One of the things when you podcast your talks is that you must keep fresh. I managed well today, but that will be the last time I do the same talk (it's only been done three times). You can link to the talk at this earlier post, where I've put the podcast and slides. Did you enjoy it? Has it given you some ideas?
This time it was great to see so many teachers from every discipline and level except modern languages. We also had the involvement of Craig from Greece via Skype and some primary school kids podcasting the podcasting session. Great fun.
We used some iRiver IFP-890s for recording on the move, the Logitech USB mic and the PowerBook to cut using Garageband, although we could have used Audacity with a PC, using LAME to convert the finished Audacity file to MP3 for the blog, hosted over at Typepad. We might also have used our bluetooth enabled telephones to record the audio, bluetooth the audio to the computer (buy a bluetooth adapter if your computer doesn't have bluetooth) and then use a converter to change the mobile file from .amr format to .mp3 (loads of free gear to do this for PCs, and Audio Hijack for Mac).
Typepad costs. To do it for free you could also use a free blogging platform such as edublogs.org to write the blog posts, providing links to ourmedia.org where you could host the large audio files. A little more complex, but such is the price for freedom ;-)
Just discovered today that there are unit (part of Passport PC) on using Internet. As far as I can see the Higher Units consist of things such as using email, msn, chat rooms etc, using the Internet, different search engines, locating sound and video files etc. Just everything we are going to require students to do in our new language course, so we are hoping they might pick up this unit en route so to speak. There are one or two things in the outcomes that I'm not sure of, but have a feeling they will be and with the support of our technician we should manage to do it.
Posted by: Lynne | May 23, 2006 at 09:49 PM
I like the idea of picking up credit 'en route' for skills that are just required to learn in the first place. It does make me wonder how important it would be, therefore, to have separate ICT classes to achieve the same thing. Thoughts?
Posted by: Ewan McIntosh | May 23, 2006 at 10:09 PM
You can also get free blogs for educational purposes from http://ethink.org.uk
Posted by: Steve | May 23, 2006 at 10:17 PM
I was at your seminar at e-live on Tuesday and have set up a blog for the school as a result. It is in its very early stages but it's a start!
trinitypri.edublogs.org
Posted by: k rae | May 25, 2006 at 03:08 PM
I think it just needs a bit of whole school joined up thinking - ICT classes tend to be limited to one period a week, pupils use ICT all over school and we should look at crediting that.
We've worked out as well as the PC Passport Internet Research unit, they can also pick up a unit called PC Passport Presentation - well worth a look if you do any kind of ICT based presentation - my favourite bit of one of the outcomes is about remaining calm when the equipment fails you.
Posted by: Lynne | May 25, 2006 at 05:25 PM
I saw your message about the PC Passport earlier on and just need two mins to look at it (well, we know it's not just two mins ;-) I like the idea of showing that kids have achieved proficiency but also feel that it should just be 'in' every area we teach and learn. If that were the case it would almost be impossible to assess within a nice neat passport type qualification - it'd be messy, complex and sophisticated. What do you think? Is messy the way, or do we need to keep it neat like this?
Posted by: Ewan McIntosh | May 25, 2006 at 06:34 PM
I don't see why it can't be across the curriculum. In this case it is to give these students a qualifciation (as there isn't a language one that fits). It fits together with two other vocational courses that are being taught (in English and Technical/Admin). In the future it is likely that the same students might take these courses and no reason why they can't be assessed across all three and from then across the curriculum (is this not a Curriculum for Excellence?) Nothing wrong with messy - just means we have to work together across subjects and talk to each other - not such a problem in our wee school.
Posted by: Lynne | May 25, 2006 at 06:54 PM
"Working together and talking to each other": this is certainly what we should be doing. But I was listening to a presentation today on ACfE and got the distinct impression that our speaker had not witnessed a lot of this kind of communication. Even in a large school or organisation the tools are there to make communication easy. Look at us! Living proof!
I'm beginning to wonder if we couldn't just do away with the concept of OUR school (no 's') and move to 'OUR schoolS', where I can work with like-minded people wherever they are and my kids can do the same in order to get the qualification and satisfaction they desire. Possible? Likely?
Posted by: Ewan McIntosh | May 25, 2006 at 07:17 PM