You probably already know the unique comfort of plugging in your earphones and immersing yourself in your favourite podcast. After all, audiences for this format have been growing for years and are projected to get even bigger in years to come.
Unsurprisingly, a podcast can also be a perfect vehicle for connecting with pupils and parents alike as it offers the unique opportunity to share school activities with families at home through their phones and tablets. So how can you best use podcasts to develop parental engagement and encourage pupil participation?
Here are some tips to make sure you make all the right noises when you start your own pupil podcast.
How schools can make the most of pupil podcasts
1. Clearly identify your goals
Before you record a single word, decide what you want to hear in the completed podcast. Fully plan the concept and structure so you can imagine the final result, leaving space for the impromptu magic of things that pupils will say off the top of their heads. Do you plan to focus on a particular area of the curriculum, like we have done with The Reading Café, which aims to encourage an active reading culture in school? Is your goal to capture the opinions of young people in vox pops run by the pupil council? Whatever your podcast’s purpose, you should have a clear enough idea so that you can explain it simply to colleagues, parents and pupils.
2. Make sure you have everything you need
You will need a DAW (digital audio workstation; for example, GarageBand or its grown-up cousin, Logic Pro) on a laptop to record and edit. A plug-and-play USB microphone will be perfect for most purposes, and you would be best advised to use a pair of headphones to record so you can avoid creating an unpleasant feedback loop. A quiet area would be ideal for recording, so speak very nicely to your school librarian and see if they can help.
Always road test and double check everything before a session. Avoid the risk of awkward silences through doing prep work in class and scripting interesting questions beforehand. Also, consider the other elements that you will need to help create the tone of your podcast, such as a distinctive theme tune and background music. The better your organisation is at the preparation stage, the better your podcast will be at the end.
3. Assemble a team of staff/pupils
Everyone knows that teamwork really does make the dream work. Identify the skills you and others can bring to the project in order to put all the pieces of the jigsaw in place. This should include pupils: the leadership, creativity and communication skills they will develop are invaluable for future careers. Work with colleagues in your department on class preparation and other staff, such as the school librarian. When we record The Reading Café, I take care of the recording and technical aspects, while our principal teacher of literacy encourages the pupils and keeps the chat flowing. You might reckon you could do it all by yourself, but it will be much easier, more fun and less stressful if you share out the work to make sure everything goes smoothly when the record button is pressed.
4. Capture great content, edit later
Make sure no one talks over each other or monopolises the conversation, but also try to keep the conversation fluid. Once you have all the raw material, you can use the editing tools in your DAW to be creative and craft it to perfection. Remember, the thing people love most about podcasts is the sense of human connection, so it’s best to keep everything feeling as natural as possible. If a door slam lands audibly in the middle of a great take, it’s worth asking a pupil to repeat what they said so that you can capture it and seamlessly edit the audio afterwards. Perhaps most importantly, you should always record more content than you think need: if you want five minutes on a topic, record 10.
5. Proudly publicise your project
Once you have edited a brilliant podcast, it is time to share it with an audience. Use a platform such as Podbean to publish your podcast on Audible and also create an Apple Podcasts Connect account. Amazingly, you can do all of this for free, yet the opportunities for creativity, pupil participation and parental engagement are priceless. Make good use of your school’s Twitter or its website to let pupils, parents and staff know that your exciting project is out there in the wild.
Most of all, think big and be ambitious: the world is listening.
Peter Kelly is a teacher of English at Holy Cross High School, in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland
