GSCEPod - anyone use it?

[david_1152]

Just looking at GCSEPod, huge BETT winners and all that, but does anyone here use it? If so, what's your view? Anyone use it with frog? Has it delivered a bump in year 11 grades?

 

Questions, questions. Sorry, I'd be happy with anyones views on it really.

 

 

Thanks

 

Dave.

[coz44]

We use it through Frog, I can't remember the figures but our Head of ICT worked out last GCSE results that the students who were higher up on the usage board for GCSE Pod got higher results in those subjects. Students seem to like it, easy to use just a link in Frog and they are asked to create a password to use with the app - The app is great idea, meaning they can listen to it anywhere.

[david_1152]

Thanks.. Interesting, might see if we could issue out little mp4 players in the library - for the students without IT at home..

 

Hmm.

 

Thanks for the prompt reply!

[simpsonj]

Use it here, and we keep pushing/reminding students to use it, but teachers and students like it, and those students who do use it seem to get better grades (ours have gone up year on year since GCSEpod was introduced, but I'm sure our LT would cite other factors!).

[david_1152]

thanks. that's two for two. I guess I should ask this - anybody with any negatives on the product?

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[clockend25]

We started using it in the spring and it was used heavily during the exam season, and the use has continued over the summer and into this year. Relatively painless to setup (SIMS sync and student self-registration) and off you go. Think we're one of the top users in the country currently; we've seen some massive usage numbers out of term time as well.

[mjk]

thanks. that's two for two. I guess I should ask this - anybody with any negatives on the product?

Some things that put me off:

1) It's very expensive for what it does

2) It is poorly integrated with Single Sign On Systems such as Office365 or Google apps so student need to remember passwords.

3) Despite very heavy advertising only a handful of teachers made much use of it.

4) our GCSE A*-C result absolutely tanked after a year of use, so it either didn't help or had an adverse effect.

[Sylv3r]

We've looked at it on a few occasions over the years and the product has improved, but we've never bought it.

 

Our major factors were:

 

Would students use it?!

Not all subjects covered

Not all exam boards covered within certain subjects

Cost

 

We even tried with staff creating their own podcasts, which the students used but it was extremely time consuming to create. These observations above may now be from around 18 months ago, so it may have evolved or become cheaper all of a sudden.

[MichelleJohnson]

Hi Dave

 

I was advised by my predecessor to get GCSEPod when he moved onto his headship at a UTC, he was leading on IT/New Technologies and I took on this part of his role. I got it within 2 weeks of researching it and students and staff loved it! They give you a project manager who leads you through and ensures that you are totally supported, it was a pleasure to lead it and absolute minimum work involved for me as everything has been done for you (resources/training vids/reporting stats). It was such good value for money I bought it again in my next post and by then (2013) every student had a phone/access to wi fi so it was a great success! I'd say def needs to be lead by SLT though to get the best impact across the school as it is a whole school system!We were a google apps school and the sso etc has all been addressed so there are no issues with that now.

[pete]

We've been using it for just over a year now. We did it initially as a "try it for a year, renew if it's useful, gets used and we can see student improvement".

 

In terms of setup it's mostly fire-and-forget. Configure Groupcall, set proxy exceptions (if necessary), tag the correct exam boards in GCSEPod.

 

We've noticed an improvement in GCSE revision and results, especially among our SEN/Learning Support students who're using it a lot, and the student in general have responded positively. As has been mentioned, you do need SLT and HODs to push it.

 

For us it passed the "useful enough to pay for another year" threshold. YMMV of course.

[david_1152]

Right,

 

Thanks everyone. We have a meeting / screen cast booked with them next Monday. I think it's fair to say it isn't cheap, but if it gets driven from the top down does stand a good chance of doing what it says on the tin. Seems the single sign on with Frog works well so I dont have any worries about that. In theory our SLT has been reviewing the actual content, I'll report their feelings on here - if anyone is interested - or considering it the same as me.

 

Dave

[david_1152]

Just in case anyone is watching this, our SLT really liked the content. We're going to do the one year trial thing and see how we progress.

 

Thanks everyone for your assistance. Having impartial views is worth a huge amount to me.

 

Dave