Everyone's a critic (again)

I recently blogged about the hidden audience effect, and cited Westfields Junior School's S'cool Internet Radio and David Mitchell's Quadblogging projects as examples of how students can become better engaged with learning when they perform their work for an audience. Social media and the internet have largely been responsible for this change. Before social media, the school play or the end of term concert was a good way to allow children to perform to an audience, as was the art display and the school sports day. But not every child excels at art, or is good at music or sport. What about those who are good mathematicians, or the scientists or linguists? Prior to social media, how did they perform their skills for an audience? Social media now provides a way. A recent blogpost by Katherine McKnight listed 12 ways technology has changed learning, and includes 'expanding audiences' near the top of the list:

Students' sense of audience is completely different. When I was in high school in the 1980's, the audience was the teacher. When I started teaching high school in 1988, the audience was the teacher and peers.  In the 21st century, it's the WORLD. Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and other online platforms changed our notion of audience.

I think the statement requires some unpacking. Yes, social media is changing our concept of audience, because the tools we use are naturally participatory. Students blog their ideas and in doing so, they perform to a potential worldwide audience. They receive feedback from their peers in the form of comments, and gain a sense of pride in their work. When they record themselves on camera, they can release it as a YouTube video and gain feedback from their peers. It can be very motivational: watching a growing number of views, comments, shares and favourites can be a huge incentive for students. But there are also risks. The danger of playing to this gallery is the exposure to a potentially harsh and unforgiving environment. YouTube is particularly notorious for trolling (individuals who patrol social media sites to make mischief) and can be a breeding ground for unneccesarily harsh, or deliberately hurtful comments. Receiving such responses, no matter how ill informed or illiterate they often may be, can seriously damage the delicate self esteem of vulnerable young learners.

Teachers should therefore promote the use of YouTube as a performance channel with due consideration to such a risks. The same safeguards should apply to blogging, where teachers are advised to act as moderators of the comments that are received, filtering each one before allowing it to be posted on the blog for students to read. There is also the danger of cyberbullying from within the peer group, and such malicious activities also need to be obviated by the appropriate management of social media tools in formal learning settings. A fine line needs to be drawn between deliberately destructive behaviour, and critial review of a learner's work. Whilst the former knocks down, the latter can build up, challenging the student to refine their skills and learn more about their subject.

Arguably, the benefits outweigh the risks, and performing your learning online using social media is a game changer. Never before have students enjoyed the opportunity to shine on such a global stage. The audience has indeed expanded, and where once a student was writing their assignment to be read by an audience of one (the teacher or examiner), now there is potential to demonstrate new learning through a huge range of globally accessible media.

Assessment should no longer be confined to the written tests or essays that were so prevalent in the last century, but might be extended to podcasts, blogs, wikis, videos, image collections and combinations of these in other media. What teachers now need to avoid is replicating old practices within new media. The opportunities to create new ways of assessment are there to be exploited. The only real limitation is imagination.

Image source


Everyone's a critic by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

The hidden audience effect

A splendid time was had by all at yesterday's bMoble12 event. Held in Bradford's prestigious National Media Museum (more on this in a future post), the day was packed full of quick fire workshops, seminars and plenary presentations. The conference was enhanced by the presence of several very tech savvy young students from primary schools, who took a full part in the proceedings, tweeting and live blogging from the event on their mobile devices. Speakers included Derek Robertson, Steve Dale, James Langley, Chris Mayoh and Julian Wood, who presented variously on games based learning, e-safeguarding, embedding the iPad across the curriculum, the use of QR codes and mobile devices in education, and how to engage readers with digital texts.

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.