PODCASTS

SET’s TOP 10 education podcasts

1The evidence-based education podcast Key issues in the fi eld of evidence-based education, particularly focusing on how the gaps between policy, research and practice can be bridged

2Mr Barton Maths Podcast Interviews across a range of topics, including lesson planning, problem solving, motivation and cognitive confl ict

3The Teaching Space A weekly, term-time podcast by Martine Ellis for the teacher or trainer who wants to love their job without taking work home in the evenings

4The Creative Classroom with John Spencer How teachers can transform classrooms into spaces of imagination and wonder

5Tests of Life Helping students, parents and teachers navigate the hidden curriculum, so young people can thrive

6The EdTech Podcast The EdTech Podcast gets behind the personalities in global education innovation and EdTech

7The cult of pedagogy podcast Teaching strategies, classroom management, education reform, educational technology

8Tes – The Education Podcast The Tes podcast brings you all the latest news, reviews and interviews with special guests from the world of education

9The NCETM Maths Podcast A regular podcast from the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) 10 Teacher wellbeing Find out more about teacher wellbeing, positive schools and burnout prevention

To access these podcasts, go to bit.ly/3bDYUnT

settings on their phones, iPads and desktops, so to promote inclusion it is best to start with a minimal approach. Some students had microphones but all that is needed is a phone, and anywhere can be the studio.

Listening to popular podcasts

We then listened to some examples of reputable podcasts and noted how every component in the audio fi le matters. This begins with the host, and how they facilitate the story with the interviewee. We discussed examples of how a beginning should suck you in.

The related sound eff ects in the famous podcasts we listened to got learners engaged and inspired, while the use of silences, timing and the structure came to the surface too.

Lastly, we highlighted the eff ective use of satisfying endings. This activity was a great way to embed assessment for learning. It allowed me to grasp what the students could already identify with in terms of story structures.

Punctuation in podcasts

Music can be used to highlight a person, place or even important information or momentous events. It’s a form of punctuation which really got students thinking creatively and diff erently. They had to replace punctuation in the podcast using sounds, so they added in horror clips for exclamation marks and really enjoyed playing around with other themes.

Lifelong implications

The podcasts mean students have memories to listen to in the future, and give them a means to absorb knowledge in alternative ways when their brain is feeling overloaded, which can lead to improved literacy skills. With regards to teacher development, podcasts are something we can use too, to become better teachers in any subject.

Leave them wanting more

We fi nished with a touching example of the power of sound and our voices. Recently, a wedding video in the US went viral. The groom did something remarkable for the fi rst dance. He played an old audio clip of the bride’s grandmother singing Somewhere over the Rainbow.

Her grandmother had passed away but as her voice echoed through the room it brought joyful tears and emotions to the whole room. It was as if she was present and this was simply due to the power of sound. I left it with the students to refl ect on how powerful their voices can be and this really made them think about the internal strengths they have.

Further information

Where to host a podcast Soundcloud (soundcloud.com) iTunes (apple.com/uk/itunes)

Sites with podcast information podnews.net

Where to listen to podcasts Radiolab (wnycstudios.org/ podcasts/radiolab) Part-Time Genius (parttimegenius.show) sticher.com oncepodcast.com

“I t’s hard to let go of something that’s worked before, but the times are broken,” says Michaela Greaves, curriculum operation manager for hairdressing and beauty therapy at Chesterfi eld College. “We need new ways of thinking, to plan for the future now.”

Amid the chaos and confusion of the Covid-19 pandemic, Greaves and her colleagues have been planning a ‘curriculum of hope’ for September, which they have named the Aspire Programme. They are using the Three Horizons strategic leadership model to win hearts and minds across the college for this new way of thinking.

“We are all changed by our experiences of lockdown and the time is perfect to start thinking in a diff erent way about how we work with learners and each other, because we just don’t know what to expect,” she says.

