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- Personal annotation including highlights, freehand drawing, typed comments and sometimes even recorded spoken word comments (in common with non-networked e-annotation such as iAnnotate and Adobe Reader).
- Ability to share selected annotations.
- Ability to respond to others' comments in a discussion thread.
- Either asynchronous (i.e. the group doesn't have to be online at once) or synchronous (real-time interaction with others).
- A personal presence so that fellow readers can follow your thinking through your annotations.
- Notifications so that readers can maintain awareness of fellow readers' activity.
- Ability to create groups and make these private if needed.
- Cloud-based or centrally hosted.
- Availability on mobile, laptop and desktop devices.
What strategies
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make a successful social reading activity?
Where can I find technologies for social reading?
Your choice of technology may depend on whether the text you want to read together is 'naturally occurring' (already exists publicly on the web) or whether you want to import a text (either open access or with permission from the copyright holders).
If you are collectively happy to annotate an existing online text as-is, then Wikipedia has a helpful comparison of web annotation tools. If you're working on an externally hosted environment, you will need to ask your students to set up accounts with that environment. Do engage them in a conversation about the site's terms and conditions and ensure that they know they can decline to set up an account without placing themselves at a deficit.
If you have a copy-right free text to import (such as something downloaded from Gutenberg, for example) you may want to upload it into one of the following environments.
- The Institute for the Future of the Book have
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- a Wordpress plugin called CommentPress
Involve E-Learning Environments
Contact your department's E-Learning Facilitator (BEAMS - Jessica Gramp, SLASH - Mira Vogel, SLMS - Natasa Perovic) who will be delighted to support your experiments.