After being trialled in a number of primary and secondary schools across the country, Podium is bringing podcasting within the reach of everyone, giving teachers and pupils the chance to create podcasts quickly and easily. 

“The possibilities of using podcasting within a classroom environment are absolutely boundless,”

As well as allowing pupils to display and extend their creativity using audio as a means of expressing themselves, teachers are able to use Podium to regularly communicate with parents through posting school updates on the website.  They can also publish lesson guides to help students who may have missed sessions through absence or who simply need reinforcement when completing homework assignments.

e-Safety For e-safety guidance when using Podium, please refer to the relevant section within the Getting Started Guide (page 42).  For further information on general e-safety within schools, see http://schools.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=is

Group working

Group working has also been enhanced through Podium’s fantastic scripting tool, which allows pupils to assign parts of their dialogue to different members of the group.  For example, if students are recording an extract from Shakespeare as one of their podcasting episodes, they are able to colour code the text on screen for different characters, so each person knows when it’s their turn to speak.

“The possibilities of using podcasting within a classroom environment are absolutely boundless,” comments David Pearson, managing director, Softease.  “The schools that have been trialling Podium so far, have proved that ‘anything goes’ when incorporating it into the curriculum.  Students have been able to create radio shows, record dialogue from plays or simply talk about what they like to do at the weekends, and share this with the rest of the school community via the web.

“We’re delighted with the way Podium has really opened up creativity and we have heard about some exceptional results from pupils who sometimes struggle expressing themselves through simply reading and writing.  Podium has helped students in a number of areas including speaking, listening and general presentation, and users have found that the software is so easy it can be picked up in a matter of minutes.  We see Podium becoming a key tool in enhancing core skills within the curriculum,” concludes David.

A BETT award winner in 2009, Podium is easy to use and allows students of any age to create, edit and publish podcasts all from the same simple interface. Podium is bringing podcasting within the reach of everyone, giving teachers and pupils the chance to create podcasts quickly and easily.

Now with video podcasting!

Podium’s new video podcasting feature is now available allowing you more flexibility with your podcasts than ever before!  Now your pupils can easily create audio podcasts, podcasts with multi-tracks and video podcasts, enabling podcasting to be flexibly incorporated throughout the curriculum. Click here to find out more.

An aid to improving speaking and listening skills, Podium can be used across a variety of subjects and gives pupils the opportunity to prepare and tailor their work to appeal to different audiences.

With Podium pupils can:

• collaborate using the scripting tool
• create across the curriculum
• record directly or import sounds and video files to create their podcasts
• edit bits our or add new chapters and episodes in

All you need is a PC, microphone and/or camera and Internet access!

Minimum specifications Windows XP (SP2), 300 MHZ (650 MHZ recommended), 128 MB (256 MB recommended), 300 MB HDD space (600 MB recommended), resolution of 1024 x 768. Podium requires access to FTP or HTTP

You will also need to host you podcast somewhere so that others can download it.

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