Hillside Beatbox radio station
David Noble is a teacher at Hillside School, a residential school for boys aged 11-16 with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. A Radiowaves internet radio station has been introduced to the school which consists of a web page to which a responsible person in the school (the publisher) can upload text-, picture- and audio-based stories. These stories are generated by individuals or small groups of pupils.
Classes across the 11-16 age range have contributed stories to the Radiowaves station, primarily to document key events in the school year or class and individual work. The class which has contributed (and benefited most) from this ICT has been the S3/S4 support class. Four of the five pupils in this class have a Record of Need, and all are working on Access and Intermediate units.
Staff at Hillside School have spent the last five years developing and introducing Access and Intermediate courses, and improving 5-14 provision. Personal and Social Education and Independent Living courses have been introduced which have resulted in many links being made with the Fife community. ICT resources have been central to all teaching and learning developments.
Among the school’s aims, they wish to foster community spirit and encourage pupils to develop their concept of self. In recent years, teaching staff have participated in ICT training, so when they were introduced to the idea of a school internet radio station there was willingness for budgets to be ‘picked’ and planning time to be spent on attempting to introduce it into the school.
The school has signed a one-year (rolling) deal with Radiowaves (provided by Synergy TV). This creates web space within the online Radiowaves community for the school to name their station and to begin customising it.
The minimum needed to produce MP3 audio, compatible with Radiowaves, is a standard MP3 player with built-in microphone (to allow mobile recording of speech) and Audacity freeware. Audacity is freely downloadable from the internet and allows audio to be mixed and altered. Additionally, Audacity converts the .wav audio file on the MP3 player to an uploadable .mp3 file.
A basic digital camera allows up to three photographs to accompany each story. Pictures are simply uploaded via the PC to the station's web page.