Podcasting in Spondon

With 32 excited Y1 children, 10 laptops and assortment of microphones, 2 teachers and myself we embarked on a podcast of what each of the groups thought of the story of Cinderella.

Firstly we had to set the kit up over lunch time and check that the laptop batteries were charged and that the mics worked ... well that took some time ... but in the end we were there just in time for the children to come in.

We began,(after the niceties) to have a look at the Podium software. I demonstrated on a SmartBoard (bad move - explanations later) how to open the software and where to click to record. We had a class go at 'We're going on a Bear Hunt' and the playback sounded really good as my laptop has a great in-built mic and the speakers on the SmartBoard did the job well.

We reviewed how to make the recording, talked about not chewing the microphones and not fiddling with the wire while speaking and then the children went to their tables to speak and listen to their voices. It was wonderful ... 32 young voices with no problems about what to say. We paused and spoke of 'sharing' and 'taking turns' and then we were off again. These were Y1 children many had never used a laptop before and certainly had not seen a trackerpad and so some of the pointing and clicking was a bit hit-and-miss but they soon got the hang of how it all worked. Small problems were found listening to playback as the laptops had really low volumes which I could not seem to change. Perhaps that was for the best really as they had to listen carefully and quietly. Oh ... and the SmartBoard bit ... well, because I moved things around my screen with my finger they thought that they could do that on theirs ! They soon worked out that it didn't happen!

I then showed how to import MP3 sounds into Podium (just for fun) and they made up lots of sound jumbles. Then we got down to the real stuff.

The group had listened to the story of Cinderella in a literacy context based on the idea of 'traditional tales' and had gone on, in small groups, to write their ideas about the story. These ideas they had 'carved up' so that in the speaking rehearsals they knew who was going to say which bit. And they had practiced their parts.

To set up the podcasts the children had to type in the podcast title, who would make it, the name of the episode and their initials. this took quite a while as keyboard familiarity is something that they are working on.

Once that was done with papers at the ready, the red buttons around the room were pressed and the recording started. Some stuttered and stopped and we restarted ... some spoke loudly and softly, some repeated. But, after all the trials were done they were satisfied with their own individual bits.

These Podium files were then saved as Podium MP3 files so that I could collect them and stitch them together to make up the final Cinderella Podcast.( They did not publish their individual files as the network was going a little slowly)

When all the files had been collected on my portable hard drive we did a final class podcast on my laptop of 'Heads and Shoulders, Knees and Toes'.

The whole thing took the best part of two hours and the children did not appear to flag once. They stuck to the task and appeared to have had a good time. The quality of the literacy was also good and the 'soft' curriculum aspects of sharing and collaborating were well to the front.

You can listen to the Cinderella podcast by clicking here or by pasting this address into iTunes:
http://www.podiumpodcasting.com/~182812/PSLiteracyGr260308182321/rss.xml