Information Technology Reference
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and useful feedback to their peers while others provided minimal and/or super-
ficial feedback; (3) the lesson design models were valued ways to conceptualize
development of a lesson or unit; (4) collaborating on lesson/unit plan development
was highly motivating and enhanced their feelings of self-efficacy; (5) using the
HyLighter environment facilitated asynchronous collaboration; and (6) annotating
lesson plans in HyLighter helped preservice and in-service teachers learn and learn
to teach more metacognitively.
Limitations
The Digital Divide affected some of my students' abilities to engage in social
annotation for various reasons: because they did not have computers at home, had
no Internet access, had computers with dial-up connections, or had out-of-date
browsers.
Other limitations were resistance to using any instructional technology, objec-
tion to being required to use a new technology or impatience with the learning
process. A final disadvantage was working with this software during Beta testing,
while there were still bugs in the system. A few students expressed resentment for
being “guinea pigs” while the software was under development. However, in most
cases these feelings were relatively minor compared to students' experience of the
profound educational benefits of HyLighter's social annotation, both as learners and
as teachers.
Conclusions
HyLighter used technology to create, support, and mediate relationships among
learners and between the professor and the students while making learning deeper,
broader and more meaningful. It enhanced complex cognition and metacognition,
such as critical thinking, self-regulation, and self-directed learning, which con-
tributed to learners transferring what they learned from one situation to another. Also
it made learning more enjoyable, satisfying, and memorable, thereby enhancing
motivation and feelings of self-efficacy. The social network feature has the potential
to maintain relationships so students can continue to learn from and with each other
in the future, as both students and as teachers.
In my classes, social annotation opened windows into learners' own and each
other's thinking. It made learning meaningful while working both independently and
in groups as they activated and applied prior knowledge from their own backgrounds
and experiences and transferred what they learned from coursework. Students con-
tinuously compared and contrasted their knowledge, developing understanding,
experience, and interpretations of what they read in the lesson plans, articles, and
case studies and what they saw in the videos, with peers and the teacher. These activ-
ities facilitated self-reflection: helping students use various metacognitive reading
strategies, including self-questioning, reviewing, monitoring their comprehension,
