Join the Marginal Syllabus for Social Reading in a Time of Social Distance

You’re Invited

Over the past four years, the Marginal Syllabus has learned a lot about how to bring people together—often at a distance, and often over extended periods of time—to read together, think together, and share in the exchange of ideas that matter to literacy, learning, and educational equity. Not familiar with our project? Since 2016, the Marginal Syllabus has sparked and sustained public conversation about educational equity through collaborative technologies and partnerships. We’ve facilitated public discussion that has engaged hundreds of educators, we’ve partnered with dozens of authors, and we’ve relied upon the strengths of organizational partners to make consequential conversations accessible and meaningful. Now, more so than ever, it is critical that we draw upon lessons our team has learned to advance social reading in a time of social distance.

Amidst the ever-changing uncertainty of the Coronavirus pandemic, our team is committed to fostering opportunities for social connection despite the need for social (and physical) distance. While the daily news is undoubtedly overwhelming, there persists a need to engage in activities unrelated to this crisis for the sake of our intellectual and emotional well-being. Furthermore, as many educators—in both K-12 and higher education settings—move their teaching and learning activities into so-called “remote” and online formats, we believe it is useful to model some of the lower-tech, highly-collaborative, and rich learning opportunities that have defined the Marginal Syllabus over the past few years.

We invite you to join us for a series of four synchronous social reading activities that extend Marginal Syllabus conversations from both the 2018-19 and 2019-2020 Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN syllabi. LEARN is an ongoing collaboration among the National Writing Project, the National Council of Teachers of English, and Hypothesis.

Join us for four synchronous social reading opportunities, something our team has previously referred to as annotation “flash mobs.” We will be using the collaborative annotation technology Hypothesis. And you can join us via Zoom, too, to talk live as we read and annotate together.

Schedule and Details

 
Looking for more social annotation resources related to literacy, learning, and educational equity? A reminder that dozens of openly-accessible articles from five syllabi are available for you and your colleagues to read, annotate (whether publicly or privately in groups), and use in your courses and professional learning activities. Access all Marginal Syllabus conversations here.

And the 2019-2020 Marginal Syllabus will continue during the spring of 2020 with readings and annotation conversations scheduled throughout April, May, and June.

Hypothesis for Social Reading and Annotation

Social reading occurs via public and collaborative annotation. Annotations may be added to all Marginal Syllabus conversations using the web annotation tool Hypothesis.

• Don’t have a Hypothesis account? Create a free account here (all you need is an email address and a minute)
• Also, check out these great Hypothesis education resources.

Photo/ Daria Nepriakhina