Workshop 5 - Digital Media - Speaking and Listening

Digital media moved on this week to consider its uses for speaking and listening.There are now many 'talking devices' available to assist pupils with presentations, instructions and discussions eg. talking postcards and tins. Inexpensive and simple to use. One of the most popular is podcasting.

Podcasting allows children to present their work and experiences to a huge audience over the Internet. Schools are increasingly using the internet to promote what they do, and to celebrate the achievements of their children, and podcasting is an excellent way of doing this.

The word podcast is a play on the word broadcast combined with the word iPOD! It is basically an online broadcast, similar to a radio show and many schools have established their own school radio.It is becoming increasingly popular for schools to link up wiyth schools abroad and have regular link ups.

The educational benefits from this are limitless. As we live in a world where ipods and you tube are now entrenched in our day to day lives, even for very young children, we must promote their educational use.

The idea of a podcast will be second nature to many!

A podcast can connect to an audience of thousands but a child is only speaking in a small group which is helpful for those who find talking in front of the whole class quite frightening. It can be a great confidence builder. T he interactive nature of podcasts allows pupils to receive feedback and provide comments.

Examples of good podcasts include:

http://www.downs.kent.sch.uk/podcast/?pid=10&type=podcast&title=The+Downs+FM+%28Podcast%29

http://www.sandaigprimary.co.uk/radio_sandaig/index.php

It is important to remember that good monitoring controls are in place!

 

Digital Video equipment was also put to the test. We attempted some basic animation using plasticine and a digital blue video recorder.It gave us some indication of the patience required at Aardman in producing Wallace and Gromit! A sequence of shots are recorded with a slight movement of the plasticine shapes each time.Over 100 shots created 6 seconds of film!

I have worked with Year 6 pupils in producing animated stories and believe the opportunity for cross curricular work is immense. Literacy for  creating the story, art in designing the backdrop and characters, maths to consider scales required and timing issues etc, etc! The main problems stem from unco-operative video recorders which can delay pupils and lead to boredom! It is therefore not easy to keep a whole class working at the same stage and probably better to teach the entire process at the start of the lesson.

Of course, animation is not the only option. It is possible for schools to turn pupils into film stars themselves! The following articles has some great examples:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/digitalvideo/story/0,,842745,00.html