history it's going to build upon that unit and we need to see those themes those trends those experiences shaping what comes next and what comes after so for me it helps with periodization
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and for getting them to think chronologically but also connected across time and space as we go through the course of the year i would agree i think um in dealing with older students predominantly in what
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i've done with hypothesis so far i think as i tackle it um this is only the second year of top freshman so um i'm reminding myself already of what that's like um i'm gonna have to create some more structures there but
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i think eventually like justin said i think they they settle into their own patterns and known connections i think as we reinforce that but um again transparency is the big one for me
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um i try to be really clear we use canvas as our lms and i always write not only the assignment for the next class but also what we're doing in class the next class so um that give
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gives them some guidance um just and i when we use yacht we'll use like the page notes feature sometimes to add in guiding questions and key terms as well um but my students today we
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we read for our summer reading book um john lewis gaddis's um the landscape of history and we were talking about a particular section today that talked about how um freedom
00:33:12
is comes out of the collision between oppression and liberation um and they knew that going into their reading for last night so um they read nicole hannah jones's article for the 1619
00:33:25
project about black americans and democracy so they knew going into that that they were looking for those themes to be um prominent there because that was going
00:33:37
to fuel our discussion for next class so i think um transparency is kind of my my best suggestion there for vote thanks katie and this is my last question and then i think we'll open it up uh
00:33:48
to the chat and to others to chime in i want to get at something you were pointing at pointing out katie about the difference between what it might look like for freshmen at st george's to be annotating versus seniors
00:34:01
but i want to contextualize that by saying that the vast majority of hypothesis users and partners are in higher ed um so a large part of the audience for liquid margins although we'll be sharing this with our secondary partners obviously
00:34:14
is you know students and teachers in colleges and universities and i imagine seniors at st george's are pretty college ready right so they would maybe be equivalent to a lot of uh
00:34:26
you know college annotation experience um so can you talk about just what annotation means at high school and maybe especially in terms of like introducing it an early level to to freshmen and why it's
00:34:38
important then yeah um i know in the humanities department we've been working on a skills curriculum the past two years and i think um we see our earlier years at st
00:34:52
george is about um learning particular skills around english and history and the basics of how to write and how to read and how to research
00:35:04
and then i think we see in junior year everyone's taking american history and american literature really solidifying and honing those skills and then in our senior year i think the hope is to then
00:35:17
apply them to more specialized courses like like economics or government or something like that and um so for me especially when we hit kind of
00:35:30
that junior and senior year annotation is to be able to um come to this collaborative space and to create your own meaning from a text i think
00:35:42
in younger years you're kind of given a text and the the analysis level is kind of like factual and synthesis like it's more definitions or um how does this compare to this
00:35:54
other thing we read a little bit more straightforward whereas when we're getting into the older years we're asking kids to really create meaning and analysis on their own so as i begin thinking about working with
00:36:07
it with freshmen i think i have that lens of they're going to need more guide like they're guiding questions or are going to need to be um more specific and it might be about the content but it
00:36:19
might also be the structure can you identify like the topic sentence in this paragraph like it might be more basic along those skill lines or how does this compare to what we read last night
00:36:31
whereas i see like justin alluded to with the the juniors the hope is and and they actually are pretty good about doing it is that they're doing that naturally in their annotations they're seeing those connections
00:36:44
um across across topic and chronology and um sometimes even class subject as well i was psyched already on on day one today with um my kids are bringing in stuff from their english american studies class
00:36:58
uh today and they were reading claudia rankin citizen and they were talking about black americans and citizenship and and what that meant so um we're lucky um again to to have some really strong kids that
00:37:10
maybe mimic some of those um college age folks um but i think you need to lay that groundwork and guide that identification so that they then can do that for
00:37:22
themselves later on hey i think i'm going to jump in here because we're running out of time um we have a couple of questions thanks everyone who asked questions and um a lot of them were answered right in the chat
00:37:37
by their people so that's great um but uh john pettis wanted to know about grading and he says how can you reduce me hating
00:37:50
my life when it's time to do grading what have you guys heard as rubrics for grading annotation and do you have any features to make that less painful for teachers um so if you could kind of
00:38:03
speak to that and i guess i'd also add on to that by asking do those rubrics change depending on the class and how they take to annotation and what
00:38:16
kinds of things they do so if there's like this group think in the class do you then adjust your grading criteria i'll start because justin's laughing at
00:38:28
me um and i know he's laughing at me um i do what justin calls um ungrading in my class so i'm i'm essentially like a feedback only um teacher
00:38:40
we do have broader rubrics for the class but we sit down at the end of each marking period and kids essentially self reflect propose a grade and we have a conversation about it so i'm
00:38:52
pretty on really on one end of the spectrum with this um but i will say i talk to a lot of teachers that are interested in de-emphasizing grades but don't go completely um gradeless or to
00:39:07
