Getting Started with Annotation

Here is our quick introduction to the Hypothes.is annotation tool and a few practice activities to get you annotating with us.

The Hypothesis Project is a new effort to implement an old idea: A conversation layer over the entire web that works everywhere, without needing implementation by any underlying site.

If you were on the web in the NCSA Mosaic era, you may remember annotation briefly being integrated in the first graphic web browser. It was a bit… clumsy.

The modern web has come a long way, and the Hypothes.is project is aligned with the W3C web standards. It will be around for a while. You will learn first hand below, but if curious, see their own explanation of How Hypothes.is Works.

If you have experience using Hypothes.is then you are very likely ready to start annotating (and you can). But it would be collectively helpful if you joined our Week[0] orientation activities and helped others along.

We will start by annotating the About page of this project site where the Hypothes.is tool is automatically enabled. You can log in or create an account without even leaving this site. Use this page to introduce yourself and maybe add some notes about your familiarity with Doug Engelbart and the Augmenting Human Intellect paper.

Start Annotating Right Here - The Hypothes.is annotation tool is independent of the web page it is used on. As you will see in our series of practice exercises, there are a few ways to invoke the tools. We will start with the easiest, as we have set it up to be automatically available on… more...

The second activity sends you to an external post by Bret Victor, a tribute to Doug Engelbart and his dream, showing you how  to annotate any page you find on the web.

 

Annotate Anywhere - In our first round of annotation practice, we used a page on this site where the Hypothes.is tool was already preloaded for you. Now we expand our reach by showing you how to annotate anywhere. You just need to add a little helper to your web browser. Visit the Hypothes.is… more...

Next, we will suggest our call for “Voracious Tagging” so we can create some collective pools of notes.

Roads of Annotation - As you are reading Augmenting Human Intellect pay attention to phrases, sentences that catch your attention. Sometimes we call them "nuggets." Respond to the nugget in your annotation. We don't want to prescribe how or what to annotate on this project--so what follows are just a few suggestions to get… more...

Then it is onto the main event.

Are you ready to annotate with us?