Schools

Using podcasting to support language and communication

Summary

Using the simple vehicle of reporting on a local news story each week, a class of 15–16-year-olds with severe learning difficulties discussed their chosen story, and after rehearsing their sounds, words, phrases or sentences, recorded it onto an iPod. Once transferred and edited on computer, it was then available as a podcast to support self-review and to communicate with others.

Organisational information

Name: Sean O’Sullivan
Job title: Deputy Headteacher
Organisation: Frank Wise School
Address: Banbury

Project overview

Creating a podcast can be a highly motivating activity for any learners, and particularly for those who have speech and communication difficulties. It encourages them to practise sounds and words they find challenging, and to strive for their 'best take'.

Frank Wise School caters for 94 children with severe learning difficulties, with ages ranging from 2 to 16. Classes are organised in age groups with around nine pupils in each class, led by a teacher with the help of two support staff.

The children involved in this case study were the leavers' class, known as the 10th Family Group, all either 15 or 16 years old. As Deputy Head, Sean O'Sullivan was covering the class teacher for his PPA time once a week, and when planning the language and communication work for this class, he was aware that every single pupil in the group had quite clearly defined communication needs.

Sean says, "I decided to focus on speech production and vocalisation and, as I was interested in the growing phenomenon of podcasting, I was keen to explore how the relatively straightforward work of recording and editing voice work could be combined with publishing the results as weekly podcasts. One of the advantages of podcasts is that they can be accessed by the pupils' families, and can generate external feedback to supplement the process of pupils reviewing their own and their peers' work."

Each week took a similar format, beginning by reflecting on the previous week's podcast, and then choosing the most interesting story from the local newspaper. Pupils then split up into smaller groups to talk the story through, working out individual contributions from each pupil, and practising them. Finally, they recorded their voices and posed for a selection of photos to show themselves at work.

Staff brought in two copies of the local newspaper, the Banbury Guardian, each week, and encouraged the pupils to leaf through it to see if they could choose one story to agree to focus on. Often it would be the front page story, as this normally had a large colourful image, but on a few occasions the class chose a story from within the paper, or a sports feature from the back pages. The task then was for the member of staff to try and elicit pupils' views and comments on the story. The teacher had set target words and phrases for each pupil at the start of the project and gave copies to each member of support staff, so they could then use their initiative to encourage each individual pupil to tailor their comments to meet the aims set for them. The pupils would then take turns to practise their contribution, and even at this stage peer review was important, helping to reflect on clarity, volume, speed of talking and other considerations.

As soon as the member of staff felt that their group was ready, pupils recorded their individual part onto an iPod fitted with a Griffin iTalk microphone. This iPod was linked to the teacher's PowerBook, where it synchronised with iTunes and automatically downloaded all the new recordings. Although the classroom is reasonably large, and the pupils were generally very cooperative about being quiet for each other, in most cases it was preferable to go out into the corridor to record with less background noise. On most occasions pupils were happy that their first recording was adequate, but whenever they felt that they had made a mistake or wanted to have another go, that was perfectly easy to do. Early on in the lessons we had reminded pupils how unwanted problems such as a cough, or stumbling over words, could be edited out very easily. By this age our pupils have normally had access to sound editing software, and this was the case for most of these children, so they understood that they could just start talking again, or have adult prompts, which could be edited for the podcast.

Once the sound files were downloaded into iTunes from the iPod, the next step was to drag them out as AIFF files, and then use a sound-editing tool to clean them up. Due to technical issues in the original recordings, Sean used Sound Studio to import the sound file via QuickTime, choosing 44MHz and 16-bit sound. This ensured that the files would play correctly when assembling them as a series of discrete voice files in Garageband. Although Garageband is designed as a music production tool, it serves as an excellent 'studio' for sequencing the vocal work. Sound Studio provides a very clear interface with visual waveforms so it's easy to 'see' the sounds and decide what needs to be cut and what should be kept.

Sean comments, "My approach was that the pupils' best efforts should be celebrated and put on show, just as would be done with putting paintings or other work on display on the wall. Thus, the podcasts in most cases cut out the adult prompts, except where they help the listener to understand what the child is saying. In some cases they have been cut to bring two or three words together which were actually spoken one by one with separate prompts for each word. In one girl's case, there were several examples over the year where the volume of her speech was boosted."

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