In my A1, I discussed Clubhouse, an audio social media that attracted a lot of attention and might lead to a new trend of open learning. I would like to follow up on my analysis of this app and also this trend. Please refer to the below link for my original A1.
Questions against Clubhouse on its “lack of management”. At this point, I fully agree that CH could not be exempted from social or human ethics. People could start a chatroom and share whatever they wanted without any supervision so far. I have joined by accident into some chatrooms speaking not that welcoming topics. However, I could also witness participants joining and leaving soon. I believe that with CH’s scaling, more noises or buzz would raise, and thus more critics against CH’s so-called total “liberty of speech”. In this sense, 17+ is properly classified to CH, and it may not a good educational platform for school students or lower graders who have not formed a solid value system.
Questions on “quality of sharing“. I have attended over 100 chatroom sharings covering various topics, including music, religion, math, sports critic, cooking and recipe-sharing, English language, movies discussion, and so on. To be honest, more sharings are far low “educational” quality. CH tends more to provide a place for everyone to speak up than to form education classes. However, wandering from chatroom to chatroom, I felt like exploring a new world or topic that I never thought of. Many times, I “wowed” when heard a brand new thinking angle of something that I am familiar with. In this sense, CH is more open to new-but-immatured ideas for inspiring than to formal education.
Till now, CH is still in beta testing and the first stage of scaling. I wonder is one day, a CH could be applied into open learning environments, what would it contribute? and what would it damage? One forseable contribution is that CH gives dignity of speach to everyone, speaker or participants, with the cost of main educational settings to be damaged. Imagine, if a CH-like virtual school was invented, were there still teachers and students? or it might lead to facilitators/question-raisers and solution-seakers?
You bring up a good point Nini when it comes to maturity factor. The liberty of speech may not be appropriate for all ears, especially young audiences. As with anything mobile, CH is the tool and the audiences using that tool will utilize it for their desired purposes. It may be for good. It may be for bad. Though I see a lot of potential for using this type of app especially for a global seminar on a topic of significance. Imagine how those connections would unfold. And imagine the break that people working at home may get. Zoom fatigue is very real, and sometimes relaxing all the other senses while listening can really help.