Gary Henderson

The Roseland Community School

Reasons for choosing a podcast

At the college we have a number of students following a range of vocational courses. Some of these are offered on site but we also work in close collaboration with two colleges to offer a wide range of other vocational courses. To ensure a breadth of study all students studying a vocational course follow a core curriculum -this includes a modern foreign language. Many of the vocational students opt to study a foundation language course. This qualification concentrates on the spoken language rather than the written form. In the past a number of students were not entered for final assessment as their spoken language was not up to a suitable standard. We hope that the introduction of podcasts will reduce the numbers failing.

One of the important skills that students studying a foundation language have to learn is to speak the language with the correct pronunciation and annunciation. While it is possible for students to hear a recording a number of times in the lesson it is very difficult for them to practice their speech and compare it to a native speaker. Students often felt that they were responding correctly. In their minds ‘ear’ everything was going well. By allowing students to listen to a recording of a native speaker and then to record their response and compare it with the original it quickly became apparent what they had to do to improve. Samples of work from the native speaker (in German) and from the students (in French) are included in this pack.

The process

The native speaker recorded a number of stock phrases using Audacity and saved all of these as an MP3 file. In the classroom students were able to record their response and using Audacity play the two tracks side by side or switch from one to another or repeat sections.

The mp3 files were also loaded onto the schools VLE so students could have access to the files from home or download them onto their own devices.

As Audacity is open source a number of students installed the software onto their home machines and carried on practicing. We also found a number of students used their own personal devices to both playback and record.

The equipment

The college purchased a number of headsets with microphones (£2.00) and leased them to the students on a buy or return basis. None have been returned so far! We also purchased a number of multicard readers so students could put the podcasts onto the SD memory cards in their phones or other devices.


Conclusion

Students got to grips with the techniques very quickly. They found the whole process empowering and engaging. They were taking control of their learning. Once we got over the hurdle of how ‘strange’ their voice sounded to them many became adept listeners. As most of the students were undergoing the same activity at the same time they were only listening to themselves and this reduced the embarrassment factor of speaking another language.

Using open source software enabled the learners to carry on the activity at home with no financial penalties. All but two of the group had a device on which they could already play the podcast. Some were even able to download the podcast directly to their phone from the internet. This has raised a number of internal issues as we do not currently encourage learners to bring their phones into the college.

Since starting this project we have started to develop podcasting in mathematics - recording mental arithmetic tests for students to try, and vodcasting (sound and video) the starters of lessons. In Applied Science and Land Based we are experimenting with recording the instructions to experiments and other activities, revision points etc.

		Native speaker (in German) Running time:00.02.50
		Student (in French) Running time:00.00.24