Podcasting is easy and fun!
At Bristol Grammar School, we recently published the first in a series of episodes of a new podcasts on GCSE Class Civ topics: http://classcivgcse.buzzsprout.com. It started when our English department announced they’d started up a GCSE English podcast (https://www.buzzsprout.com/726141) and the School Senior Leadership Team started excitedly tweeting about its potential. Our Year 11s also seemed to love it, and with the rapidly changing COVID-19 situation, we started discussing how we might keep things going if schools closed.
Department colleague Dan Watkins and I therefore arranged a date in the half-term holidays and got together with some paper and pencils, the GCSE text book and an iPhone, and set about laying down some audio gold.
First thing I did was set up an account on buzzsprout.com, taking advice from Peter Forster, our Head of English, that a paid account was good value for money, and essential if episodes weren’t going to just disappear into the ether after a few weeks. When I signed us up, the cost was $12 per month, which gives 3 hours of content. More can be bought ad hoc if needed. Of course, this may be prohibitive for some, but if those schools who can afford this do it, then those who can’t can benefit.
So we decided how we were going to break it down (in this case, one episode for each of the 8 chapters of each section of the text book made sense) and found a small room (minimising echoes!) before positioning the iPhone between us, and starting the discussions. We tried to split the chat between us, and to keep the focus on the topics, but also think about what would help the pupils the most.
There are so many positive things that have already come out of this.
Firstly, we have now managed to get one of our Lower 6th scholars, Daisy, involved, and we hope others might join her for future episodes.
Secondly, it’s remarkable how much spending a couple of hours talking with a colleague about the nitty-gritty of taught content helps to focus the mind when standing in front of a class.
Thirdly, it has helped to encourage me to empathise more effectively with the average Year 11 pupil – it’s not so much a case of starting from the content as starting from their own world and dovetailing what they need to know into what they already know.
It’s also a huge amount of fun, and there was a warm fuzzy feeling of helping people, not just at BGS, but hopefully in other schools that study the subject.
I’ve already had a boy come up to me in the lunch queue to say how useful the podcasts have been for him. As study leave approaches, I hope that this can be a reassuring and helpful part of revision.
