Bromley ICT Forum Blog

Reprinted from the NAACE Newsletter

There are two objectives for this article: describing the podcasting project we have established in Halton and inviting your participation. This principle of participation and collaboration lies at the heart of the project.

We decided that any project aimed at producing teaching and learning outcomes through podcasting needed to acknowledge the following key factors

1. A podcast is not a radio report: podcasting offers teachers and learners the opportunity to record, collate, share and discuss their ideas, responses and learning in an immediate and exciting way and it was this ephemeral immediacy we needed to tap into with the project.
2. An essential aspect of podcasting is that the podcast is available electronically to other users via subscription.
3. Podcasting is a not an ICT activity, it is a communication activity. The project therefore needed to have an impact across curriculum areas.
4. Podcasting should be tied to teaching and learning outcomes, not specific technologies. The project would use whichever technologies simplified the production process and the first priority of training would be outcomes rather than processes.

Our solution was to buy, in partnership with the LA, twenty Samsonite attaché cases, each containing a Macbook, a video and stills camera and an iPod with a plug-in microphone. This answered most technical issues: the contents are charged by plugging in the cases rather than the equipment, voice recordings are automatically synced to iTunes and Garageband, and the iLife suite takes care of any video/photo content. The equipment is easily accounted for and passed between users.

By far the best decision we made regarding these kits was to give them to a designated co-ordinator within each school as a long-term loan rather than as a donation. The cases were not handed over until representatives from each school had attended training sessions at the CLCs. A condition of the loan was that schools produce a minimum number of podcasts on a shared theme and submit them to our podcasting channel. We also specify a subject area for the podcasts so that skills and training are spread across disciplines; in this way we are building up banks of shared resources: science revision podcasts, MFL podcasts by Language assistants, training podcasts from CLC staff.

We tried to make sharing podcasts as straightforward and secure as possible: you can see the results by visiting www.clcpodcasting.org.uk. As befits a podcasting project, this is an evolving site. An early development has been the addition of a comments button so that teachers and classmates can engage in a dialogue about the podcasts and - a key aim - allow communication between schools and authorities. Having experimented with giving schools ftp access to the site, we have now opted for an online submission form for podcasts. This is where we begin to wrestle with issues of legality, permissions and copyright. A fair proportion of our training for schools centred on the legal requirements for podcast content and the use of images and full names: teachers are asked to confirm at the point of submission that permissions have been obtained, copyright checked and no surnames used. The podcasts are moderated a second time by CLC staff before publication (comments and blogs go through the same moderation process). We think one of the many successful features of the project has been the necessity for teachers and pupils to engage with these issues at a practical level.

Now that schools have had the equipment for a term, how is the project shaping up? Very well, is the short answer. A quick browse of our podcasting channel gives you an idea of the level of engagement and expertise achieved by our teachers and pupils in a very short time. We have schools routinely taking the media case on school visits and submitting podcasts during the trip. We are hitting our targets in terms of curriculum coverage and are starting to get contributions from sectors outside the traditional secondary audience: UK Youth Parliament candidates use the channel to communicate with the electorate and blog campaigns, School Councils report back to their colleagues by podcasting via their VLE, BEd students on placement submit logbooks as podcasts, and Youth Forums conduct consultation exercises with their peers. The project has developed a real dialogue between teachers, pupils and CLCs and pioneered the use of podcasting and audio/visual production techniques as learning tools within Halton. Schools have become familiar with the technology very quickly, to the point where participating teachers are offering podcasting training to the community as part of their extended learning provision. In this respect, a key role of CLCs - the adoption of new technologies and pedagogies by partner schools - has been achieved.

Teachers have been equally quick to adopt the principle of immediacy, the move towards communication and away from quality of finish (not to say that the podcasts lack quality, just that there is more discernment and debate regarding when and if this notion of ‘quality’ is important or appropriate). Allied to this is the debate that is being opened up about network access and provision within schools: real and practical issues of access, network defaults, mobile technologies and Web2.0 capability are being pushed to the fore by participation in the project.

All of which brings me back to the question we posed to our teachers 6 months ago: how will you get involved? We have recently added our first external school to the site: history pupils in Liverpool and Bristol will be exchanging podcasts on their city’s part in the Slave trade. We want as many contributors and commentators as possible. Submission details are available on the site: please feel free to add to our project or get your classes to comment on the podcasts that are already there. If you need an area setting up, then use the feedback form on the site or contact myself, Ray Weaver, at Widnes CLC or Nick Amyes at Runcorn CLC .

We look forward to communicating with you.

rayweaver@widnesclc.co.uk,
nick.amyes@thegrangeclc.com
www.widnesclc.co.uk
www.clcpodcasting.org,uk