Hypothesis for Collaborative Web Annotation: For Everyone

This video from Hypothesis shows the very basic basics of annotating with Hypothesis in Canvas:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlkUBM9MJZ4

A note to faculty:  For some reason this demo shows Hypothesis opening in a small frame.   It is  simple, and highly advisable, to make Hypothesis open in a new tab so that you and your students will have the entire screen to work with (the For Faculty page on this guide shows you how).

The Basics (step by step):

1. When you click on the button to open a document for annotation in a new window, a new window will open with two panels
   1. one panel contains the text (pdf or web page) to be annotated
   2. the other panel is the Hypothesis annotation panel -- this is where you will type your annotations, and see all annotations (yours and those of others).
   3. If the annotation panel overlays and blocks your view of a part of the document, there are two fixes:
      1. Reduce the text size (control -  on a PC;  Apple Key - on Mac) until the overlap goes away
      2. Toggle the annotation panel open and close using the arrow in the top left corner.
   4. Select some text from the document.
   5. From the popup that appears, choose "Annotate"
   6. In the annotation panel, type your comments.
   7. Use the "Post" button to post to the whole program (this is the default)
   8. Or use the dropdown to post to only yourself.
   9. Your annotation will not be visible to others until you Post it.
   10. To reply to any annotation, use the Reply button    found below the annotation itself. 
   11. To edit one of your existing annotations or replies, click on the Edit icon.
   12. Use the formatting menu to format your text as needed (bold, italic, link, LATEX, outline, and more)
       1. You can also add images.
       2. To add a video from the web, just copy the video url into your annotation.
          1. There are ways to have only a portion of the entire video actually play.
   13. You can add tags to your annotations.
       1. You must be in edit mode
       2. Add your tag in the designated text box
       3. Hit Enter!! (your tag will not stick unless you do this)
   14. After many annotations have been made by you and your classmates, here are some ways to navigate:
       1. You can view only the annotations by one person by using the search feature with the user prefix:  user:ray
       2. You can view only the annotations that have a specific tag:  tag:fact check
       3. You can sort by most recent annotations first.
       4. Clicking on highlighted text in the main text window will show only annotations connected to that text.
       5. Clicking on an annotation entry in the annotation window will take you to where the annotated text appears in the main text window.

Tech Details: 

Additional Tech Details:

If a red arrow appears in your Hypothesis frame, that indicates that someone else has just posted an annotation. 

Click on the red arrow to refresh the panel and see all annotations including the most recent.

You can sort annotations by clicking on the up-and-down arrow combination icon. 

The default sort causes the annotations to appear in the same order as the text that they are annotating appears.  You can change that to see the most recent annotations first, which will be useful if you drop in to see what's new more than once.

 If you click on highlighted text in the main text window, the Hypothesis frame will open and show you only the annotations associated with that specific text.  To see all annotations again, click on the “Show All Annotations” button. 

If you click on a text excerpt in the Hypothesis frame, the main window will scroll to that point in the text, showing the text excerpt highlighted in its original context.

The main point of annotation is to directly connect your comments to specific bits of text.  But, if you do want to write or read a comment that is directed towards the entire text, use the page note icon:  

If you want to read the main text without seeing the highlights you and others have made, click the eye icon:  

Don’t open the document in Hypothesis twice.  If you do, close one to avoid temporary digital upset. 

If anything goes wrong, just close your Hypothesis window, reload the Canvas page for the module or assignment, and click on the Hypothesis button again.