ThomasAdamsPodcast!

In three hours between hearing Marc Prensky and speaking in Manchester, Steve suggested that I make a podcast with some kids in Thomas Adams School in Wem, Shropshire. It's not as if I haven't got a veyr long list of things to do but I jumped at the chance to work in my first English school, albeit for a few hours. The result:

Download thomasadamspodcast.m4a If you have Quicktime and want to see the graphics with audio

Download thomasadamspodcastmp3.mp3 If you don't have Quicktime installed.

See what the students said live on their French blog as they heard it for the first time.

I was really pleased with them, and saw some amazing team work. In particular was the team work and web presence of a team of girls. Their preparation was done entirely on a Writely wiki, their French bolstered by the personal teaching freewebs website (NeatLanguages) of one of the students in the group, and then their contribution, the telephone sequence, was recorded on a Nokia mobile with voice recorder and bluetooth activated. Who needs expensive hardware in classrooms?

Please do leave a comment for the guys here, or on their own French blog.

Podcasting lesson: what was good and what could be done better?

Steve and Dale were truly inspired in today’s work, adding two key elements to the learning process. First, they invited three students onto Writely to work collaboratively on their script. This was great for them, seeing that their peers were contributing to the parts they found hard to complete, correcting the mistakes as they went. I wish all the students could have been writelying their scripts, but didn’t have the forethought to set up their wikis. Next time, we’re wiki-ing the planning of the podcast! The advantage was a real one – the girls could collaborate continuously without breaking from their work to lean over and ask.

Steve’s other moment of seamless genius was creating a podcast blog. Here, students could comment on the experience and blog live as they heard the whole podcast for the first time, giving their thumbs up or tip for the next podcast based on what they were hearing there and then. All without interrupting the flow of other’s listening.

At the end of the lesson as the editing team creates the final cut there is a need for some kind of ‘holding task’. Up until now I’ve tended to use three questions – simple questions – to keep students on task:

What was the most enjoyable part of the process?
What was the most difficult part of the process?
What would you do differently?

Today, instead of getting students to carry this out on scraps of paper which I then transcribe onto my blog, they just blogged it themselves. Brill. Instant feedback on the lesson, on the outcome, on each other.

Yet after these past days’ experiences I’ll be changing these questions, asking why and how things could and would be done differently, getting the students and not me to look into how lessons could be improved. As Steve says, making them higher order.

This is exactly what Prensky was saying on Wednesday when he hinted at asking one student each week in each class to sit down with the teacher and plan how the content would be delivered. It’s not what should be taught, it’s how. Prensky did say that, but I hadn’t taken on his emphasis of the word ‘how’ quite enough. He also suggested asking students what the teacher could do better for the next class that comes in through the door. This has nothing to do with whether it’s the same content you are hoping them to learn, it’s all to do with the method through which they learn it.

If there’s one thing of which I am becoming surer and surer thanks to this Shropshire outing, it’s that content is not definitely not king. Teachers who think that teaching is giving more and more content are getting the wrong end of the stick. Kids learn more through process. It might be an ugly, messy process with loads of errors and never quite seeming to get the perfect ‘final draft’, but since when has anyone ever been perfect, anyway? As Kawasaki says, don’t worry, be crappy.

Comments

[Dale]

Here's the link to the Thomas Adams MFL blog where all postings of the day are to be found.

Yes - I heard it at a conference last year where one speaker declared that "content is king" and many people nodded sagely, but they nodded more furiously when the next speaker suggested that "pedagogy is king"; it's HOW you deliver that is important - make sure the audience is receptive and they'll get so much more from it.
If we really are a learning community of learners and teachers (everybody fulfilling both roles) then there should be some sort of consensus over the approach taken.

Thomas Adams' ICT department are using their blog to do just this thing - they are asking for stundent comments on the lessons and using those to inform future practice and ways to improve the delivery. Take a look at the comments on their use of Flash, and on their use of Dreamweaver. Majestic.

Many thanks to Ewan for a good day, and to the students who worked hard to produce a successful podcast.

[Neil]

Wahey! All 3 of you were terrific to work with and thanks for the experience, I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I know everyone else involved did.