Hypothesis is an open source web-annotation tool that allows users to annotate webpages, PDFs, and other online documents either privately, in groups, or publicly. It is currently operated by anno and in August 2022 ITHAKA invested in the tool. As of September 2022 Hypothesis had been used to generate over 40 million annotations.
Rather than a tool to be used to create digital projects, Hypothesis is primarily a digital pedagogy tool. It allows for social reading of texts. For example you could have your students read and annotate one of their assigned readings in a private Hypothesis group for your class, which would allow them to reply to each other’s annotations, and learn from each other and be in conversation with one another outside of class.
