"Audience Awareness" Article

The beginning of the article points out the importance of audience awareness and how if the audience is aware it was written for them and contemplate the information they will understand the article better, and conversely, if the author understands that they are writing for an audience then they will be better writers. "Audience awareness in a technology-rich elementary classroom" talks about how having technology in the classroom blurs the line between audience and author since it is so interactive. (This is the sort of learning that was suggested by a quote in the last reading that we did.) The article summarizes a 5-month study in a 4th grade classroom in which 5 "multimedia" work stations were set up. Overall, the study found that the computers and other multimedia sources were quite helpful and should be involved in the learning process, but they do not take the place of the very necessary student-teacher interaction.


Link to article: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/10862960009548086