Week 1A: NWP: Audience

Promised Audience

Real Audience

In 2005 I took my first teaching job at a pioneer school during the first wave of the 1:1 laptop movement.  I have therefore NEVER taught in an environment in which my students did not have access to technology including web 2.0 tools.  I have attended technology conferences, taken technology courses, even lead technology professional development and feel very passionate about this subject.  I agree with most of what has thus far been laid out in the intro, chapter 1, and chapter 2 of the NWP book however, I do disagree with one point that being audience participation.

 In conferences, classes, and in this book I have been told time and time again one of the biggest benefits of digital writing for students is the expanded authentic audience that writing and publishing on the web can create.  Stories of students posting their work and the greater community commenting on this work.  Stories of teachers connecting students with other students around the world.  From my YEARS of experience asking hundreds of students to publish on the web using blogs, wiki's, web 2.0 sites like Xtimeline, nings, even when I joined a program that connected students from one school with those of another I have yet to have my students experience this new, large, participatory audience that is explained in PD, conferences, courses, or books (NWP included).  What I have experienced is my students publish to the web and I, the teacher, am still the main if not only audience my students are writing for. 

The web is flooded with content and what my students publish gets lost in the wave.  Digital writing certainly makes it easier to share content with their peers, but even their peers are not subscribing to, reading, or commenting on their classmates work unless I the teacher require them to do so.  My students wait and wait to receive feedback and comments from this promised audience and it never comes.  Even the year I partnered with two schools to hopefully ensure that my students audience would be authentic and expanded beyond the "physical walls" of the school the experience flopped.  Only one student from the other class in Canada ever commented on the work my students published to the web.  I even struggle getting parents to read and comment on their own child's work.  Digital writing has loads of benefits for students yet, I would have to argue that creating an expanded audience is not actually a REAL benefit for students since it is so seldom that it ever happens.