Peer Review

Hypothes.is: Open Annotation Platform

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Reviewed:: Nov 19, 2018 by Teacher Education

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

Hypothes.is provides educators, students, journalists, publishers, and researchers with a free and open source software annotation development tool that enables sentence level note taking or critique on top of the open web to include news, blogs, scientific articles, books, terms of service, ballot initiatives, legislation, and more. Annotations are not only word based; you can add hyperlinks and images as well.

Type of Material:

Development Tool

Recommended Uses:

Excellent tool for classroom reading/discussing activities, homework, group (student or professional) research projects, individual (student or professional) research. Educators can assign annotations of articles, websites, and more. When working with a class, it is helpful to use the group annotation to allow for clarity.

Technical Requirements:

There is a Chrome extension; other browsers can utilize Hypothes.is by adding a bookmarklet available on the site.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

This tool enables users to take notes on, highlight passages and annotate web resources and share these notations with others. Users can

hold discussions
read socially
organize research
take personal notes
employ close reading techiques
collaborate on projects

Target Student Population:

High School, College General Ed, College Lower Division, College Upper Division, Graduate School, Professional

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Basic computer skills; Internet access; user must add the extension to Chrome or use the bookmarklet provided to add the extension to their other browser.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: It is powerful and effective. It employs current thinking about social learning and collaborative research. It provides high quality instructional media on how and why to use the tool. The site provides models available for a variety of focus areas: research, education, journalism, and publishing.
Concerns:: None.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:: Can be utilized to introduce collaboration via commentary about topics as well as by groups conducting a social media style collaboration. It can be used by a wide range of audiences, and in multiple contexts: personal research, collaborative reading and writing, classroom activities. Based on the open structure of the tool, it can be utilized in conjunction with a lot of other types of apps. It can be used to provide feedback to students, particularly for content published on the open web (blogs, student websites, academic postings); it can be used to guide a revision process.
Concerns:: None.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

Instructions are clear; it is easy to navigate. Offers guides for teacher and student use. It is simple to switch between public and group annotations. New users must create and confirm an account, install the extension into their browser, create a group, and begin to annotate. Hypothes.is codes and collaborates on GitHub.

Users can view and/or export all of their annotations in HTML, CSV, and plain text. Users can also search their annotations within Hypothes.is.

Concerns:

Users of the Chrome browser have the easiest time setting up Hypothes.is.

Other Issues and Comments:: One reviewer remarked, "This is a great tool. I intend to use it, professionally, and with my undergraduate students."
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