Tag Archives: banton

A Term on my Class Blog⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

I’ve now been running blogs with & for my classes since 2005. I still find them a really useful tool for teaching and learning. The focus and content has changed continually over the years.

Back in the noughties I was keen on having my class blog kept up by pupils (archive.org link).

I find this harder to organise now, not sure if it is my age, the demands of the curriculum or something else. Pupils in my class now post to their e-Portfolios1 and add pieces of work to the class blog which I collate into posts. I also pinch quotes from their e-portfolios for the class blog2.

Like my own blog here I still find my class blog a great resource to remember & review. Of course it is a curated view. Much depends on what I am finding most interesting at the time. I both enjoy reading back and use it as a tool when asked for feedback or a record of some sort.

I was somewhat cheered up by Matt Mullenweg’s birthday. Sometimes it feels like WordPress is focused on content management. Matt’s post show that blogging is still loved.
While content management is a main focus of Glow Blogs my love is blogging. I still think we are only scratching the surface of the use of WordPress in school3.

Posts Last Term (Oct 2023 – Dec 2023 on my class blog )

  1. Glow Blogs – WordPress blogs for Scottish Education ↩
  2. example of quote collection↩
  3. H5P for example ↩

wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display 2021-03-09 19:16:30⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

Reposted a tweet by Banton Primary (Twitter)

Episode 4 of the Banton Biggies Podcast is out now. Scripted & recorded by pupils in their home and edited together by the children in school all in less than a week.https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/nl/bbpod/2021/03/09/bbp-episode-4/

I’d avoided doing this earlier in lockdown ’cause I though it might be tricky. Turned out easier to organise than if I was in class. Even minimal supervision of the edit in school today.

Classroom Podcasting again⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

I started a podcast in my previous school in 2005 which produced episode fairly regularly until 2008 when I moved to a development officer post in North Lanarkshire.

I found podcasting to really worthwhile, fun and motivating. It involved children in all sorts of learning and created many opportunities.

I’ve also produced a fair number of podcast over at EduTalk and play with microcasting  here.

I spent a fair bit of time in my development post trying to encourage the practise. Ironically I had more luck with video podcasting and for a while we had a Mac server running podcast producer which could server audio and video podcasts.

When I started work on Glow I was particularity keen to promote podcasting using Glow Blogs but didn’t see a lot of uptake.

Since returning to class in 2016 I’ve had podcasting in the back of my mind, we have, I think, posted the odd bit of audio to our class blog but until now now made a big deal of podcasting.

This session I decided to get it into our plans covering in particular:

>By experiencing the setting up and running of a business, I can collaborate in making choices relating to the different roles and responsibilities and have evaluated its success.
SOC 2-22a

We are going to produce a multi-episode podcast and look for sponsorship to make it into a business.

There are an amazing number of opportunities in making a podcast for pupils including: writing, recording and editing, making a website, graphics production, finding sponsorship and publicity. We have already ticked of many of the skills that we audit in our learning.

I’ve also been learning a bit about GarageBand and how it has changed since the last time I used it. Exploring software with pupils is a great way for them to learn. My needs for podcasting for Edutalk were met by a wee bit of audacity and the levelator, not complex, but pupils are a bit more ambitious. I am also stepping out of my mac comfort zone and using the pupils iPads for the whole thing, or at least they are. They  are organising things in Teams (to include an isolating graphic person last week) and using the pupils iPads. GarageBand for recording, notes for writing, Teams for working together, brushes, sketches & keynote for graphics, numbers for organisation. Personally I would be using a different set of apps on a mac for these tasks. Moving to the pupils devices gives them control and puts me in an advisory role.

So far we have organised teams for different roles, made a start on a blog, graphics, scriptwriting. Our first bit of publicity has gone out and I cooped my daughter into a Skype visit to talk about her job as a tv producer (and her experience of working on a podcast).

We have started recording episode zero and I hope that will be published on the new podcast site next week. It is good to be back podcasting in class.

micro:bit decorations⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

We finished the micro:bit decorations as planned last week.

I put a quick video of the result on the Class Blog

A micro:bit Christmas

and twitter