Everyone seems to podcast these days; radio shows, comedians,
newspapers – even the Tate offers a podcast to its visitors. They’ve
become a permanent fixture in the classroom too, because people
discovered how much they have to offer both pupils and teachers.
They’re simple and inexpensive to make and you can use them in every
aspect of the curriculum. Getting pupils to create their own podcasts
can improve their literacy and communication skills with the added
motivation of providing interesting content for an audience. Teachers
benefit too, with the opportunity to record sounds and short snippets
of information to play in lessons, school plays and assemblies, or for
pupils to take away and listen to at their own pace.
Podcasting is now part of the technology lover’s staple diet (a sweet
yet healthy dessert if you will), but how did it make it onto our
digital plates? We decided to go back to our roots (in a podcasting
sense) and see how this phenomenon began.…
The Years B.P. (Before Podcasts)
In the days of yore, when times were simpler and podcasts not yet a
twinkle in anyone’s eye, people shared information and their personal
opinions in good old fashioned written blogs. There was nothing
particularly fancy about them, but they gave web users a digital
soapbox to stand on as they championed, ridiculed or complained about
day to day life. Then somebody decided that they needed something more
than simple text; they wanted their voice to be heard in its purest
form, and so began audio blogging. Anyone could record themselves in an
mp3 file and post it up on the internet for their adoring (or ignoring)
fans, so audio blogs quickly became a universal sensation.
The Epiphany
Of course, they weren’t perfect. Once you’d found an audio blog that
you liked, you had to keep going back to its original website to
manually check for updates. It was all a bit inconvenient and Adam
Curry (MTV video-jockey of 1980s fame) decided enough was enough. He
talked to software developer Dave Winer to see if they could come up
with a way to let listeners automatically download their favourite
audio-blogs without having to retrace their steps every time.
Let There Be Automatic Updates
Curry and Winer were on a mission to create what would eventually
become the first prototype podcasts. Winer’s first move was to add a
file enclosure to audio files, allowing them to be carried in RSS
(Really Simple Syndication) or news feed aggregator (a scary way of
saying “information collector”) format.
File enclosures are a sort of stealthy SatNav, directing your computer
to the download destination (without telling it to do a U-turn). No
longer did people have to bookmark websites and check them obsessively:
they could simply rely on technology to do the work.
Curry took the next step, by creating the first ‘podcatcher’. This
software reads file enclosures, checks for audio updates and downloads
the new files. It even automatically transfers them to portable mp3
players, and so the podcast was born. The creators set about promoting
their new pet project and soon it found its way into the limelight.
What’s In a Name?
The word ‘podcast’ was first coined in February 2004 by Guardian
journalist, Ben Hammersley. He combined the words ‘pod’ and ‘broadcast’
together and came up with ‘podcast’. Lucky he didn’t do it the other
way round – we’d all be listening to ‘broods’…
Of course, one journalist inventing a word doesn’t mean instant fame;
blogger and columnist Doc Searle kept track of the number of Google
hits for the word ‘podcast’ as time went by, to see if it would take
off. In his first count in September 2004, Google came up with just 24
hits. Not bad for a burgeoning technology, but would it continue to
grow? Apparently so: by mid-October, entering ‘podcast’ in Google gave
more than 100,000 hits. Exactly a year on from the first search, Searle
found himself looking at over 100,000,000 results. Podcasting had well
and truly broken into the social consciousness and even found its way
into the dictionary in 2005, along with ‘chip and pin’, ‘gamespad’ and
‘pukka’. The creators made a name for themselves too, particularly Adam
Curry, who is now widely known in the computer world as The Podfather.
Yes, really.
In Practice
Although podcasting sounds complicated when you get down to the
technical details, making your own is actually really simple. It’s not
just for Internet geeks (or ‘mouse-potatoes’); anyone with a microphone
and the right software can put together original content in virtually
no time. This includes schools, where it’s a fantastic tool for a huge
number of activities, including creating progress reports and diaries
with your pupils. Children can write out a short script, communicate
and record their ideas, and then edit themselves until they’re happy.
They learn how to be organised and self-critical, but the best thing is
that by the end, they have a fun and informative podcast that they can
listen back to and share with their teacher, their classmates and their
family.
It boosts your school’s profile in the community too, because people
can sign up for your podcasts and find out what kind of things your
pupils get up to. You can make public podcast about anything, from
recent school trips to upcoming events. Chandler’s Field School in
Surrey even provide a 5 day national weather podcast – very handy for
staff, pupils and prospective visitors (well, they wouldn’t want to be
caught in a downpour without an umbrella, would they?)
A huge number of primary schools now use podcasting in lessons. Pupils
at Sussex Road Primary School in Kent created their own podcasts about
the Amazon rainforest as part of an ongoing project, while another
school in Nottingham rewrote the lyrics of the Queen hit ‘We Will Rock
You’ – with a space theme! The possibilities are endless and just to
get your imagination going we’ve come up with a few ideas of how you
can use podcasting to enhance your science lessons…
Teach your pupils about sound and vibrations by asking them to record
the noises that different objects make. Get them twanging guitar
strings or simply tapping on desks and they can hear the differences
between them.
Give them a theme and let them loose with portable recording equipment.
They can record birdsong, running water and the wind blowing through
the trees to create their own nature podcast, or go the other way and
record man-made noises like traffic and footsteps.
Why not make your own podcast? Record yourself going over useful
information for upcoming lessons and your pupils will be off to a great
start! It’s good for long-term projects too, because you can keep
adding content as much as you wish!
Now for an offer the Podfather himself couldn’t refuse: get in touch
with our education specialists and we’ll share all of our podcasting
wisdom with you!
Call 03332 409 333 to speak to one of the team, or email us at learning@jigsaw24.com.