Rap Genius, Curriculet, and Digital Annotation in the Cla**room
The subjects of this review are two digital reading and annotation platforms, Curriculet and Rap Genius.The review itself is saved as a Rap Genius text, so as to give a more vivid demonstration of its capabilities than a traditional text document. I will be posting it as a Curriculet in the near future. I am interested in how these tools can be used to support the interaction between teachers, students, and texts. There are three sections. Section I deals with the language and rhetoric that these companies use to describe themselves and their goals. Thinking about what problems or demands they try to address offers hints about a key question: To what extent do the folks at Rap Genius and Curriculet envision different models for reading and learning that point beyond prevailing desires and visions? It is my main argument that Rap Genius may be a more inviting space for students due to its design, vocabulary, and self-representation. These are the things that users see first, before functionality and possibility. Section II goes into the nitty-gritty of Curriculet and Rap Genius as platforms for reading, teaching, and annotating. This includes issues of device compatibility, design and navigability, and as many of their capabilities as I can find. Also, how do they try to make money, if it does, and how does this affect the product and user experience? What kinds of projects or learning opportunities are enabled with them?
Section III wraps it up with some musings on where Curriculet, Rap Genius, and their annotative brethren might be in the future.
Having read this over again, I want to emphasize here that I am a big fan and user of both services. I'm applying to Curriculet in hopes of being a Curriculet creator, and I think Rap Genius is going to be one of the biggest players in the ed-tech space.
Section 1: Names, Purposes, Claims
1.1 Currica-what?
In brief, a Curriculet is a text that has been digitally annotated with highlights, comments, questions, or quizzes. Teachers can create Curriculets and share them with colleagues or students, who can then read the annotations, respond to questions, and make private annotations.I first found out about Curriculet when its company, and I think it's product, went under the name Gobstopper. I saw Gobstopper give a presentation at an Edsurge event in San Francisco, where they were pitching their service to a group of teachers. This was a fitting venue for them, since Curriculets (as they are now called) are explicitly intended to be created by teachers and used by their students, as their name “Curriculet” implies, with its derivation from a word almost inextricably a**ociated with educational institutions, curriculum. The suffix -let is usually diminutive, meaning a smaller version of the root word (e.g. piglet, droplet), so the name Curriculet suggests a small part of a curriculum, and it must have resonated well with creators and/or users, as it replaced Gobstopper as the company's name. Although I think the name Curriculet is fitting, I liked the playfulness and positivity of the word Gobstopper, making me think of the candy, its colors and sweetness. In a more literal, foundational sense the word gobstopper implies something so astounding that it literally shuts your gob. In any case, it doesn't come loaded with resonances of school as Curriculet does, a tone that doesn't appeal to students who perhaps don't need or want reminded of “school” every time they look at their book's table of contents. Lots of people like the idea of learning and reading but don't like the idea of school.
If you teach middle or high school, imagine some of your students reading on Curriculet's web site that a Curriculet is a “curriculum-enriched text that includes instruction and a**essment”. Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't think many would be particularly enthused to explore one. In the same way, as a student, I didn't always like reading books for school or taking quizzes on them.
Or, imagine logging in to your student account and the first things you see are two orange boxes, one which tells you how long you've read for and another that tells you how many "correct answers" you've gotten. Leaving aside the fact that the most provocative questions about literature rarely have "correct" or "incorrect" answers, I don't like the idea of a student thinking that their activity of reading is intimately tied up with multiple choice questions, a**essments, and grades.
1.2 Common Core Curriculet
Situating this tool most explicitly in the K12 cla**room, Curriculet is eager to tout its potential use in "Common Core" aligned learning:
We believe that every moment of learning begins with reading, that teaching is a craft, and that the most effective curricula begins with the inspired work of great teachers and is perfected through peer collaboration. Curriculet is revolutionizing the way kids read, and how teachers create, share, and teach with a simple yet dynamic digital reading platform. Curriculet enables teachers to deliver customized, Common Core aligned learning and digitally create and share their curriculum and lesson materials. Curriculet also allows school districts nationwide to purchase ebooks at a lower cost, expanding their library and enabling teachers to broaden their reading lists, making reading more enjoyable for all students.
This emphasis on the Common Core is widespread throughout Curriculet's website and within the service itself. For example, if someone making a Curriculet adds a question to a text, they are given the option to select which Common Core Standard the question addresses. The Curriculets that are offered in the Store are laden with questions linked to Common Core Standards, and writers of these ready-made Curriculets have to demonstrate their ability to reference these standards in their work. In the Teacher's Guide, the second section below “Curriculet Overview” is “Common Core Standards”.
