Writing Our Civic Futures: Marginal Syllabus 2017-18

Writing Our Civic Futures, a collaborative project of the National Writing Project and Marginal Syllabus for the 2017-2018 academic year, invited educators to a year of social reading, collaborative web annotation, and public conversation exploring our civic imaginations and literacy landscapes. As civic engagement changes and evolves, Writing Our Civic Futures considers the implications for connected learning and teaching.

Writing Our Civic Futures: Marginal Syllabus 2017-18

In this collaboration, we partnered with—and draw texts from—a range of educators, youth, scholars, media makers and journalists to think about the landscape of civic engagement and education while imagining ways that we can engage ourselves and our students as writers and makers of our civic futures. This project leverages the web annotation platform Hypothes.is, adding multiple voices to critical conversations about equity and education.

Even though this syllabus is past, we invite you to use it and its related texts and annotations as resources. All texts remain annotatable and the syllabus will take you to them along with related author conversations.

How it worked:

• Writing Our Civic Futures kicked off the first week of October 2017 and ran through May 2018. See the Writing Our Civic Futures Syllabus for details!
• The first week of each month a new reading was posted on the syllabus as a live annotatable link for sharing and social annotation.
• Related events happening that month were also announced. CLTV broadcasts will be aired at educatorinnovator.org.
• We encourage you to use these readings and the opportunity to annotate however it best works for you—organize a study group, bring a class you are teaching, engage as an individual, connect it to a meeting.

Want to learn more?

• Check out this recent episode of NWP Radio with the founders of Marginal Syllabus and representatives from NWP discussing the power of annotation.
• Educator Innovator also teamed up with Marginal Syllabus for the 2016-17 syllabus. Read this introductory blog post to learn more about the partnership and the logistics of participating.
• The full 2016-2017 syllabus can be found at the Marginal Syllabus website.
• Still wondering how to join in an annotation conversation? Check out this tutorial from Marginal Syllabus.
• Need some help getting started with hypothesis? See this overview from KQED Teach.
• Follow @innovates_ed and #marginalsyllabus (on Twitter) to keep abreast of future Marginal Syllabus opportunities.