With great timing on the heels of my review of my experience at Northern Voice 09, several people posted links today to a wonderful summary article by Olivia Mitchell:
This is a wonderful summary of 1) why people are creating the backchannel, 2) how this effects the presenter, and 3) how the presenter can actively incorporate this activity into the presentation.
I especially like her observation in section 2 on the loss of eye contact as the principal measure of gauging audience response. Instead, speakers will need to measure response by the flurry of typing.
And she gives these four positive ways of thinking of the backchannel :
Your colleagues can answer questions for you
You’ll get immediate feedback
They won’t fall asleep
The Backchannel in the Classroom
These are all items that would be of great interest in the classroom as well, especially for the monster lecture courses common in large universities.
Teachers like David Silver are using Twitter as part of their teaching, so the next step will surely be students beginning to use it as part of their learning, whether directed by the teacher or not.
You Can Tell When Lunch Was...
Just in case you don't think this is happening, here's Miss604's Chart of Twitter Backchannel at NorthernVoice09 showing the volume of Twitter traffic during the morning and early afternoon.
ing that I find interesting is how iTunes U and podcasting are assumed here to more or less synonymous. I'm sure Apple marketing is smiling with glee at that.