To wrap this section up, I suspect that many students who read how Curriculet describes a Curriculet won't exactly be chomping at the bit to open one up. This is a shame because I think Curriculets can be a neat space for reading and writing, and the tool itself and what it affords are worth getting excited about. The name just seems more likely to please the teacher than the student, as might the explicit rhetoric about a**essment and standards.
1.3 Rap Genius, or Now Try Explaining This One To The Parents
I'll be frank: when comparing the name Curriculet to the name Rap Genius, I gravitate towards Rap Genius because of the simple coolness and intrigue offered by its name, fueled also because I enjoy rap music. The name doesn't remind me of teachers, school, or homework, and for that reason is all the more approachable and charming. I suspect this is a sentiment that I share with more middle schoolers than middle school teachers. I do think that names matter more than many people think, because of their bearing on reception and thus use.
Anyway, Rap Genius was originally a website where users posted rap lyrics and annotated them publicly for the purpose of exploring their meaning. Rap lyrics are known for being cryptic and heavily reliant on complex slang, making them particularly ripe for interpretive annotation. In many uploaded raps, every line is annotated with comments. Rap Genius has since expanded its purview beyond rap lyrics, embracing all manner of genres. Rap Genius eagerly embraced and continues to embrace the use of its platform in the cla**room, where it is used to support reading and collaborative annotation. A quick scan through the collection reveals that cla**rooms are using Rap Genius to collaborate on annotating all manner of texts. The site has split into four sections to accommodate the different kinds of texts being submitted by users. Each section (Poetry, Rock, Rap, News) uses the same “Genius” annotation platform.
The word "explanation" was previously used on the site instead of "annotation", but now they've embraced "annotation" because it's more neutral, and they want to embrace content that isn't an attempt at explication. Check out this video where this issue comes up in an interview with the founders of Rap Genius.
1.4 Poetry Genius (it's called that, but they mean a lot more than Poetry)
“Poetry Genius” is the region given the most attention to here, because it embraces texts that teachers commonly use in the cla**room (poetry, prose, drama). Check out their description of Poetry Genius as provided on the “About Poetry Genius” page.
Our library includes poems, stories, novels, essays, even scripts, all annotated by community members and verified authors. Everything from chapter-by-chapter an*lysis of cla**ic novels to author annotations of contemporary works has a home. Studying Shakespeare? Read our breakdowns—and contribute yourself!
1.5 Socialness and Authority
The next section in About Poetry Genius reveals a fundamental difference between it and Curriculet:
Who writes the annotations?
Anyone can! Just create an account and start annotating. You can highlight any line to annotate it yourself, suggest changes to existing annotations, and even put up your favorite texts. Getting started is very easy. If you make good contributions, you'll earn Poetry IQ™, and if you share true knowledge, eventually you'll be able to edit and annotate anything on the site.
Students and teachers can annotate for everyone to see; the folks at Rap Genius are serious about all users having this ability. For a cla**room, this opens up vast new channels of communication. Contrast this with Curriculet, where all annotations besides that of the teacher are private. Students only interact with teachers by answering their questions, and when they do only the teacher can read the answer. The teacher exerts a lot of control on the reading and learning experience. To me, the format of Curriculet lends itself most to positioning the teacher as a source of authority/knowledge and the student as a consumer/question-answerer. The format of Rap Genius weakens this distinction by giving public annotation privileges to students. This doesn't mean that teachers will necessarily allow Rap Genius to work this way. For instance, some teachers might tell their students that they should read the text and the annotations already on it, but shouldn't leave annotations of their own. Those teachers should be using Curriculet, not Rap Genius.
1.6 Rap Genius to Teachers: Don't Be Scared
The next section in About Poetry Genius targets teachers directly by noting the “wide variety of cla**room projects” on the site and answering the question “Who do I contact if I'm a teacher/professor/school?” (answer: Jeremy Dean).
Rap Genius does have a feature geared most explicitly towards cla**room uses: Education Genius. Education Genius describes itself below:
Education Genius works closely with teachers at all levels and across disciplines to design and implement cla**room projects using the “Genius” collaborative annotation platform. Whether the a**ignment is a cla**ic work of literature, primary source historical document, or scientific article, Education Genius lets students an*lyze and discuss their coursework line by line, online. We're updating close reading for the twenty-first century! Public school educators, check out our annotated Common Core to learn how you can use Genius to implement the standards for reading and writing.
