#AnnoConvo

After I finished revising my notes, I asked ChatGPT to revise my blog. Here are the results, unedited, as my TL;DR

This blog post is a reflection on "Annotation" by Remi Kalir and Antero Garcia. The writer shares their annotation practices, which include underlining and marking pages with important passages, and reflects on the purpose of annotations. The post discusses how annotation can be used in different fields, such as science and art, and how it can be a collaborative process. The writer reflects on the role of annotation in the age of AI and machine learning, and how it can be used to teach algorithms to recognize non-human objects. The post also delves into the history of annotation, including the use of red ink in medieval manuscripts as rubrics, and discusses the potential of annotation as a tool for diversity, equity, and inclusion. The writer finds the book to be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the practice of annotation. The post highlights specific examples from the book, including how hashtags and animated gifs can function as annotations, and knowledge communities that use annotation, such as Rap Genius and Hypothesis. The writer also reflects on how annotation can be used to teach students how to do solid research and document their sources. Overall, the post provides a comprehensive overview of the many uses and benefits of annotation, and encourages readers to explore this valuable resource further.

Now: How do I actually summarize / discuss Annotation by Remi Kalir and Antero Garcia? In many ways, this blog post doesn’t but instead has me going back through the annotations I made as I read the book more as a reading journal versus a summary.

As I read, I found myself underlining and “starring” passages but also writing down the page numbers on my bookmark as I went. This has been part of my reading practice for quite a while, especially when I’ve had books I didn’t specifically want to write in. The notes on my bookmark (often a piece of notebook paper), might have text next to them or I might circle or underline the page number itself to emphasize that that page had something particularly important I wanted to revisit.

But, I don’t always revisit these items, and I’m not generally sharing my book with anyone so who is the annotation for?

But, let’s get back to the book itself.

Annotation presented intriguing examples of how annotation is utilized within a variety of fields, including the sciences such as how annotations could be used to categorize scientific content (think genome sequencing). Additionally, annotations have been (and are still) being used to teach AI algorithms.

Continuing in the vein of AI and machine learning, here are some additional annotations I made while reading:

• A more artistic example described graffiti as annotation which got me thinking about OpenAI again and DALL-E

• A personal connection to the work I did (back in the day) on Amazon Mechanical Turk which was likely used to help train AI through machine learning and meta data (think of all those times you’ve had to note how many bridges you see to get through a CAPTCHA - some of the Mechanical Turk workers helped to train that AI for pennies)

That last one becomes particularly meta as I think about how we humans were teaching algorithms how to recognize non-human behaviors.

As me, the human, reads back over the notes I copied here (and shared with ChatGPT), I can see how it would be daunted. I’m not quite sure how to bring it all together for you because I don’t think going through my notes chronologically actually works. Annotation covers a lot of territory but it often circles back because the uses for annotation are vast.

Maybe I’ll make a list of some examples?

• Page 17 talks about how animated gifs are arguably annotations as well as being multi-modal

• Page 68 gets into a discussion about hashtags and what role they play because they annotate in multiple ways from

  • categorizing items (#annotate)

  • to also being commentary themselves (#annotationshelplearning)

  • to being an emerging narrative from (as I briefly mention in an earlier blog I wrote while taking a Master’s level communication course)

Me as a student, circles back to me as an educator and instructional designer. One of the more fascinating tidbits was on page 43 with a fact about the history of the word rubric. Did you know that red ink annotations in medieval manuscripts was were used to create an index? Is that part of where rubric came into use for assessment? How could I find out more about that? Perhaps by looking into the index of this book to see if they have sources they recommend. Which makes me think of when I’d try to explain to students how to use things like appendixes etc. as they did their research.

Speaking of things I used to work on with students: knowledge communities come up around pages 55-56 as the authors talked about the different ways that varying groups might use annotation. Some specific examples they give that are more open world so to speak are Rap Genius and Hypothesis. Hypothesis is a tool I had heard of prior to this, but I had not explored it extensively. Genius was completely new to me. I’ve only looked at Genius briefly, but they really have a lot of tips on how to do solid research, including documenting your sources (although MLA / APA etc. is not called for).

When I think of students, and some of these other “communities”, the quote on page 115 about annotation being a potential tool for DEI stood out to me: “Annotation expresses power, but it does not wield it in and of itself”; however, that also circles back again as page 127 brings us back around to how technology wields power. (Remember how we mentioned and tried to play with AI?)

I consider DEI quite a bit while working as an instructional designer, but I found myself finding too much I could discuss from those areas so I will try to highlight some of my favorite takeaways as to how annotation plays into the learning process:

• Page 138 mentions also annotating with symbols which got me thinking about short hand and other ways that you can think of symbols as their own language. Is annotation, therefore, a language in of itself?

• Page 66 drew me to Joseph Reagle, Jr.’s (a communications studies professor) definition of comments in regards to digital writing:

  • a genre of communication that is reactive, short, and asynchronous

  • which got me thinking about a project I am working on regarding discussion boards and whether replies to a post in an online classroom function the same way that comments do in other venues?

• Around page 140 that discuss how annotation is beneficial for a learners metacognition and motivation which speaks directly to another project I am working on

• Page 148 has this quote, “Across disciplines, educators’ use of annotated primary sources and educational resources can scaffold student engagement with expert ways of thinking, aid comprehension of content knowledge, and make explicit the craft of rhetoric and method. “

• Page 151 gets into an interesting discussion about how to anchoring written conversations via models and instructor guidance, especially as even more k-12 education use LMS formats

So where do I put myself as an educator but also as a writer as I noted around pages 106-108 where the authors discuss annotation for educators as a way to work on their own professional development?

Which can also bounce over to work that the authors did as they prepped for the book with more a more open peer review process than you sometimes see in academia. They took on topics related to peer review on page 80 and 104 (to name a few) but also tangentially make connections to how writing reviews (page 134) is a form of annotation as well as counter narrative (and educator me, says this could make a fascinating assignment topic).

And let’s not forget how within all of these, there is also writer me.

Writer me was drawn to Page 120 and its discussion of redaction as a form of annotation, especially because it talked about erasure poetry as an example which I talk about a bit in my “Pick Your Pen” writing guide project under Prose or Poem? Or Both?

So my annotations on Annotation ended up being extensive and, perhaps, the following quote times all of them, and my varied interests, together just a bit, “ . . . literacy is as much about reading and writing words on a page as it is about reading and writing the world around a community” (pg 156).