Schoolmaster’s Blog

This is the 3rd chapter of our students’ radio play “Kutikula”. This time, Kutikula suffers from a severe depression. Well, being Draculas’s younger brother ain’t easy…

The girls think of a way to cure Kutikula from that depression: a trip to New York. Their means of travel? A globe!

Enjoy.

Kutikula 3

Our heros from chapter one, a group of students fed up with their English
homework, are miraculously transferred to Romania. They find themselves in the company of Dracula’s slightly frustrated younger brother…

Enjoy!

Kutikula Chapter 2

Hi -

this is the second show of Schoolmaster’s Podcast. One of the ideas I have had in the back of my mind is the use of podcasts for student-made serialized radio plays or audio books. Creating radio plays has been almost a standard in our curriculum, especially in the language classroom. My town has the privilege to have an independent radio station, the Offener Kanal Jena. It’s perhaps good to know something about the concept of those “open stations”: In Germany, you have to pay a monthly fee for every TV-set and radio you own. This fee goes to the public stations, since they do not run commercials most of the time. This money also enables them to create some programmes that might not be quite as mainstream (documentaries etc.). A part of this money goes to these “open stations” as well: small communal stations (mostly radio, but there are a few TV stations as well) that have to be open for anyone who wants to produce and broadcast a programme. They provide studios, technology, air time and help. Plus - and here we’re getting to the point - most of them offer support for schools that want to do some radio work. Our station does that, in a wonderfully supportive manner. So, some of our 10th graders (when they were still grade 9) decided to produce a radio play (as a result of an English homework ). They did most of it on their own, just very little support from some teachers and quite some help from the station. But ideas, stamina, work etc - that all came from the students themselves. Incredible, I just wish we had more kids like that. With their play “Kutikula” they earned a rather prestigious award from our federal state’s Media Board. And they certainly deserved it!

I won’t give you the story of the play, of course - just listen yourself. I’ll post the other episodes piece by piece, so stay tuned!

Here we go - “Kutikula”, chapter one.
Kutikula 1

Here’s the first show!

Just playing I fiddled around with Audacity - which is my favourite sound editor anyway. As background I used a nice piece of acoustic music from the Podsafe Music Network. It is from a band called Everyday Jones, the track is “Here I am”. This seemed to be a good track for a first-time podcast…
Good to listen to (the music I mean, not my babble, of course). For my liking, at least.

Hi there,

I’m really glad to have been accepted to the ELT Podcasting Course although (once again ) I exceeded the registration deadline. Thanks for that wonderful opportunity!

I’ve been fiddling around with podcasts for a while now: using them for my own learning and entertainment purposes (Gosh, what great stuff there is…) and tapping in on them as a marvellous source for authentic listening material in the EFL classroom. I’ll put up a list of my favourites asap. For now, this little message here must do…

I am very much looking forward to collaborating with you!