Just like Curriculet's rhetoric of “revolutionizing reading”, we get a similar claim from Education Genius: that they are “updating close reading for the twenty-first century”! This language is strange to me because when I think of close reading I think only of that: reading and thinking about a text carefully. Close reading qua close reading doesn't hinge on or imply dialogue, written interpretation, or collaboration. Is it a defining feature of the 21st century that its close reading is digital, social, and full of links from outside the book ? Do the annotated texts on Rap Genius or Curriculet bring the reader closer to the underlying text or farther away?
1.7 Common (Hard)Core?
As seen above, Education Genius draws attention to Common Core Standards and their potential fulfillment through the Genius platform, just as Curriculet does. They note elsewhere:
The Genius platform, with its emphasis on close reading,intertextuality, and digital literacy, helps fulfill the Common Core Standards for reading and writing.
Rap Genius has also uploaded certain Common Core Standards as well as the Common Core Initiative's Introduction to the English Language Arts Standards, both replete with annotations that detail how Rap Genius can be used to implement the Common Core Standards. Common Core Standards apply to K-12 public school learners, and while I think Rap Genius should be applauded for encouraging its use in, say, an 8th grade cla**room, most 8th grade administrators, teachers, and parents might find this difficult to accommodate for a few reasons. One reason takes us back to the issue of naming. The name Rap Genius, the core of the site which is even in the URL of Poetry genius (www.poetry.rapgenius.com) may be attractive for more playful, open-minded teachers and students, but will be hard to swallow for more conventional students and parents who can't possibly imagine what anything having to do rap has to do with school. The name is just one thing, so lets imagine for a moment that this platform comes up as a topic of discussion between student and her parents at the dinner table, with an 8th grader referring to the tool just as “Poetry Genius”. The curious parents go to the Poetry Genius webpage, somehow without being aware of “Rap Genius” in the URL. There is a decent chance that some pretty inappropriate stuff for middle schoolers will be on the page! Why? The front page of Poetry Genius shows a list of texts with a lot of recent activity, as well as a list of selected posts chosen by the folks at Rap Genius. At the time of writing this paragraph, the heavy hitters are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, and Rudyard Kipling. But just after canonically minded parents saw those and breathed sighs of relief, they take a peek at some of the posts on the right, which at the time of writing this can be seen here. This doesn't end well for most teachers.
Rap Genius does try to rein in the risqué, and they remind users that they want to keep the lyrics in their texts "hygienic".
Section 2: Affordances, some Design
2.1 Curriculet Basics
A Curriculet, as described in their own Teacher's Guide is a “curriculum-enriched text that includes instruction and a**essment. As students read a text, questions, quizzes and annotations (i.e. material that would normally be placed in worksheets) pop out of the text, so students are instructed and a**essed as they read… at just the right moment.” When you create an account on Curriculet, you sign up as either a teacher or student. A teacher account includes the ability to create, edit, and a**ign Curriculets, while a student account has the ability to read Curriculets, to read and respond to the annotations and questions embedded on them, and to create private annotations.
If you are reading this review in Curriculet form, I've attached some annotations to this paragraph with the different sorts of questions that Curriculet enables: multiple choice or open-ended. I could also attach a quiz, which is just a collection of multiple choice questions. Feel free to respond to my questions. So, a Curriculet is a layer of multiple choice or open ended questions, rich-media (image, video, text) annotations, and/or highlights that someone using a teacher account places over a text. This text can be either a public domain text from Curriculet's “Store”, a name which hints at how Curriculet plans on making money in the future, or a text that the user uploads from their computer, Dropbox, Google Drive, or a URL. Supported file formats for importing documents are Word, PDF, and Google Doc. With the URL option, Curriculet does a decent job at taking a URL and extracting the text from it, creating a readable version of an article on a webpage that one can then annotate and share. The major drawback for teachers here is the need to re-upload a text if it gets modified since the last upload. A basic writing console for text input and live modification feature for teachers would help keep documents responsive. Sadly, even the annotation layer on top of the text, once edited by a teacher, has to be re-shared with students in order for the students to see the up-to-date Curriculet.
2.2 Ready-Made Curriculets - For When You Feel Collaborative or Lazy
The Curriculet store also has a section of ready-made Curriculets that the company curates and offers to teachers (for free as of now). Once one of these Curriculets is added to a teacher's library, it can be edited by that teacher. These edits don't change the Curriculet in the store, but once saved by a teacher only create a new, local version of the Curriculet that can be shared with a particular cla**. In other words, the Curriculets in the Store aren't much like the open, more crowdsourced texts in Rap Genius, as presumably Curriculet has a notion of quality control that doesn't jive with Rap Genius's model. I can't say I blame them, since if Curriculets had truly open editing privileges, I imagine some mischievous students accessing their cla**es Curriculets and making them nonsensical for the sake of sabotage or humor.
