Category: Citizen Journalism

Podcasting in Plain English plus Frankley Talks again.

Students at Frankley High have returned to their experiment with podcasting which I was helping to support last year. It’s taken a while to get back but we’re hoping to create a learning group where those who worked with us last year begin to show the teachers how to use the kit.

We also went through a fascinating process for a Creative Partneships project – we had a series of teachers pitch to us about how they would like to use podcasting.

It is a really positive starting point for any school work because it helps the staff focus on why they might want or need your support. It allows us to put our effort where we are most likely to find the enthusiasm to turn the skills into something of mainstream value, which of course is likely to further encourage other teachers to experiment with social media.

Anyway thanks to Laura for listening to the warm up podcast for a year 9 group and commenting. Laura also helped me spot this youtube film from commoncraft on her blog. Useful woman: Laura.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-MSL42NV3c&eurl]

Update. Thanks also to Andy for his thoughtful comment on the Frankley Talk blog about the problems of background noise and people with hearing problems.

Sneeze Feed

Not Pete but a fine pic from fernyfern n Flickr. Thankyou

Since July 2007 my friend Pete Fletcher has been keeping a record of each of his sneezes but waited until today to tell me:

http://sneezecount.joyfeed.com/

He offers these thoughts for anyone else embarking on a counting project:

When choosing something to count, it is important to realize that some things work better than othersc. Sneezes work, but other candidates for counting are demonstrably less rewarding. For example “saying the word fish”, or “cleaning my teeth” are countable, but can be produced almost at will, and so lack much of the joy of incremental documentation. (As well as my delight at the times I’ve sneezed while updating Sneezecount either online or the notebook, thereby generating recursive Sneezecount references.)

Bless you Pete.

Pic courtesy of fernyfern (not Pete by the way)

Equalities and Human Rights Commission launches Youtube Channel.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=589k-sl4P-4]

This Youtube channel is my idea of good. A series of cleanly made but short (typically 3 mins) videos on personal experience of discrimination and reflections on human rights. The film above is from Michael Etkind, who survived a Nazi concentration camp. Other films feature Tanni Grey Thompson, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Radio 1 DJ Nihal Anthanayaile.

These should provide readily accessible sources of debate for people to use on their blogs, in classrooms or where ever. Media as a social object.

Tweet tip.