“Cut, take two and… Action”

It was a freezing February morning when I filmed Jennifer Mactaggart presenting her first ever video-tutorial. Just two weeks previously we’d decided to pool her talents as a tutor and mine as a film-maker to create educational videos for GCSE students. So here we now were on Bristol’s floating harbour, filming the introduction to ‘Shakespeare’ and conducting vox pops for ‘English — non-fiction text’.

Throughout the day we worked closely to our script. This detailed the shot number, location, props, costume and, of course, the words. It meant we could jump from programme to programme and scene to scene, making maximum use of every location. For example we managed to persuade the owners of the replica of John Cabot’s ship, The Matthew, to let us film on board. It was a perfect location for the opening of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. A quick costume change and we did a section for ‘non-fiction text’ on the use of persuasive language in brochures for tourist attractions.

It was very demanding filming sequences out of order, but it was the most efficient use of time and location. At the end of the day I recorded Jennifer reading the whole script through, so that I knew we had everything, even if it had to be used as voice over.

Jennifer then went back to face to face tutoring, whilst I entered a darkened edit suite. When it came to digitising all the rushes, I simply used the same number from the script to name each shot, which made it a relatively straight-forward process of editing by numbers. The final stage was then the graphics and music, before encoding the file as a QuickTime movie to load on to the Beanbag site.

So, if you’re thinking of having a go at podcasting yourself, here’s a few words of advice:

• Plan carefully
• Work on interesting and visual ways to present your ideas
• Get permission to film at all your locations
• Remember the importance of good quality sound
• Give yourself lots of time for the editing

Looking around the internet at what is available online there are an increasing number of resources being made available.

Most notably:

• Teacher-based sites. There is an excellent site which includes a series of podcasts for history. Mr Alsopp is a teacher at King College for the Arts and Technology at Guildford, and has produced (to date) 17 podcasts covering a range of subjects from revision skills to Weimar Germany.
• There is also a podcast directory with 440 educational podcasts — albeit with a fair amount of US material.

There has been a greater take-up by teachers in the US — but quantity hasn’t necessarily been matched by quality.

Wouldn’t it be great if:

1. There was a much greater range of UK-based educational podcast material available on the internet;
2. They were easily findable in a UK educational podcast network linked to the National Curriculum;
3. Teachers could find a place where they could learn how to podcast;
4. Someone stepped up to the plate, put their money where their mouth was, and paid for some podcasts to be produced, to show teachers what could be done and to spur on others to do the same!

Well, we have decided to put our money on the line, and sponsor a short series of podcasts. We have arranged for an experienced television producer to work hand-in-hand with teachers to create something special. If you are a teacher, or know of one, who would love to work with us on this, email me direct on jon@jivatechnology.com.

Oh and by the way, we will create a National Curriculum linked educational podcast network too!!