Last week we were in Cadiz at the European Conference on Educational Research. Amongst other things, we produced three live half hour radio programmes and I will upload the podcast copies in the next two days.

Today we had an online meeting of the UK Nominet Trust funded RadioActive project. This is a great new project, using Internet radio to work with young people in Hackney in London. the idea is for them to produce their own programmes, about whatever topics interest them. And in the course of the project we hope they will learn a series of different skills and competences, including interviewing, multimedia, producing and editing music etc.

The grant included funding for equipment, which we bought at the start of the work. Of course, we wanted to make sure we had all the equipment we might need in the course of the two year project (we will post this up soon in case anyone is interested). We adopted a cascade model for training, with Pontydysgu running a two day workshop for youth workers who would be working with the young people. Of course we wanted to show the best that could be done wit such equipment, using wireless microphones, a portable mixing deck and an Apple computer to broadcast a half hour radi0 programme. Although I was not there, by all accounts the workshop was a great success.

The idea was the youth workers would follow up by running their own workshops with young people. But as sometimes happens, contracting issues crept in to delay the live launch. And by the time we were ready for working directly with young people, the youth workers were not confident about using our advanced ‘outside broadcast’ radio set up.

Although we had taken a lot of trouble to design the workshop to scaffold the learning process around skills and competences such as interviewing and designing and producing media, in the course of today’s meeting it became apparent that we had failed to scaffold the learning around the technology.

This afternoon I did a one hour on line training session (using Skype) for one of the project staff. Instead of setting up the mixing deck and wireless microphones, we started simple, using just a USB microphone plugged directly into a computer and focusing on a number of simple first steps:

We did 3 things:

1. We used GarageBand to record and edit a short voice input (if there had been more people this could have been an interview)
2. We made a simple jingle mixing a GarageBand loop with a voice over
3. We downloaded a Creative Commons licensed track from jamendo.com and edited it in Garageband to make our intro music for a programme.

We exported all of these to iTunes and then dragged them onto Soundboard. Sadly we did not have the server settings for Nicecast but if we did we could have then instantly broadcast a programme.

Now I am thinking how we can build a series of activities which both scaffold the content of what we are doing but also scaffold the technology which we use.

Of course I should have done this when we started, but I think it is indicative of a wider problem. We have been working in several projects using Web2.0 technology and social software with teachers and trainers. I think we can get over excited about the possibilities such applications offer. Then instead of focusing on the subject or topic of the learning, learning about the technology overwhelms everything else. I had a conversation with Jenny Hughes some time ago about this and she suggested (if I remember correctly) that we have a develop a dual system of scaffolding – one for the subject and a second for the technology. Of course these two scaffolds will overlap at some point.

I have seen a number of attempts to develop schema or even applications which suggest the best software or apps for any particular learning task but am unconvinced they work or even that this approach is possible. In most cases there will be many different technologies which could be used. I am far more impressed by the format and structure adapted by the Taccle2 project, in which Pontydysgu are a partner. This project focuses directly on teaching and learning and the technology is an enabling factor, rather than the ’50 great apps for learning’ approach so prevalent today.

i will write more on this but would be interested in any feedback / ideas.

Photo: Sal Borg

Last year we organised a workshop on web radio at the annual San Marino International Festival (SMIAF). This year we followed it up by launching SMIAF radio broadcasting directly from the main stage at the festival.

Although tiring – I think we put out about 15 hours of live radio – it was great fun. We had a team of four – I directed the broadcasts and co-hosted along with the wonderful Annalisa Schembri from Malta. And Michele Ghiotti! from San Marino, who participated in last years workshop did an amazing job dashing around the different festival sites gathering interviews with performers, vendors, festival volunteers and just about anyone who would stay still long enough to be interviewed. As always Dirk Stieglitz manfully manned the computers and somehow kept the broadcast going out, even when the tangle of feeds seemed mind boggling.

Although we have done many live shows from conferences and events we had never broadcast from a  festival before. It was a fairly steep learning curve but hard to see how we could have learned so much from another way than just doing it. We learned how important coordination and collaboration with the sound technicians and stage manager is. We failed in advance to realise how long sound checks can take and had to plan our way through that on the go. Live festival broadcasts require a great deal of flexibility and very quick decision making. Artists do not always turn up for sound checks at the time they are supposed to, acts do not always stick to the  timetable and nor do artists turn up for interviews at the exact time they say they would!

One issue which worried us prior to the festival was copyright for music. We could not even find out what the copyright laws were in San Marino. In the event we approached the artists and asked them for agreement that we could use their material. and they all readily agreed. This is not a big festival with super groups. The bands at the festival, just like the majority of performers all over the world, are desperate for any publicity they can get for their music. If people listen to a podcasts of their live performance they may buy their records or just as important may go and see them at a live gig. Indeed a number fo the bands asked if they could have copies of the interviews we made with them.

We also recorded a one hour informal discussion between the SMIAF staff and volunteers with Nobel prize winning writer and painter, Dario Fo. Unfortunately my Italian is fairly non existent but the bits a did get sounded extremely interesting.

