{"id":676,"date":"2014-03-09T17:48:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-09T17:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/?p=676"},"modified":"2014-03-09T18:45:53","modified_gmt":"2014-03-09T18:45:53","slug":"annotating-with-poetry-genius-and-house-divided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/2014\/03\/09\/annotating-with-poetry-genius-and-house-divided\/","title":{"rendered":"Annotating with Poetry Genius and House Divided"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"David<\/a>

David Foster Wallace\u2019s annotated copy of Don Delillo\u2019s Players, from the Harry Ransom Research Center in Austin, TX. http:\/\/bit.ly\/1ef5ziL<\/p><\/div>\n

From scribbled marginalia \u00a0to full-scale scholarly treatises that gobble the works on which they comment, text annotation is one of the most basic and diverse activities of the humanities. Its purposes embrace the intensely personal, the didactic, and the evangelical. It serves all kinds of communities, from the classroom to the law court, from the synagogue to the university research library.<\/p>\n

The movement of text annotation to an online environment is still very much a work in progress. There are\u00a0many platforms<\/a>\u00a0attempting to marry original text and a stream of added comments, some attractive and functional, some awkward. Crowd-sourced annotation is being tried in many corners, and sometimes it catches on (check out the remarkable\u00a0wiki commentaries<\/a>\u00a0on the novels of Thomas Pynchon),\u00a0sometimes they build it and nobody comes.<\/p>\n

Rap Genius<\/a>\u00a0and its sister sites\u00a0Poetry Genius<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Education Genius<\/a>\u00a0are the most exciting recent entrants into this field. What distinguishes these sites is first the astonishing ease and flexibility of the interface. The mere selecting of a chunk of text allows one to add not just a typed comment but audio, video, links to parallel passages, embedded tweets, virtually anything digital. The other good thing about the Genius sites is the way they tap into existing communities of fans, readers, teachers, and students. Education Genius is well-funded by venture capital and has a staff that talks directly to teachers, works to make the site useful to students, and builds bridges with other sites and institutions.<\/p>\n

A case in point is the emerging collaboration of Education Genius with Dickinson’s\u00a0House Divided Project<\/a>.\u00a0An\u00a0annotated version<\/a>\u00a0of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s 1859 autobiographical sketch is now available at Poetry Genius, and represents the beginning of partnership between the House Divided Project and the Genius platform spearheaded by Dickinson College student Will Nelligan (\u201914). There is a\u00a0general annotated guide<\/a>\u00a0to the sketch, which was originally written for a Pennsylvania newspaper when Lincoln was a presidential candidate,\u00a0and also a version especially designed as an\u00a0open Common Core platform<\/a>.\u00a0This is in keeping with the \u00a0strong educational outreach of House Divided and its director, Associate Professor of History and Pohanka Chair in American Civil War History\u00a0Matthew Pinsker.<\/p>\n

There is an audio recording of the sketch in the voice of Lincoln as recreated by Todd Wronski, part of a larger multimedia edition of Lincoln’s writings being undertaken by House Divided. In the Genius platform clicking on different colored text brings up an annotation. Here is one with an embedded video player. Note that annotations are fully “social,” in that one can give them a thumbs up or down, share in various ways, and leave a comment on the comment.<\/p>\n

\"Clicking<\/a>

Clicking on different colored text brings up the annotation, in this case one with an embedded video player.<\/p><\/div>\n

Some annotations simply add contextual information. Others, like the one above, hint at an interpretation, as a teacher might, in an attempt to get the reader thinking beyond the surface of the text. Others amount to polite essay prompts:<\/p>\n

\"Lincoln<\/a>

One can easily create an account and start annotating.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Lincoln<\/a>

House Divided’s annotations often take the form of questions.<\/p><\/div>\n

The idea of annotating with questions, in addition to statements, is a fine one, helpful to teachers and students alike. Note also the ability to brand annotations with the House Divided logo, which marks them as more authoritative and “verified.” The folks at Poetry Genius understand the power of reputation, and unobtrusively include it in the platform in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n

The ease of annotation\u2014one can sign up for an account in a moment and fire away\u2014makes this platform well-suited to “class-sourcing,” the adding of content by students under academic supervision, and in fact that is how these particular annotations were created. High quality content created collaboratively for a well-defined audience in an attractive, open, and flexible format: digital humanities doesn’t get much better than that.<\/p>\n

I am delighted to say that Jeremy Dean of Education Genius will be visiting Dickinson on April 17, 2014 to speak with a group of faculty and students about text annotation and to further develop this collaboration between the Genius sites and Dickinson College. If you would like further information about this event please contact me (francese@dickinson.edu).<\/p>\n

–Chris Francese<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From scribbled marginalia \u00a0to full-scale scholarly treatises that gobble the works on which they comment, text annotation is one of the most basic and diverse activities of the humanities. Its purposes embrace the intensely personal, the didactic, and the evangelical. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61804,2045,61737],"tags":[77806,77805,85710],"class_list":["post-676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collaborations","category-events","category-pedagogy","tag-annotation","tag-house-divided","tag-poetry-genius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}