Writing For Purpose: 5 Ways To Use Technology To Give Children A Genuine Audience.

When announcing a writing task, on a number of occasions, I have been asked by my students,

“Why do we have to do this?”

It’s a question that can sometimes be difficult to answer. All too often the work is stuck into their English books and is only seen by the teacher.

---

Online safety is of course important. Ensure students are well monitored and precautions such as disabling comments can be effective. Click here for some more great tips on e-safety.

Below are 10 ways to use technology to give your pupils a real audience for their work:

1) Class blogs.

By having a class blog, children know their work will be going online for the ‘world’ to see. This motivates them and encourages them to take pride in their produced content.

Good blog creators are: Blogger , WordPress and Google Sites (some schools have made class Facebook pages or class Twitter accounts as an effective alternative).

Tip: work in exercise books is easy to display on the blog – just take a photo of the page it is on.

---

2) Online competitions.

There are so many competitions on the internet. Creative writing, poetry and quizzes are all popular and easy to enter.
Often, even if your pupils don’t win, their work is featured on the website and sometimes a certificate is sent. Competitions certainly give students a purpose and audience.

---

3) Review websites.

Have your students recently purchased a toy? A computer game? Have they had a bad experience at a restaurant? Then encourage them to write critically through submitting reviews to products/services.

Good websites to do this are TripAdvisor and Amazon.

By creating original and real reviews, children are often enthused to write.

---

4) Wiki websites.

Wiki’s are websites collaboratively created by the public.  Anyone can visit a Wiki and edit it or add new content.  What a perfect way to inspire writing!

Wikispaces, Wikihow and Wikipedia are ones I have used with my class.

---

5) Picture sharing websites.

Flickr and Instagram are great apps for this.  Make a class Flickr account or encourage your students to post their work on their personal social media accounts.

A child, hearing that they got 100 likes for a piece of work, would surely be a great confidence boost?

---

How do you share your students’ work to give them a genuine audience?  Let me know with a comment.