Do you annotate?

An important element of  "active reading"  (click for explanation/definition) is annotation.  A sharp pencil is an essential tool for this as you engage with what you are reading.    You can jot down your thoughts and observations,   questions, disagreements.    You can indicate what are the important points in the materials.     Two purposes of annotation are to to help you think as you read,  and to make it useful when you come back to the reading at some point in the future

Good reading is active reading that engages the brain,not just the eyes.

Here are some useful tips for active critical reading from Harvard Library

They recommend you throw away your highlighter.

Remember that reading is a dialogue between you the reader and the writer of the text.  

Here is a classic example of annotation.  I believe this was the director’s original annotation of the script for the movie, “The Godfather”.   

I don’t recommend this cluttered text as a model for you, and there is too much underlining,

but it gives you some idea of the mental interaction.

Now let's jump into the 21st century of digital annotation.    Your professor has provided a reading in PDF or has posted to D2L her PPT (Powerpoint) slides for you to read before class.     In the old days,   you would print these out and then annotate with a pencil.   In 2014 why not go digital,   especially if you have a tablet such as an iPad or Android device.

How can you annotate digitally?     You need a good app  like Goodreader.

If you want to annotate a PPT file,  in Goodreader you need to first convert the file to PDF.
I do this by first importing into Powerpoint or Keynote,  then saving as a PDF, then opening this PDF in Goodreader.   (It only takes a minute.)