Three Horizons is not new. It was developed at the start of this

Fresh thinking

The Three Horizons model has been around for the past two decades but is now starting to gain traction in the further education sector. Lou Mycroft explains

century by global management consultancy McKinsey to drive business innovation, and is having a new lease of life in uncertain times, particularly in local government where some of the most creative local authorities – Wigan, Doncaster, Leeds – are embracing its capacity to get them thinking diff erently.

Grand vision

In Three Horizons thinking, you fi gure out where you want to be – and nothing is off -limits. This is Horizon 3. The next step is to look back at where you’ve been: what can you learn from where you are now (Horizon 1) that is valuable and worth keeping? From then on, all discussions take place in the space between those two horizons: the Horizon 2 landscape, where there’s plenty of room for movement.

“Three Horizons is useful as a notation,” explains Jackie Rossa, executive director, student

experience, at Chesterfi eld. “It helps us navigate our thinking. Aspire is about putting wellbeing at the heart of a whole-college approach which gets the best out of us all, and we need Three Horizons if we are going to be agile enough to implement this in what is bound to be an unpredictable and challenging new academic year.”

Any model is only as good as the way it’s used, and the breakthrough at Chesterfi eld came from using the Pixar Storyboard process in Three Horizons sessions with staff . “Every Pixar fi lm tells the same story once you break it down,” explains Greaves. “This is a great way to do Three Horizons thinking, because you already know at the start what your happy ending will look like. Pixar Storyboards are going to be a big part of induction. We want students to have those lightbulb moments for themselves, as they think of their own aspirations, where they are now and what might get in the way.”

Overcoming uncertainty

Chesterfi eld College is not the only provider using Three Horizons to navigate uncertainty. At Barnsley College, former director of teaching and learning Stef Wilkinson used the process with curriculum managers.

“I wanted managers to take a fresh look at their teams,” Wilkinson explains. “People naturally gravitate towards diff erent horizons: powerholders (Horizon 1), innovators (Horizon 2) and visionaries (Horizon 3). A great team has all three making eff ective use of the tension between them and I hoped that curriculum managers would see their team diff erently, looking through this lens. I set out the model for them and sent them off . They came back buzzing!”

Using the Three Horizons process got Barnsley’s curriculum

THE TIME IS PERFECT TO START THINKING IN A DIFFERENT WAY ABOUT HOW WE WORK WITH LEARNERS AND EACH OTHER

managers thinking not just about practical issues but about the culture and practices of their curriculum, asking themselves how they wanted students to feel about the provision on off er: its emotional wake. “It helped them maintain some energy and momentum around visioning,” says Wilkinson. “It was powerful online, but it would have been brilliant to have done this in person.”

Both Barnsley College and Chesterfi eld College took practical ideas from Public Health Wales’s Three Horizons toolkit, which presents three ways to use the notation. As well as the Pixar Storyboard and the Voices (or Teams) approach used at Barnsley, the toolkit also includes example questions to tease out potential journeys to the elusive third horizon (see Fig. 1 below).

Greaves warns against overcomplicating things. “There are plenty of planning models which tie your thinking up in knots by considering the risks before you’ve got the idea out of your head. That’s no good for the challenge we’re facing here. We’ve got a window of opportunity to change FE for the better and it won’t stay open for ever. Three Horizons pushes us to look beyond everything that we take for granted.”

It should also help providers navigate the current uncertain times, believes Wilkinson. “This is not just about one-off planning, nor it is about setting up two diff erent scenarios: physical and digital,” she says. “We have to be prepared to move between the two, long term. Although some people naturally fi nd comfort in the thought of returning to what we had, those days are gone. A regular Three Horizons practice helps us create something new, which is responsive to the times.”

Figure 1: Three Horizons model

Horizon 1 What makes you think or feel that the current situation needs to change? Horizon 2 Where is the vision happening already? What projects, ideas and initiatives are in sight that might change the status quo?

Horizon 3 What does this look and feel like in the new academic year?

LOU MYCROFT is a writer, educator and TEDx speaker. She works on the #APConnect project for the ETF

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