The ‘backchannel’ to the fore

The ‘backchannel’ has emerged over the last two years or so as a major component of any technology-related conference. The backchannel is the stream of real-time online Twitter ‘tweets’ from participants, commenting on, critiquing and sometimes criticising the presentations. For the first time we can find out what (some) of the audience is thinking while the event is actually taking place. This can be refreshing, illuminating or sometimes plain irritating, depending on the quality of the input. How could this be used in education?

Last year Cliff Atkinson’s The Backchannel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever began to explore the implications for higher education and the first chapter is available online.

Educational blogger Derek Bruff’s thoughtful post Backchannel in Education – Nine Uses includes note taking, sharing resources, commenting, ‘amplifying’- highlighting and spreading important comments, asking questions, helping one another, offering suggestions, building community and ‘opening the classroom’. He believes it can promote active reflection and constructive discussion, but admits it can be overwhelming – maybe frightening – for the teacher.

In terms of technology, Twitter can be a bit restrictive so Purdue University have developed their own application Hotseat where students can post messages using their Facebook or Twitter accounts, sending text messages, or logging in to the Hotseat Web site

Popular web-only backchannel tools are TodaysMeet, where you can set up a room in seconds and make the URL made available to the audience, and Google Moderator which has a ‘ranking’ facility to help popular questions/comments to be voted to the top.