Podcasting Training at Bedok South Secondary

 

ATTENTION PLEASE!!!!!!!

 

I didn’t use the above line on the students today though, but it is a title to one of Aya Ueto’s drama shows. It’s about her being a rocker chick, and slowly learning to become a flight cabin attendant. It’s nice. Check it out at www.crunchyroll.com

 

Anyway, how did this "me giving training" all come about?

 

I was asked by Charles, a Polytechnic classmate of mine, to help fill in for a 3 hour training lesson on Podcasting at Bedok South Secondary School, Singapore. The lesson was about introducing Podcasting and the program Audacity, for them to do their own audio recordings. Charles runs a Multimedia and Robotics training company with his elder brother and another Polytechnic classmate of mine (Kevin Wong). They basically supply trainers to schools in Singapore.

 

Since we’re good friends and he was rather short handed, I thought I’d just take up the one day job. And no regrets on that decision.

 

This is Kevin, followed by Charles…

 

 

 

And here are some pictures of Bedok South Secondary.

 

 

 

I apologize for the lack of pictures about Bedok South. Due to my excitement, I forgot, and only snapped the 2 pictures when I was leaving the school, and found their logo on Google.

 

So the day went like this: I went to Bedok South with another trainer named Joey. We met up with the teacher in-charge (Mrs Yee) of the school’s InfoComm Club, and she led us to the students at the computer lab. Joey took the upper secondary students (sec 3 – 5) in the new computer lab, while I took the lower secondary (sec 1 – 2) in the older lab. Joey was lucky as her lab was newer, and had a mic system, so she didn’t need to speak very loud. (She was having a sore throat, so good for her to have the mic). The computers were new and had no problem with hardware. So her lesson went on smoothly.

 

Lessons were from 2.30pm till 5.30pm.

 

As for me, there was no mic system, (I didn’t expect it anyway, I was still thinking of the ‘old school’ method of teaching with a louder voice), the computers were older, the school’s Technical Assistant didn’t install the program Audacity into all computers, and they didn’t copy the lame.dll file, which was required to save the audio into MP3 format. More technical problems include the computer’s soundcard was not working, so the students couldn’t recording or listen to anything, and one pc would automatically shut down itself. I had to get the students to share computers, and I even had a group to use the main computer (which was the one I use to run my presentation slides and demonstrations through the projector) The worse problem was that the student’s computers cannot save their work onto the computer’s harddisk, due to some administrative rights issue. I had to go around saving their work into my thumbdrive. Since there was no lame.dll, every student had to wait for my thumbdrive to come along.

 

 

 

So those were the main problems. Here’s the fun part!

 

I started out my lesson by going through the presentation slides. Had to throw in some examples of recording using Audacity, to prevent the students from getting too bored by just seeing text off the projector. I also thought it would be appropriate to throw in some examples of podcasting such as Mr Brown, who is rather popular in Singapore. Got the students laughing and I didn’t notice anyone dozing off.

 

Eventually, it came to the time whereby the students have to commence on their own recording. They had to work in pairs due to the lack of working PCs. Some of them had working PCs but without properly setup soundcards. So I got about 4 or 5 groups saying "teacherrrrr….. my computer cannot record…. help…."

 

Naturally, I couldn’t be at their PCs all at once, so I kept them busy by asking them to write out a simple script for them to record. While they were writing out their scripts, I could go around to troubleshoot the problematic PCs. I told them they could write about anything. There was this ambitious group who wrote a script as though they were newscasters. There was this other group who went on about ways on how to save the environment. The girls mostly went on about introducing themselves, their hobbies, who is their best friend etc etc…. Cute…..

 

I told them they had to write out their script, EG. 5 lines, and record the 5 lines in a jumbled sequence. They would need to use the editing features of Audacity to re-sequence their work. To prevent them from cheating by recording the correct sequence initially, I also told them that "for those of you who are thinking of the easy way out, I can tell if you have recorded the lines in sequence, and whether you have edited them or not, so don’t try to cheat…" 

 

It’s true. I can.. I’ve done sound engineering on my own before… Haha…

 

Okay, after they were done recording. It was time to show them some effects that Audacity can do. Effects like echo and speed change was to be gone through. But the most popular effect was probably the pitch change. The kids are just facinated by changing their own voices into chipmunk voices, by just raising the pitch. Lowering the pitch would end up sound like an old man/woman.  

 

The students were playful (yes, being secondary 1 and 2 pupils)… I must have been a brat myself when I was their age. It felt kinda good to see secondary school students again. There was this little Malay kid who kept going " teacher, how come I don’t see this, that ". There was this Indian boy who probably reached puberty earlier than the rest, and he was like bigger in size and mentioned a few vulgarities at times. I had to tell him "And you watch your language…", Russell Peters style, when he was talking during my presentation.

 

Just sideline a bit, Russell Peters is a great comedian, check him out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24Ryj1ywoqw

 

At the end, it was 530pm, and they had to go home as Mrs Yee informed that some of their parents were already waiting for them at the school porch. I went around their computers to save their work, and take a listen as well. There was this group who ended their recording by saying "I like the teacher teaching us today". Awwww isn’t that sweet…….

 

I left Bedok South with Joey, and she asked me how was it…. Overall, I think I did rather okay, considering this was my first time giving training. I generally never had problems meeting people, regardless of age. And I like to teach people, probably due to my saintly patience. I like interacting with people. I would definitely go for it again when given another chance. Who knows, I might end up being a teacher in future. =D

 

In case anyone is interested and wants to give multimedia or robotics training, please feel free to contact Charles or Kevin at the following:

 

IT LEISURE AND EDUCATION PTE LTD

336 Smith Street #04-304

New Bridge Centre

Singapore 050336

Tel: +65 67560912

Fax: +65 6756 4763

 

 

Good luck!!!!

 

 

Han