Online Assignment #3: Annotation Studio

Annotation Studio (http://app.annotationstudio.org) is a free web tool for having online conversations about literary texts. It lets students make analytical comments in the margins of a document and respond to each other’s comments. I have uploaded all four of the texts for this assignment and saved them to our class account, and each of you will make two comments on each poem. One comment for each document should respond to a comment that a classmate has made. To access the documents, you first need to make an account.

How to create an account:

  1. Go to http://app.annotationstudio.org/users/sign_up and fill out the empty fields. Please use your actual name so I can give you credit for the assignment.
  2. NOTE: For “Affiliation,” put “SUNY New Paltz,” and for “Class,” delete “public” and enter “Virtually London.” Then hit enter.
  3. Click the checkbox and then the “Register” button.

You should be taken to your “Dashboard,” which should show you 4 different documents. If you don’t see those four documents, follow these instructions:

  1. Click on this icon in the upper right hand side of the screen: Screen Shot 2015-08-19 at 2.35.50 PM
  2. Click on “My Profile.”
  3. Under the “Classes” field, type “Virtually London” and then hit enter
  4. Retype your password.
  5. Click Update.

To make sure this works, click on the word “Dashboard” on the upper-left hand part of the screen and check to see if you can see all four poem titles.

How to Add Comments:

  1. Click on the title of one of the documents.
  2. Click and drag to highlight text you want to comment on.
  3. A little icon of a pencil should appear. Click the pencil.
  4. Type your comment in the pop-up box.
  5. Click the checkbox labeled “Allow my groups to view this annotation.”
  6. To add a website link in your comment, click the icon of a chain link and paste the URL into the field labeled “URL.”
  7. To add a picture into your comment, click the icon of a picture with mountains, Under “Source,” paste the URL of the picture.
  8. NOTE: To get the URL of a picture, follow these directions: http://support2.constantcontact.com/articles/FAQ/1801
  9. When you’ve finished adding your comment, click the “Save” button.

How to See Classmates’ Comments:

1. Click on a document.
2. Click on this icon: 
3. In the new black window on the left-hand side, click “Classes” under the heading “Who made them”?
4. You can then control how many comments appear at once. To see more comments as you scroll through the poem, select “Visible portion” under the heading “Where they occur.” To see all of them at once, select “Whole document.”

Comments should:

  1. Be at least two sentences long.
  2. Be specific (Don’t just write “I like this,” or “I agree,” or “I disagree”).
  3. Focus in detail on some aspect of the poem: imagery of London, repetition, rhyme, meter, punctuation, personification, purpose of a rhetorical question.
  4. One comment for each document should respond to a classmate’s comment.

Due Date:

All comments are due by noon on August 31st.