Growth & ToK Resources
This is a quick post to let you know where I'm at with the growth of the site and ToK Resources.
Growth
We're now 9 months into TokToday, before I started the site a technologically-minded colleague told me that it would take two years to establish the site. It turns out that she was broadly correct. All measures of 'engagement' are steadily growing across both the YouTube channel and the TokToday.com Wordpress site.
On the ToKToday wordpress site I'm currently getting about 300 visitors per day, with about 500 views a day. I compare this with September 2022 when I was getting about 12 visitors per day with about 30 views per day. So, I'm very happy with the growth of the site. I'm not sure about monetising the site, I tried running Google Ads on the site back in January, but I felt that the money made (about $1/day) did not offset the increased clumsiness of the site. I'd prefer to leave the site as an 'easy to use' ad free environment. I want site users to have easy access to the free ToK resources provided. I'll come back to this in a few months time.
YouTube Subscribers - keeping hope alive !
The growth of the TokToday YouTube channel (click here) has been far more erratic than the TokToday wordpress site. To be honest I am on a very steep learning curve on the types of videos that people want to watch. Videos on pedagogy / lesson design / Tok Content have had very few views. I posted these on Linkedin & the Facebook ToK Teachers group in the hope that teachers would watch them, but views are generally in the dozens. Videos on ToK content have faired better with students, but again it's not predictable. Sometimes a video that I've spent days putting together gets very few views, whilst another video that I've compiled from the top of my head, and mainly used AI to make, has attracted lots of views. It's very unpredictable. I have noticed that short content videos can do very well on YouTube Shorts, and Tik Tok. This is clearly the direction in which to head with student focussed content.
The YouTube content that attracts the most viewers is that concerning assessment, particularly videos explaining the Essay and Exhibition prompts. These videos have attracted thousands of viewers. I was told, by a number of people, before I started the site that students (& teachers) would generally only be interested in the assessment content. I naively hoped that I could make videos that would engage people beyond the assessment requirements, I continue to live in hope !
Subscriber growth on YouTube has been steady, but slower than I initially expected (588 subscribers at the time of writing, thank you to all those who have subscribed to either YouTube or Wordpress sites). I quickly realised that most of my viewers have clicked on one of my videos to get help with their ToK Essay or Exhibition. Once they have received this help I guess that they are unlikely to subscribe to the channel because that aspect of their "ToK journey" has now been fulfilled. This realisation has led me to start looking at diversification on YouTube (more on that in coming months).
Seasons of Love
I have also learned that engagement in ToK content is highly seasonal. There was little interest in the site in August, September and October. However as May Session Draft Essay deadlines approached engagement both on YouTube and Wordpress shot up in November and December. Engagement continued to be high in January and February as May session students completed their essays. In March, when May session students submitted their essays, engagement dropped off a cliff. In April and May engagement has been increasing rapidly as many May session G11 students prepare for their ToK Exhibition.
Welcome the Southern Hemisphere !
In autumn 2022 I had some engagement from November session students preparing their ToK Exhibitions. There are for more May session ToK students than November session ToK students (110,000 students in May, 11,000 students in November). I was interested to see what engagement I would get from November session students in the essay resources, it turns out that it has been incredibly impressive both on YouTube and in the TokToday.com. Ratio engagement from Nov 23 students has been far higher on both platforms than it was from May 23 students. I'll be interested to see whether this is due to the site now having a higher placing in Google's algorithm, or due to other factors.
The Nov 23 session students have brought far more viewers from Australia, New Zealand and Peru. Surprisingly it has also brought in viewers from Singapore, S.Korea and Japan - I didn't realise that there are Nov session schools in those locations. I am yet to see any viewers from Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina nor S.Africa (which has also surprised me). Welcome to all of my November session viewers - it's great to have you on board !
ToK Resources
The initial aim of TokToday remains the same: to provide accessible ToK resources for students and teachers. I have learned that these resources have to be differentiated just as they do in the classroom. It has been interesting to receive feedback on resources designed for students and teachers who find ToK very challenging, and this is my main area of challenge. Conversely, the vast majority of students with whom I have worked have not been struggling with ToK, generally they are students who are doing very well but want to secure a 9/10 or 10/10 in their essay or Exhibition.
Every Exhibition Prompt explained.
I try to fulfill my viewers requests for content (if you have any requests please let me know: Daniel@TokToday.com). A couple of weeks ago a teacher asked me for a guide to every ToK Exhibition prompt. After some consideration I thought that this would be an excellent resource to put together, albeit a rather lengthy undertaking ! Initially I'll publish it in mini-guides of 5 prompts, when it is completed I'll compile them all and publish a guide to all 35 prompts. The guides to Prompts 1-5 (linked) and 6-10 (linked) are now published. They include:
An overview explanation of each prompt.
Examples of three knowledge claims for each prompt.
Suggestions for the types of object that would be appropriate for each knowledge claim.
Suggestions on how to structure the ToK Exhibition Commentary.
Questions for Artificial Intelligence.
The recent change in IB's Academic Integrity Policy to allow the use of AI content (so long as it's adequately cited and referenced) is welcome, realistic and very interesting. I've been experimenting with ChatGPT and the Nov 23 session titles. I quickly realised that you have to ask very specific questions of AI to get appropriate responses. Further, you need to build the AI understanding of the type of responses that you want through the sequence of prompts that you ask. In order to help students with this process I have produced a series of 25 AI prompts that you can use to help write your ToK essay. I look forward to receiving feedback from students who used these.
Skills
Finally, I'd just like to comment on the issue of ToK Skills. My initial idea for TokToday.com was to identify, operationalise, the skills required for success in ToK. The IB ToK Study Guide (IB 2020) contains the word "Skill" or "Skills" 11 times, 9 of these mentions is to refer the reader to the AtL Skills. I don;t think that the AtL skills are sufficiently specific for us to build learning activities that specifically build skills required to target learning in ToK. Therefore, working the ToK Teachers Network in Thailand I built a skills diagram (below), and developed some learning resources using this diagram. I'd like to return to this in the coming year for further development.
I'd like to thank all supporters of both this site, and the YouTube channel. Your support, feedback, and guidance over these first 9 months has been invaluable. Please keep giving me feedback so that I can continue to improve Tok-Today.
Stay Tok-tastic !
Daniel,
Lisbon, May 2023