Having gotten all of the preparation for the AIM testing out of the way it was time to get back to grass roots and making another podcast. As we had “lost” the “Personality of the Week” recording between podcasts we had to go back to the personality to ask permission to re-record the segment. This was rather embarrassing as the personality involved is our new principal. Fortunately we had not burned all our bridges and Jane was more that happy to go through the “gruelling interrogation” for the second time. This time around the students also suggested a whole new segment called place of the week. This has given the students concerned an authentic reason to research which they were soon doing.
This time around the students were also using the new Garage Band 3 which has a slightly different packaging and look. There are more pre-packaged and novelty loops that the children seemed to be attracted to in the way that they like to use all of the transitions and effects in PowerPoint the first time they use it. All this meant that a lot of the loops were not as generally appealing as on previous casts.
This time around also the children have become a little more performance oriented not necessarily to the best outcome. A couple have tried to use “radio type” voices which detract from their presentation. Another segment also introduced a foreign name for a student from the class. We have since spoken about this and the class agree that the authentic is best.
In order to ensure that we don’t accidentally overwrite or lose iPod content, as in the Principal interview I have decided to train a number of students in downloading and managing the iPod content. So far this is working very well.
