First INSET of Autumn and I am on a Podium

What a great session I had earlier last week. Podcasting and the Renewed Framework @ Chadwell and all through the medium of 2Connect and with Podcasting done through Podium. It struck me once again that this is an extremely easy piece of software to use and get your head round. And yes I have blogged about this before, and there are many of you who will nag and say but Audacity is free. Yes it is and it can do things that Podium can not, but that will change, we eagerly await the upgrade and then that will make this the app for primary Podcasting on a Windows platform.

Why do I rave about it?

I think we have to remember audience when we talk about new applications. Teachers (and some ICT Coordinators are busy and sometimes even suspicious of new ideas). If an application is going to take a long time to work out, or if the interface looks unfamiliar they'll leave it to the tech teachers to do. This already happens in some schools, where the sexy bits of ICT gets done, while other units are brushed under the server or taken up with typing up/ finishing off or 'research (read googling about) for our Romans work'. The usual suspects : Colour Magic, Kartouche, 2Paint a picture, Newspapers in Word. get done to death while spreadsheets, control and databases get short shrift. So, with this in mind teachers need something easy, something they can switch on and work out quickly.


Podium has an easy interface with intuitive contols and a general ease of use, it just works and as a trainer I can trust it, and does all this without a lame encoder! I was interested to read Eneas's comments, about other soloutions,in the podium case study, which I think ring true of Audacity and is perhaps why a teacher said to me at the end of last term,'little ones (year 2) are too young to Podcast'


“We had heard of podcasting and had been talking about how to integrate it into the curriculum, but most of the software available was not appropriate for the age groups we work with and didn’t support joint projects. With other applications, we would have to do a lot of the work instead of allowing the children to run free with it, making it too hard for us to teach and too much for the children to learn.”

Eneas McNulty at St Mary Magdalen’s RC Junior

Here as promised are the two podcasts which I was given permission to share.

J and J