With interactive flat panels opening up so many possibilities to show students a range of text types and exciting forms of media, it’s easy to overlook a tried-and-true teaching tool: annotations. No longer relegated to the margins of textbooks, it’s time to bring those highlighters and post-it notes into the 21st century, and we’re here to help.
Annotations can offer deeper engagement with and comprehension. Handily available from the ActivPanel Unified Menu, the preloaded Annotate app makes it so easy to edit texts as you go. There are so many effective, creative ways to get your students thinking in different ways about your lesson content.
Our recent webinar provided heaps of valuable tips for annotating texts with the ActivPanel. In case you missed it, we’ve gathered up some easy ways you can engage your students.
Colour-code for visual learners
If you’re teaching from a displayed text, image or video on the ActivPanel, use the Annotate app to highlight or add notes in different colours to represent different functions or themes. Five different colours and highlighters allow you to customise, divide, or draw attention to your content however you need. This can help visual learners organise ideas in their minds, and annotations can be removed or edited however as needed.
Comments on
An important and often overlooked modern-day gathering house for discourse, the comment section can be a cross-section of society. Deconstruction of content is what annotations are all about, and social media comments can be a rich source for many different types of viewpoints.
As a fun activity for older students, why not find a tweet or Facebook article referring to a piece of taught content and have students dissect the positioning behind each one? They can then write their own comment on a personal device and send it through to the ActivPanel to be viewed by the class.
Collaborate to broaden horizons
To get students thinking of different ways to annotate, why not try an activity where students mark-up a text on their personal devices? Then screenshare on the ActivPanel to compare notes. Split screen to show more than one viewpoint and broaden everyone’s perspectives.
Lights, camera, annotation!
To get students thinking of different ways to annotate, why not try an activity where students mark-up a text on their personal devices? Then screenshare on the ActivPanel to compare notes. Split screen to show more than one viewpoint and broaden everyone’s perspectives.
Lights, camera, annotation!
No longer do you need to wait for the movie to be over before you can deconstruct a film text. With the ActivPanel you can mark it up then and there. Create a stationary annotation over moving images in a film, or pause and write or draw over the action. This is great for media and English teachers but can be utilised in a number of other subjects if you have video to demonstrate your lesson content.
Check out our webinar video for more practical ways you can use this tool to deconstruct and demystify your texts with visually striking annotations.
