In this best practices paper, we discuss how we have used social annotation in our asynchronous online undergraduate Educational Psychology courses for pre-service teachers. We provide tips in three different areas of implementing social annotation. First, we discuss the importance of having an explicit purpose for using social annotation and helping students get started on annotation activities. Second, we recognize the specific affordances of social annotation and how they might be used to improve student engagement. Third, we consider role of the instructor in the annotations. We close with some challenges regarding social annotation that continue to push our thinking as we refine our own pedagogical approaches to social annotation.