Creative ICT News

Advanced podcasting skills tutorials

Isle of Wight based, colleague, Joe Dale is renowned as an advocate of educational podcasting as a teaching tool, especially in the context of modern languages. His blog is always worth following and just recently his output has been prolific - he has been collecting lots of web-based podcasting tutorials and resources, just a couple of which I am highlighting here:

• Cleaning up a podcast with Audacity
• Using Windows Moviemaker to make a video podcast (vodcast)  

Perfect for your Class Christmas Karaoke

Most decent karaoke sites are pay sites, and this one is no exception, but at only £5.99 for a month's sub, it's guaranteed to make the last week at school go swingingly!

Sing to the world, online karaoke

Annual ICT Register Showcase

I am pleased to be running a short seminar at the ICT Register Showcase in Loughborough tomorrow. My session is on podcasting and I'm representing Chorlton Park Primary School where I'm currently working on a podcasting project with year 5 children.

For my session I've uploaded a PowerPoint to Slideshare and created some notes to help inform teachers' planning. Both of these resources can be viewed at http://creativeblogs.net

The Chorlton Park podcasting project is showcased at http://radio.chorltonparkblogs.net

And the wiki I set up to manage it is at http://creativeict.wiki.zoho.com

One of the key elements of the project was to write scripts for radio programmes in small groups, and if I could have had access (blocked) I'd have used Google Docs for the collaborative writing element. As it is they used good old MS Word and uploaded some of their scripts to the wiki.

I'm looking forward to this conference, as there seems to be a host of interesting and innovative practitioners presenting - it's going to be more of a question of deciding what I amd going to miss.

Conference details here.

Podcasting at King's Heath

Download podcasting_flyer.pdf

http://levitafari.sudleyjnr.net/  An audio file embedded in a blog for direct streaming.

The standard icon for an RSS Feed.

http://creativeict.solidcasts.com/xml/podcast/761 Here is an example feed hosted at www.solidcasts.com

This is the same feed displayed in a window on a my Pageflakes page: http://www.pageflakes.com/john21

Or it could be subscribed to in iTunes:

 

Green Park Podcast

Normally, when you turn up at a school to do a day's podcasting, you do a show about what's going on in school, maybe interview the headteacher and occasionally do some poetry reading or play reading and the like. All good laudable stuff that kids love doing and gives them an audience for their speaking and listening curriculum.

When I turned up at Green Park Primary last week I was expecting more of the same. However, They had a "celebrity" in town in the shape of David Graham. I don't think David would classify himself as a celebrity, but as a contestant on Pop Idol and as a backing singer to the likes of Ronan Keating, he certainly has enough of the stardust on him to make him a big hit with children.

His "Natural High Tour" is a schools presentation for years 5 to 8 based on a message to focus on positive role models and avoiding following the sheep into trying drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Judging by the slick performance and the reaction of the Green Park children, the show is definitely a hit.

Working with Year 6, we taped a bit of the show, interviewed David and recorded some reaction from the children who saw the show. Using Audacity we edited the various recordings into a podcast which is now available  for download.

The school use Solidcasts to host their podcast, which is a free hosting service (up to 100mb).

For more information about booking the "Natural High Schools Tour", David can be contacted at: dmg@david-graham.net

Podcasting day: special offer

If you would like me to introduce podcasting to your school: a whole day working with children and followed up by an extended staff meeting to teach the teachers  costs only £400. Alternatively, book a half-day INSET session - a really fun and creative way to spend an INSET day. Contact: john@creativeict.co.uk for details.