Flexing Time to Enhance Teaching

Profiles in Success: Hurstpierpoint College

Podcasting and the VLE are reinforcing the school’s policy of ensuring its pupils develop strong independent learning skills. A growing body of evidence suggests that this strategy encourages maturity and personal responsibility.

Richard Cooke believes that generating your own podcasts provides a more powerful teaching tool than commercially sourced online course content. “Some schools buy in material for their VLE. That’s a good way of populating the system quickly. However, our experience is that students are much more likely to learn from their own friends and teachers. Also, we believe the school and its staff are better equipped to design the learning material best suited to Hurst’s own students”.

Creating podcasts for themselves is also an effective way for students to absorb the material they are using, he says. “It’s the old saying: the best way to learn is to have to explain it to someone else”.

“Teachers will increasingly find that podcasts help them become much more flexible in how they use their classroom time, and make their teaching experience far more satisfying.”

Richard Cooke, ICT Coordinator at Hurstpierpoint College

Parents are enthusiastic about podcasts, too. They like the fact that they can see what their children are studying, and can better support their learning programmes.

Cooke believes that podcasting and the VLE will, over time, significantly enhance teaching effectiveness at Hurstpierpoint College. “I call it ‘extending your classroom onto the web’”, he says. “Teachers will increasingly find that podcasts help them become much more flexible in how they use their classroom time, and make their teaching experience far more satisfying”.

Podcasts are becoming so familiar to young people in their daily lives that students relate to the medium easily as an educational tool, Richard Cooke believes.

“Each generation of children at the school is more capable than its predecessors of using technology”, Richard Cooke says. “Not long ago, we were teaching 13 year-olds to create presentations using standard software. Now the six and seven year-olds do that, and the 13 year-olds make podcasts”.

Familiarity with commercial podcasts also sets a high bar, for which forward-thinking schools can now realistically aim. “Our students expect production standards to be as good as the BBC — and it’s important to the credibility of our podcasting that we aim high”.

Previous Page: Podcasting Drives Inclusive Education