Orange Grove Primary School

The Walls Crash Down

Adding further to the positive impact of podcasting in learning is, according to Fuller, the elimination of some of the traditional barriers surrounding the classroom. "The classroom is actually an isolated environment, with parents and other teachers having little opportunity to actually see what the students are working on," he says.

"In the past, parents had to rely on the limited information their children give them about their life at school. Now the parents of our students are able to go onto the Internet and either listen to the podcasts from within their Web browser or download them to their computer and then onto their iPod. For those parents who don't have Internet access, we simply use iTunes to burn copies to a CD, which they can listen to from their home audio systems.

What's particularly interesting is that the students are incredibly keen to tell their parents about a new podcast that's been put online - they're now taking greater pride in the work they do in school; and that's something that every teacher hopes for."

Gaining Critical Awareness

The experiences gained by the Orange Grove Primary School students in developing their own podcasts helps them to make sense of the ever-increasing amount of media-rich information available on the Internet. "It's incredibly easy for anyone to put virtually anything on the Internet and, by virtue of its visual appeal, give it a strong sense of credibility," Fuller explains.

"With students relying heavily on the Internet as a primary information source, the very real challenge for them is to gain a critical awareness of content, its source and the motives behind it. For my students, the fact that they now know how easy it is to create media-rich content makes them highly discerning when viewing content created by others. For 9 and 10 year olds, they are becoming a very savvy group of researchers."

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