Headteacher Karine George's post lunch keynote was one of the highlights of #bMoble12, and included a great first section from two of the children from her large school, Westfields Junior School in Hampshire. They had been up since 6 am that morning to travel for 5 hours on a train to arrive in time for their presentation, and had to travel back that evening. It must have been a very long day for the kids, but they performed very well, and were very entertaining and raised a few laughs too.
Karine George's presentation was one of those keynotes that raises the eyebrows and gets you thinking. It must be the first time a keynote speaker has appeared on stage accompanied by a toilet seat, but I think we were all relieved when she made a point about emerging technologies, featuring the Japanese Washlet 'intelligent loo' as an example of how technology can improve lives. You can see video of Karine's keynote and many of the other bMoble12 sessions on this website.
As I looked around the room during Karine's keynote, the audience was transfixed by the volume of new ideas that were being applied at Westfields School. She reported great learning results through activities supported through the use of games, mobile technology, video, music technology and other specialised software. One great innovative idea Karine talked about was particularly useful at engaging kids across the entire curriculum. Their learning activities are scaffolded through their own internet radio channel S'cool Radio. The children take turns in operating and hosting the radio channel, working in pairs. They take on the responsibility to write and produce their own shows, and in doing so they are able to reach out not only to their own peers (the radio shows are broadcast over public address systems during break times) and their parents, but also the wider community, and ultimately, to a worldwide audience.
In effect, S'cool Radio is taking a similar approach to Dave Mitchell's Quadblogging concept but developing it in another direction. What both projects have in common is their capitalisation on the 'hidden audience' effect. Dave Mitchell stresses the importance of providing an audience for young bloggers, who then 'perform' their ideas and writing skills, receiving feedback from their peers. It is highly motivational to know you have an audience. Performance levels are raised as extra effort is made. The meteoric success of Quadblogging lies in its organisation of 4 school clusters, which provide a guaranteed audience to read and comment on every post the children make. Evidence from earlier studies I conducted with my own researchers in Plymouth in 2007 revealed that the 'hidden audience' who read my own students' wiki content, encouraged them to raise their game in terms of improved academic writing, greater accuracy, deeper critical analysis and thinking, and a more polished presentational style. The entire account of that research can be found in the 2008 British Journal of Educational Technology article The Good, the Bad and the Wiki.
Clearly, the hidden audience effect is only one of the components that make projects such as Quadblogging and S'cool Radio a success. For Westfields Junior children, the ability to communicate clearly, self-organise, self-broadcast, express ideas, work in a team, problem solve, plan ahead and think on one's feet, are all brought into play when they plan, present and perform their shows on their internet radio shows. The Westfields internet radio project is therefore destined to be a great success, because not only does it provide learners with a ready made audience, it also gives them space to practice and acquire these key transferable skills - skills they will certainly need to use when they enter a world of work that is uncertain and in a constant state of change.
Image courtesy of Westfields Junior School
The hidden audience effect by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.
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