I have been writing about layering services since 2015 and continue to encounter new services and increased interest in the capabilities layering offers. Layering is the term I have tried to use to create a category of online services. There is always a challenge when you decide to create a category others probably don’t recognize. My use of the term implies both a capability and a method. By capability, layering refers to the ability to take existing online content and add elements to (on top of actually is more accurate) this content. The simplest example is highlighting. Many layering services allow a user to highlight the content they read on web pages. Layering services may allow the addition of other elements – e.g., questions, links, discussion opportunities, comments.
The second component of the way in which I use layering involves a method that allows these elements to be added without modifying the original content as intended by the content creator. This would include the opportunity of that creator to serve this content and receive recognition for each time the content is viewed or ads are displayed. This could be very important should the content creator depend on server “hits” or ad views for revenue. I think of a layer of elements that is added as the content from the server used by the content creator passing through the server of the layering service before being sent on to the viewer.
The first layering service I used was Hypothes.is. I remember the motto – annotate the web – but that may have come from another source. While my focus on layering has been on the opportunities layering provides in teaching and learning, my initial experience was of tools for communicating with others about some online content. You could add elements reflecting your perspective using highlighting and annotations and other users of Hypothe.is could see your additions if they had Hypothes.is active when viewing the web comment you annotated. By the way, the spelling with the embedded period is accurate to allow the “is” to represent the final component of a URL in the same way com, org, edu are final components of addresses.
Hypothes.is allowed public annotations (as described above), private annotations, and a system for designating specific individuals who could view annotations(groups). The group function met the type of privacy required for use within classrooms and folks began to use the service for educational activities.
I have no idea if Hypothes.is was the first service with such capabilities or not, but it was the first with the features I was aware of that seemed suited to educational use and the first service I used with a college class. I have since explored other services (some designed more specifically for video annotation) and began writing about these services on a regular basis (use the tag for this post or this address to see related content.
The Hypothes.is community has continued to grow and evolve and developers have added new capabilities, e.g., DropDoc. If you are new to this type of service, I thought it might be useful to point you toward Hypothes.is and some relevant resources.
Hypothes.is site for educators
Liquid margins – videos from educators exploring the use of hypothes.is