the extent that i do and i will say and i like i read one of these comments um in the chat already about making it um part of just kind of participates
00:39:19
participation and engagement in general and that's how i actually frame it in my class i don't i don't use the word like participation or participation grade i use the word engagement um and hypothesis
00:39:32
is one aspect of engagement as is verbal communication in class as is participating in group work as is like um taking notes in class so
00:39:44
i i try to look at engagement as more holistic and and their annotations instead of grading them like i said i'll sometimes click on a user name in our hypothesis group and kind of
00:39:57
scan their annotations as more of a collective and we'll give that student individual feedback hey i had wanted to see in the second hey hey student one um i see that your antiquations are
00:40:11
quite brief and seem to just be reiterating on what someone else has written can you um next class try to work on like expanding your comment a little bit or adding another question to the end so i think
00:40:24
some another aspect is kind of to look at the collective um experience of that student and either grade or provide feedback on that and i'll let justin nellie's
00:40:36
no i mean i think uh canadians said it really well for me causation correlation oftentimes the students who are not not doing the most but are most consistently annotating tend to perform really well
00:40:48
across all of the the different types of assignments i might give to them in the class so it's a it's for them it's a formative piece of assessment and to jeremy's point earlier and katie's point earlier about like oh i have to stop and
00:41:01
then i have to annotate like yes precisely that we want you to read closely and annotating your text requires you to read closely and with intention as opposed to just simply scanning text and having eyes on screen and then
00:41:13
saying that you're done when you annotate you have to stop think reflect digest and distill that information in a way that's useful for you so it becomes a bellwether for me to see where that student is particularly early
00:41:26
on if you know if they're only doing one or two annotations a night and they're not very additive i'm gonna that gives me a chance to pull that student in and have a conversation with them about what this should be and how it could look i typically don't want to grade
00:41:39
annotations beyond that participation piece sometimes i'll give a very intentional designed annotation assignment but even still i you know for me like the formative quizzes and stuff it's always very low stakes it's meant to be
00:41:52
about the learning and i always tell them like these annotations are for you and that's that's the collective view that's why we're doing it socially so you can learn from one another i will have students who will not they just they don't like to speak in groups but
00:42:04
when they get into hypothesis they drive conversation they drive discourse and they'll have all of their peers jumping on to comment and engage in ways that just don't happen in the classroom and i love that because then those
00:42:16
students have this really powerful voice and it gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their learning and to really drive discourse in conversation so much so that that will oftentimes serve as a jumping off point for me in the next class so oh that's great i mean i often think
00:42:30
of it as um a vehicle to let every student raise their hand um because when i in the way back days when i taught um composition um there were so many
00:42:44
students who just would like never raise their hand literally those back of the class students and then the students to raise their hand all the time and you wanted to you know say you know the screen i'm glad you're raising your hand a lot but you really want to hear from those others it was almost impossible
00:42:57
to get some of them to raise their hand so i think with collaborative annotation there is that you know maybe it's less intimidating or something um but anyway we
00:43:07
are really out of time and i just want to thank everybody who joined us today and also remind you that next week um next friday the 11th um the topic will
00:43:21
be world languages so global margins annotating world languages and we hope to see you all there um and i would like to give our wonderful guests
00:43:33
a chance to say goodbye and leave us whatever wisdom or happiness they want to leave us with i guess i'll start by um i think
00:43:45
not seeing hypothesis as another like tech tool i think often times with tech um we just want especially right now during covid but it's like add the thing at the thing at the thing um and i think that seeing hypothesis as
00:44:00
a tool that is really low low lift if if you design it that way for the faculty and huge payoff um and it's it's not complicated
00:44:11
uh to use or onboard or anything like that so um i think just seeing the additive um nature of hypothesis to your your students learning um is massive so i don't know if i need
00:44:24
to convince people of that but i think the um intellectual payoff for um how much it takes to use um is just wonderful so
00:44:37
thank you justin yeah i would agree with that i mean i'm somebody who's very tech heavy in their teaching and and like a lot of bells and whistles and flashy and novelty just as a way of engaging students where they are now but for me in 15 years in
00:44:51
the secondary school classroom like this is the one tool that i could point to and go like nope this has made me a better and more effective teacher and it has supported student learning in really like measurable ways and
00:45:03
as a result i'm just a tremendous fan of it so um i'm so happy to have found it five years ago i i just want to say one last thing franny which is to thank justin for his many years of
00:45:15
collaboration and partnership and it's very exciting that saint george's is moving forward with an official pilot of the hypothesis lms integration uh there are a number of uh independent secondary schools that have come on in the past few months as you
00:45:28
know that model of education is moving online and needing tools like this i'm just finally i just want to say i think i would really like us on liquid margins to continue this conversation and include some other institutions and
00:45:41
types of institutions uh you know st george's a one school that we're talking to two wonderful teachers at um and you know look for other secondary school conversations in mighty school uh include public schools and and
00:45:53
different contexts in the future on liquid margins yeah thank you for saying that jeremy we're definitely going to do that um it's been such a great discussion um thank you again everyone and don't
00:46:06
forget to join us next week and we'll see you then have a great weekend you
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