While nice that that teachers can edit existing Curriculets and then share their new versions with students, it's unfortunate that there isn't a way for a student to make an annotation that appears immediately to the rest of the cla**. Signing everyone up as a teacher wouldn't help, because when Curriculets are edited they have to be re-shared in order for the edits to be seen.
2.3 Black or White?
As a reader, Curriculet's user interface is pleasant enough, although on a laptop or a desktop, the box that displays the text doesn't take great advantage of the screen's landscape. It seems awkwardly positioned on the left of the page. On mobile devices (browser only, there is no app) the text is positioned more centrally and in my opinion, more effectively. On both, the layout is very clean and white, which seems to be pretty standard for reading apps like Kindle or iBooks. Tapping on the C on the upper left corner brings a sidebar with a few options. Take a peek. Checkpoints brings up a list of the Curriculet's annotated comments or questions. Clicking one takes the user to its position in the text. Student View, a feature I couldn't find on mobile, allows the teacher to see the Curriculet from the student's perspective. Their Teacher's Guide is recommended viewing for those interested.
For students, reading Curriculets and responding to multiple choice questions works decently on mobile, but annotation doesn't work on mobile devices. It would be nice if it did, so that users could annotate Curriculets on the fly. I will admit that I've had problems viewing Curriculets from a mobile browser. Sometimes the pages just don't turn. Sometimes this happens on my laptop, too.
Should students read books with the impression of a teacher lurking behind the text, with visual reminders that they are reading this book for school, and with multiple choice quizzes literally embedded within the text, hiding furtively in its lines? This won't always be the recipe for happy reading, methinks.
2.4 Rap Genius Basics
Now, on to Rap Genius as a platform. Any basic text can be uploaded to Rap Genius, as they provide a text input window into which you can copy and paste text or compose anything. For anything under copyright, Rap Genius says we should only submit excerpts. There are only basic formatting features (e.g. bold, italic), so it's pretty bare bones and that's all it needs to be. There is no fancy name for an item submitted to Rap Genius - everything is a “text” - but when you submit an item you select the region in which your text belongs: Rap Genius, Education Genius, Poetry Genius, or News Genius. Once you hit “submit”, the text gets uploaded where it is then available to be edited by the submitter or annotated by anyone. Compared to Curriculets, which have to be re-sent to students in a particular cla** at every change in underlying text or annotations, texts on Rap Genius feel a little more vibrant, open, and alive. Whereas the difference between teacher and student on Curriculet is reinforced by the different affordances of the teacher and student accounts, the lines are blurrier in Rap Genius. As mentioned earlier, in Rap Genius anyone can submit a text, and anyone can publicly annotate. In Curriculet, only teachers can submit texts and create curriculets, whereupon they can be shared. and if students annotate on the text it remains private.
Rap Genius does have a mobile app and can be opened on a mobile browser, but like Curriculet on a mobile browser these environments are only for reading marked-up texts, not for making annotations. Sad face.
Rap Genius's website is set on a black background, rather than Curriculet's starchy white, and I think they pull it off pretty well. Do you prefer a black or a white background for online reading?
2.5 So Many Geniuses
One can sign up for an “Educator Genius” account, which allows an individual to create a version of a text for a specific learning community to work on. This alternate version can be made private amongst this community, or be made available for the outside world to view and edit. The way an annotation looks shows whether the annotation is unapproved (red), approved (yellow), or has a suggestion that has not been taken into consideration (dashed underline). While anyone can annotate, only “Educators” and “Editors” can turn red annotations into yellow ones. Only “Moderators” (chosen by Rap Genius) can turn a user into an “Editor”. As Rap Genius imperiously says, “Editors are selected by Moderators who deem them worthy to curate content on the site.” Those that are particularly insightful and ambitious can even become Moderators themselves, as determined by the authorities that be at Rap Genius. Hopefully I haven't made this sound more complicated than it is. The system seems to work well enough, and is much more flexible than Curriculet's rigid teacher/student hierarchy which has the student being instructed and being a**essed, but not sharing with or instructing others. With a Curriculet there is no tangible sense of a cla** working together on something, since students read, answers questions in a two-way channel with a teacher, and take private notes. With Rap Genius, open collaboration is encouraged. An Educator can also make their own copy of a text for their cla** which is free from other annotations and unsearchable from google or rap genius. This makes it "semi-private", so a cla** could work on a text without any outside voices, or a teacher could open it up to other particular cla**rooms by sharing the link to the page. This creates a cool space for multi-cla** collaboration on a smaller scale than a normal, public Rap Genius text open to the world.