We will be post processing the Dario Fo session, like all the other festival interviews and performances and releasing them on both the SMIAF website and the Pontydysgu site over the next month or so. And we will be very happy to provide copies to anyone who wants them.

Finally many thanks to the  core organisers from SMIAF, Meri, Matteo and the Tommies for all their help and support. And not forgetting Elio Balestrieri for keeping us supplied with beer!

Photo: Mariorosa di Nublia

Have you got any sources of free and open music we can use in our radio programmes or for multi media projects. Angela Rees has collected a number of courses on this Pinterest. We welcome your ideas!

RadioActive Europe project which will work with different groups of young people and adults to develop internet radio and set up a European Internet Radio hub kicks off in November. But we are already working on a RadioActive project in London, funded by the Nominet Trust and I am in contact with a number of projects and initiatives around Europe using using radio and video channels with young people and adults.

One of the biggest problems for these project is music. Well it isn’t music as such that is the problem. Access to music has never been easier. I am nostalgic  for those long hours I spent browsing in record shops, and taking hard choices as to which album to spend my hard earned pennies on. Now my phone has more music than was ever contained in my much loved collection of LPs.

The problem is the licensing of commercial music for streaming over the radio or for use in downloads of radio programmes. And of course many young people want to play their favourite music. It is a form of curation and self expression. From talking to many musicians, they too want their music to be played on internet radio. It is a way of reaching new audiences who might buy their music.

But the licensing, controlled essentially by the music industry (and certainly not the musicians) is a total mess. I ploughed through the UK licensing documents last week to try to make some sense out of what we can and can’t do through RadioActive. And this is what I came up with.

“1. For broadcasts that include non Creative Commons licensed material

a) requires a sign off by whoever owns the music – e.g. a friends band

OR

b) A PRS For Music licence and a PPL licence.

In the case of (b)

1. We cannot offer the download of programmes or files containing any part of any Sound Recordings. This includes Podcasting.

2. We cannot loop the (streamed) replay within a 3 hour time period.

3. No more than

– 3 Sound Recordings from a particular album

–  2 Sound Recordings from a particular album

– 4 Sound Recordings by one particular artist

– 3 Sound Recordings by one particular artist consecutively

Assuming – reasonably I think – that we do not go over 270000 performances per year the 2012 licence fee for PPL’s Small Webcaster Licence is £189.41 (plus VAT).

If we played say 8 recordings per hour this would provide us with 649 listener hours per week.

We would have to provide quarterly a Webcasting Report detailing the total number of Listener Hours (i.e. the aggregate duration that all users have streamed the service), and the average number of Sound Recordings played per hour for the quarter and (if they ask for it) –  a Programme Report detailing all of the Sound Recordings used during a given day’s programming.
We also need to know which countries listeners come  from (via web analytics).

The PRS license is far less restrictive costing £118  for 118000 streams. it also allows downloading.

How could that work? For instance cover versions of copyrighted music can be downloaded but commercial recordings cannot.

So in summary (assuming we purchase both licenses) broadcasters have three options

a) To play friends original music with permissions (obtained on paper or by electronic media)

b) To play cover versions of versions by friends with permission

c) To play music covered by a creative commons license

In these three cases we can offer unlimited streaming and downloads

2. To include commercial music in which case we cannot offer for download but can offer on looped streaming subject to conditions detailed above

I think we should purchase the licenses and then explain conditions to broadcasters to make their decision.”

It is all a bit of a nightmare. Jamendo.com is an increasingly rich source of Creative Commons licensed music (although I am told even this is contested in Portugal). And I hope through the RadioActive projects that we can start recording original music. But themess of licensing is stigling creativity and preventing many musicians from getting their music held. All this in the name of an industry which has spectacularly failed to keep pace with changing technologies and changes in the social ways in which we listen to and share music.

I had a lot of fun in Koblenz last week. We have been experimenting for some time with different ways of using internet radio. And my old friend,  Andreas Auwärter, invited me to co-host a live radio internet radio programme as the conclusion to the tenth Koblenz e-Learning days conference on Wednesday 12 June. The programme focused on the current “Big Challenges,” in the field of media-supported learning.  What is our “… giant leap for mankind” for e-learning in the college in 2015 or 2020? It was supposed to build on an hour of group work to prepare the contents for the programme. To be honest I was unsure if an hour would be long enough. In the event the conference overran and there was only 15 minutes. But, to my pleasant surprise, the participants had worked their socks off in the 15 minutes available and came up with some wonderful and rich ideas which they explained in the programme.

You can listen to the programme here. A couple of interviews are in German, the majority in English.

Thaks to Andreas and to everyone who took part.

This month sees the launch of the RadioActive project, funded by Nominet. We will be ru8ning a training workshop in London for youth leaders interested in supporting young people in producing their own internet radio programmes. And we have already a lot of interest in the project.

But it is not just north Europe where radio is attracting attention. In the border between Burma and Thailand, the Rising Voices grantee project Karen Border News has launched their audio podcast workshop. In this short film, the students of the radio journalism course speak about their experience.