Podcasting, Blogging and Flickring at SJT
12 07 2006Today I took my podcasting roadshow to Sir John Talbot’s school in Whitchurch Shropshire, this is my local secondary school.
It was the year 6 induction day and the headteacher had asked me to get a group of 20 mixed year group students to record the events of the day. Prior to the day, just like at OWS, I emailed the students with a link to their blog and asked them to comment on the first six posts. Unfortunately not many of the students participated in this activity, this lead to me having to spend time going through the questions with them to assess what they knew already. The applications I had asked them to look at where all new to them - so today was going to be a big, but enjoyable, learning curve for them.
So after getting their brief and planning the questions they wanted to ask the year 6 students off they went with ibooks, mobile phones, mp3 recorders and digital cameras in hand to record their discussions.
The students were given a brief introduction to Garageband, iPhoto and iTunes to enable them to produce their enhanced podcasts. All photos taken throughout the day were uploaded to the schools Flickr account, they even caught me doing some work - I think I should frame it!
The students were really motivated and engaged with using the ibooks and ICT being more than spreadsheets and databases. All the teachers that popped their head in during the day were impressed with the work ethic and the buzz that was going around the room. It was amazing to see how much they produced. You can read their evaluations of the day here, at present there is only a couple but they have all agreed to add theirs comments tomorrow.
Please check out their blog and leave them some comments.
It was great to see the students so engaged in their work, there really is great potential in developing this kind of experience for our students. I will have to put some time aside during this Summer break to produce a unit of work for KS3 ICT lessons based around these collaborative and social technologies.
Great work, I’m a total convert to the benefits of this technology. Do you think that a Mac is a must for this stuff Steve? I’d be interested to know if you think it makes a difference.
John I wouldn’t say Macs are a must for this but they are probably the best for the job. The iLife suite of applications work so well together, allowing you to import your photos from your camera/phone into iPhoto once you have done your alterations you can then just pull them into Garageband. Garageband is superb at producing enhanced podcasts, but you could produce a normal podcast using audacity on a pc, I know there is software out there for doing an enhanced podcast on a pc but I have not used it yet. You can then open your enhanced podcast in iTunes and convert it into a normal podcast all effortlessly. The other reason why I have used macs is to give students a taste of a different type of computer, to let them realise there are more than just pcs out there. I think if I was back in school I would definately be purchased as set of ibooks for use around the school, they do excel for creative work. If you would like me to come to Hope and run a session with your students let me know.
Steve, this is great stuff. Using your posts and looking a some of the blogs you have created I have pinched all your ideas and we had a go at blogging our year 9 mission day at (mac-less) BRJ. The students love being creative in this way and I was surprised at the quality of some of their work. http://blogofmrc.wordpress.com/2006/07/15/brj-mission-day-blog/
Keep up the good work!