Why Every school should be Podcasting

I found this rather interesting article in the Guardian that explains why Podcasting is so valuable. There is a quote below from the article

"Podcasting has transformed our school," says Oakington's head of ICT, Ophelia Vanderpuye. "Kids are excited by it and it's opened new ways of communicating with others. Every school should be podcasting."

Read more

Festive Podcasts

Well done to Wendi and Nicky for podcasting the Christmas songs - They sound very good. I am sure the parents at your school will really enjoy hearing them. You must have been very busy.
Lynn and Rob

Fairlop Christmas

Some people have been talking to me about using the Podcast as a tool for recording Christmas concerts. I have just checked out Fairlop's channel on the LGFL network and they seem to be uploading Christmas songs, perhaps as a way of getting the children to work on them at home!! Check out the Year 1 song here.

Audacity Tutorials

Thought this may come in useful! Some parts are better than others.
Website providing tutorials in audacity
http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/17-audacity-tutorial.htm

Network Meeting Thursday 29th November

Another successful network meeting today. Thank you to everyone who came. It was really good to hear how far each school has come already with podcasting and be able to see evidence of podcasts that the children have created. It is still early stages and as we heard today there is a lot that we can learn from each other, which is great!

I liked the idea of the Redbridge FM club and the notebook idea for the children to record their scripts for future podcasts, it was fantastic to hear year 2 children in action on the Samuel Pepys interviews. All in all an excellent start to introducing podcasting within the curriculum.

From todays meeting I am sure I am right in saying that we have begun to really discover the true value of Podcasting in educating children, here are some of the benefits we can see so far:

- it can motivate children to write (scripts)
- provides a real audience and a sense of achievement
- increases a child's self esteem
- it can be accessed by all
- it provides opportunities to share knowledge and experience
- it encourages collaboration and team work
- children develop the ability to adapt their speech (tone, vocabulary etc) according to the audience
- it is an excellent tool to develop speaking and listening skills (EMA)
- it builds childrens confidence now and for the future
- it enables children to overcome fears
- it provides a life skill; a tool for communication

Also as discussed today there is no doubt that Podcasting must be purposeful! Children need a purpose for doing podcasting, whether it is in the form a weekly/termly news update, school sporting reports, sharing of specific work or experiences or events.

Another interesting and productive meeting, thank you.

Next Meeting- Thursday 6th March 2008, 4pm at Redbridge Primary

Podcasting Network Meeting

Podcasting Network Meeting 29.11.07 F3- Teachers Centre

Agenda

Could all minutes be recorded as a live blog entry – though these may need editing at a later date?

Welcome – Anthony and Lucy

Sharing Success:
Redbridge FM- Lynne /Rob
Anthony- Hatton
Fairlop- Samuel Pepys and Glasbury
Manford- Up and coming project
Essex SEAL podcast

Brent podcasts

Issues to consider

• Moving from Club to classroom and curriculum contexts
• Technical issues
• Where Next?

Date of next meeting

Fairlop

Just thought I'd mention that I have just enjoyed listening to the Fairlop Podcasts.
Have a listen
Well Done Wendy and Nikki



Interview with Samuel Pepys



Ryan and Oliver go canoeing

Hatton and other Podium Tales

This term I have worked with two schools on Podcasting. I have worked with a Year 5 Teacher at Aldersbrook on using Podium to podcast poetry. We were both surprised at how easy it was to use this software, though they were problems and these were to do with mics not working and audio settings. I am sure when these issues are sorted out then the podcasts will be of the same quality as this one from Origada.

I have also been privileged to be involved with Dan Plane at Hatton. Dan is the ICT instructor and technician at the school. He has been keen to innovate with ICT and is keen to look at how it can make a difference to children with a range of needs. During my last visit, we talked about how and why we would create an audio Podcast with non-verbal children. Watch this (and the other blogs) for more on how we do this, in the meantime look at how James from Podium has followed the story on the Podium blog.

Fairlop add their Podcasts.

