Following previous efforts to crowdsource teaching materials related to current events–like the Twitter-driven #FergusonSyllabus and its spin-offs–the hypothes.is Syllabi Project leverages web annotation to collect primary source documents by theme and organize communal conversation of those documents.

Teachers and students can help curate and discover content through the project. And they can join others in discussion of these texts and their underlying issues.

There are two parts to the project:

1. 1. 1. Tag online documents: Using hypothes.is’s tagging feature, students and teachers create page notes on relevant articles, speech transcripts, legislation, and other documents (1 above) and use the tag box to enter “Syllabi” and thematic keywords (2 above): “Ferguson,” “BlackLivesMatter,” “Orlando” and so on. This activity will generate lists of texts for discussion of these events and issues that will be publicly available to all interested teachers and students.
      2. Annotate the documents: Teachers and students can then use hypothes.is to annotate these documents with their thoughts and opinions. These conversations can take place in private classroom groups or as a public discussion between classrooms around the country and world.

Below are links to some of the topical streams of documents and annotations. Use the hypothes.is tag feature to create a new topic and stream. Email us at education@hypothes.is so we can add new topics to this list.

1. 1. • Ferguson
      • Orlando
      • Brexit