Web Annotation as Conversation and Interruption

The Marginal Syllabus: Educator Learning and Web Annotation Across Sociopolitical Texts and Contexts

“…With historic and paper-based annotation practices reimagined and extended "as a new layer of interactivity and linking on top of the Web" (Web Annotation Working Group, 2017, par. 1; see also Kalir & Dean, 2018;Schacht, 2015), we contend that intertextuality is a germane conceptual perspective for the study of educator collaboration, learning, and political agency when such activity is situated among multiple sociopolitical texts-as-contexts.…”

“…As described by Kalir and Dean (2018), both the defining characteristics and associated learning practices of OWA bolster dialogic collaboration within and across texts-as-contexts. OWA is defined, first and foremost, by an interoperable data model that allows annotations to be shared among projects and across technologies (Web Annotation Working Group, 2017).…”

“…The presence of multiple author and reader perspectives held together in tension by annotation appears, for example, in Hollett and Kalir's (2017) study of playgrids, or emergent configurations of collaborative media practices and technologies that curate pathways for interest-driven learning. Annotation, in their case, subverted the limitations of online commentary and also coordinated improvisational dialogues atop texts-as-contexts (see also Kalir & Dean, 2018). For Schacht (2015), annotation functions as a form of "writing-as-conversation," and "typically begins by gesturing toward an actual or hypothetical position taken by another" (par.…”

“…Annotation, from this stance, is conceived as an additive social and technical practice by which everyday citizens can contribute their voice to various texts and contexts. As discussed by Kalir and Dean (2018): "The idea is there are all these official voices on the web and everyday people need a way to join that conversation… we're not just accessing knowledge on the internet, but creating it ourselves. But it's not at all the way the web has evolved in terms of the everyday ability to effectively question authority, both technically and politically" (p. 25).…”

“…In this respect, our chapter is an attempt to work "toward understanding and acting on educational technology in terms of its complicated and often unjust connections to the larger society… to develop a more politically aware and sociologically grounded narrative of change" (Selwyn & Facer, 2013, p. 4). We develop one such narrative of change by examining OWA as both a context for and a mediator of educator agency that is grounded in social and political contexts of education, expansive designs for professional learning, and new expressions of media practice (Kalir & Dean, 2018).…”