Since I was one of the first to annotate the article, I found the highlights and annotations to be sleek and welcoming additions to the piece; however, I can easily imagine that by the time our entire class has gone through the article, that it would less pleasant, and potentially overwhelming to sparse all the overlapping annotations and long threads of replies. Once many annotations are already in place, it my also disincentivize further contributions from the folks who join later on, as they don’t want to further clutter up the page.

Where I can see this tool being extremely useful is in smaller groups.  If 4-5 colleagues need to analyze a few articles or resources, Hypothesis could be invaluable in sharing thoughts and ideas asynchronously. It could even be good for dividing the readings and having each person annotate and summarize their respective sections and the others could read their summaries while skimming the article at large.

Hypothesis could also fill a niche, as I am sure it will in our course, of teachers providing assessment to online submissions such as blog posts or website creation. I can imagine a computers teacher loving this program as it would provide them with a quick and convenient method of delivering feedback, and provide the recipient with clear highlighting and direction as opposed to general feedback at the bottom of the page. This also entails that a class that explicitly does not use online resources will find no use for this program.

Something the article being annotated above puts forward is that technology does not implicitly help our pedagogy and learning outcomes. For Hypotheses I would agree. As mentioned above, factors such as class size and course content narrow the scope of Hypothesis tremendously; however, under the correct circumstances (and with enough enthusiasm from all group members) Hypotheses promises to be a very rewarding tool. I am excited to use it within our class, and maybe in some of our programs group assignments, to be able to fully evaluate the software and decide whether or not I will incorporate it into my own pedagogy and classroom in the future.