Myself and Wendi finally got the opportunity to add the mp3's to the school's area on the LGFL podcast site. I was pleasantly suprised at how easy it was. I recorded and added previous mp3's using the LGFL tool.
Over the last term, Year 2 have been learning all about the Great Fire of London. They thought of all the questions they would liked to have asked Samuel Pepys and then imagined how he would have answered them through information they had found out using Magic Grandad, the Internet and the 2Simple story about the Great Fire of London'. I originally thought that the children would be able to work in pairs recording each other asking and answering the questions, but quickly realised that this was quite unrealistic due to background noise. So for the first Podcast, I worked with a group of six children and used the LGFL recording facility. This worked well but I was unable to delete the mistakes the children had made. So I saved it and then opened the MP3 in Audacity and cropped the mistakes and then uploaded it again.

The Podcasts about Glasbury were taken using the 'Sound Recorder' and a Logitech microphone on the computer at Glasbury House. These were then sent by e mail and put on our school website for Parents to access while their children were away. Today I opened the WAV. files in Audacity and converted them to Mp3 files and put them on the LGFL hosting site.
I think the recordings will be useful to present to the Year 5 children who are intending to go to Glasbury, an excellent reminder of the fun they had when they were there, great for the Parents to listen to, a good way for the year 6 children to think about how they present information and finally the children will be able to use them when writing their autobiographies at the end of the yea

Redbridge Primary FM

Latest update on our podcast: We have uploaded the first edition of Redbridge Primary FM onto the lgfl podcasting site. It is the first attempt by the pupils to make a voice recording. They did most of the work in audacity and choose tunes from the lgfl web. Enjoy!
Lynn & Rob

TV Glaitness

I am always on the lookout for schools that Podcast, or even Vodcast, one such school is Glaitness. This school in Orkney are uploading their newscasts, to their Edublog, these include slideshows and video clips of school events.



Click on the image and have a look at what they're doing

Havering are doing It!!!

Well done to schools and colleagues in Havering, who have taken part in an Animals into Poetry competition. Their work has been put into Podcasts and is now live on Podcast.lgfl.net. The winners can also be found here:

http://www.lgfl.net/lgfl/leas/havering/web/Animalartpoems/

Blog in use

Good to see the blog is being read and used. Rob from Redbridge left a comment under Lucy's first entry, explaining how his school will be using Podcasting:

Wednesday 10th October 2007
We echo the comments previously made by Lucy regarding our first podcasting experience and appreciate that podcasting can / will have many uses in the primary curriculum.We're planning our school's strategy for the incorporation of podcasting within our teaching and learning.

We're initially planning to set-up a school audio magazine which will be posted on our school website and hosted by Year 6 children.Watch this space (or should we say listen?!)for further details.Rob & Lynn

What about the rest of you? Any mp3s to marvel at yet?
Please post and let use know

Tutorial Site

A colleague from Bristol has alerted me to a great site for Podcasting tutorials. It looks really good:

http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/

What is RSS?

We talked a lot about RSS in our meeting,last week and it can be a bit difficult to explain, maybe this video will help to clarify to those, who are just getting their heads around it.

First Podcast

This was our first Podcast. Well done to all involved, I can safely say I had nothing to do with it and if you listen carefully you will not hear any Welsh tones! To save the Podcast right click on the icon and choose save target as

Podcasting Mind Maps

Podcast Meeting Thurs 27th Sept 07

Our first 'Official' network meeting took place today. I would say, it was a very worthwhile day, we have all inputed and I believe learnt a lot from collaborating and discussing our thoughts and misconceptions. I now feel confident to try podcasting in school. We shall see what happens!!

It has been a very productive meeting, network schools have learnt:

- how to use audacity to create MP3 files and that you must have downloaded a lame encoder in order to import and eaport mp3's http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (download here files needed to podcast)
- where to access free sound effects, backing tracks http://www.soundsnap.com/ and audio.lgfl.org.uk (see links)
- how to create a podcasting channel through Lgfl
- we have spent time creating our first blogs and podcasts
and much more.....

It has been a worthwhile day, with lots to take on board. Our aim is to meet again in November to see what stage we are at.

Good luck to everybody!!