2.6 Annotations and Authority
Both Curriculet and Rap Genius annotations can include videos or images that get embedded right in the annotation. The idea of multimedia annotation is not new, but here is made much easier and accessible than it was, say, in the Middle Ages. Embedding videos alongside text opens up some cool opportunities. Rap Genius actually gives you the option of recording a video right there on the spot when you add an annotation, which would let one skip the step of uploading to YouTube first.
As a way to let general users evaluate contributions, though, anyone can also upvote or downvote an annotation, which gives “IQ points” to its author. A single annotation can also be edited by multiple users, and the platform keeps track of who contributed to the annotation, although it doesn't say who exactly contributed what. Users can also make suggestions to annotations, and suggestions are noted below the annotation itself. Users can also upvote or downvote these, and the goal is for the incorporation of valuable suggestions into the annotations, thus improving them. Those interested in being Editors or Moderators are advised to rack up their "Poetry IQ".
2.7 $$
I mentioned briefly that Curriculet seems to have an eye on its "store" as a way of making its money. There are programs in place that allow cla**es to "rent" books from, say, Houghton Mifflin, which can then be turned into Curriculets. In terms of how this is affecting the user experience at this point....it isn't really. There are no ads and Curriculet is free.
Rap Genius has ads which annoyingly pop up right over the text on a page. They are annoying, albeit small. In the interview I link to above, Rap Genius mentions that they have lots of different possibilities for revenue generation. I'm hoping an ad pops up on this page as you're viewing it so that you can get a first-hand peek.
Section III: What's Next?
It is difficult to make the claim for any tool that it is “revolutionizing the way kids read” or "updating close reading". Where are these updates and revolutions pointing? Since annotations or highlights inevitably reflect what certain people find meaningful about a text, they manipulate the experience of reading. I think the remaining experience can often be wonderful and stimulating, but the reading of a static, annotation-free text is something worth preserving, for the sake of the reader and author. I suspect cla**rooms have room for both kinds of reading.
Things are gained and lost in an annotated text, regardless of the annotations' content. More research needs to be done on the way students read and write on these platforms and others. The more constructivist platform of Rap Genius is powerful and can give agency to all users as co-constructors of knowledge, but educators may be turned off by that openness, as well as its edgier and more inclusive content. Curriculet is a handy way for a teacher to overlay their thoughts and questions onto a text and share it with students, but its emphasis on a**essment and the teacher may s** some of the joy out of reading for the students.
Again, though, what the behavior that the platforms seem to encourage does not always translate into how the platforms get used. A teacher could find a way to make Curriculet feel more social (for instance by having students submit annotations and questions that the teacher can then put in the Curriculet). Conversely, teachers could make Rap Genius more restricted by forbidding certain activity for students, neutering its intended potential but opening up different sorts of spaces.
A Direction I Don't Like:
Most Curriculets and Poetry Genius texts distributed to students will be marked up with multiple choice questions that seem more successful at addressing Common Core Standards than they are at posing provocative questions about literature and life. Readers will come to expect, and eventually have a hard time reading without, annotations on their books that seek to explain every difficult concept or word. Readers will come to see books primarily as answers, not questions. Reading will be seen as a "school" activity amongst students even more than it already is.
A Direction I Like:
Rap Genius and Curriculet on mobile will be greatly improved. Curriculet will develop mobile apps, and also a version of their platform that permits public, live annotation, and change its name back to Gobstopper. There will be tools built in to Rap Genius and Curriculet that allow voice-to-text conversion, so that conversations or lectures can be recorded, put on Rap Genius on the spot, and then annotated upon. There will be an open speech feature that allows those working on the same text to speak to each other while they read and annotate. Curriculet's Ready-Made Curriculets will be a big hit, but teachers will examine these Curriculets closely, reflecting deeply on their annotations and how they might change a reader's confrontation with the text. Rap Genius ramps up its gamification features, giving more nuance to Poetry IQ by allowing teachers to distribute custom points to students, and points within different categories. A group of English teachers vetted by Rap Genius can give a particular kind of Poetry IQ to any user that is widely recognized in academic communities as a sign of insight and focused effort. This could exist for any discipline. Rap Genius and Curriculet find ways to incorporate their platforms into broader Humanities MOOCs
Rap Genius also becomes a strong platform for those learning programming languages. Rap Genius stays cool and Curriculet becomes cool, both without scaring parents and teachers too much. The activity of a reader with a simple, unannotated text will still be called "close reading".