Students have been annotating a semi-private "class page." Now it's time for them to choose one of their best annotations and add it as an annotation or a suggestion on the public version of the text under study.

JUSTIFICATION:

There are at least two major reasons why it is pedagogically valuable for students to share their work with a larger public in this way:

1) Of course, taking a previous piece of writing and revising it is an incredibly valuable exercise in and of itself, supported by the Common Core Standards and almost any writing curriculum.


2) Writing for the "wall of history" changes the game for student writers and thinkers; no longer is it just about a teacher's responses or a grade, it's about the broader, never-ending project of human knowledge!

ASSIGNMENT: 1. During the course of the annotation project, students may have received "feedback" from their teacher and "suggestions" from their classmates. These comments may have been integrated during earlier stages in the assignment or require attention now. Direct students to begin the assignment by reviewing this valuable peer and teacher feedback.

2. Students should also read over their annotations themselves and reflect on how they might be improved for a public, online audience. Ask them to consider the following:


• Is this written for a general audience (i.e., not specifically for your teacher and classmates)?


• Is the annotation visually interesting (have I used images, video, and links to their full effect)?

3. Students can simply open unaccepted annotations and copy and paste their contents (command + c) into a new annotation on the public edition of a text. BUT emphasize that revision needs to take place between the private annotation and the public one. (If an annotation has already been accepted, reconstituting the annotation with images and links will take a little more effort.)

4. To get feedback from their immediate community, students can share their annotation via social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Google +).