If you are a teacher or school leader looking for a one-stop professional development resource focused on teaching practice, Power Up Your Pedagogy: The Illustrated Handbook of Teaching is the perfect book for you. Covering a broad range of themes, from professional learning and coaching to cognitive science and educational research, this book is comprehensive in its scope. Now that you have your equipment you’ll need to use some software to record your podcast. Different programs have different levels of complexity depending on how simple or complex you wish to make your podcast. Here are some suggestions: Finola Wilson added: “It really is the only book you’ll ever need to improve your practice in the classroom.”

A podcast is an episodic series of audio recordings usually organised around a subject or theme, falling somewhere between a radio show and a blog. As a medium podcasts are immensely popular among young adults (15-24) with one in five now listening to podcasts regularly at least once a week. If you haven’t listened to a podcast before, you might like to try Impacted– a podcast created by the University of Sussex looking at the impact that research can have on the world or TEL: US– The Technology Enhanced Learning team’s own podcast.Their book, Power Up Your Pedagogy: The Illustrated Handbook of Teaching, is a one-stop professional development resource for teachers. Audacity– A great free open source software available for both Mac and Windows desktop and laptop computers. Has a steeper learning curve but has a wide variety of features and editing options giving you greater freedom.

You’ll need something that’s capable of recording sound, but most modern smartphones and laptops have built in microphones which can be used. Otherwise there is a broad variety of cheap microphones available, lapel mics in particular can be helpful as they can just be clipped on and then forgotten about. Throughout the book, Reflective Tasks are included to support critical thinking and discussion. Whether you are just starting as a teacher or have been teaching for thirty years, Power Up Your Pedagogy: The Illustrated Handbook of Teaching should prove invaluable as a handbook to support you make your teaching even better than it is already.A compelling description of what we know about how learning happens and what to do about it in the classroom, ably supported by excellent illustrations. It’s clear, practical, easy to apply and highly likely to improve your teaching practice.” Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion Gives students a chance to cement their knowledge of a topic by engaging with the material through the creation of an artifact. Bruce Robertson and Finola Wilson have teamed up to create a resource for teachers which expertly weaves together the latest research in cognitive science with advice borne from years of practical experience of teaching. It takes some powerful and complex ideas, and makes them accessible for busy teachers, without dumbing down the content. It is very clearly laid out, making it easy to dip into, and is accompanied by beautiful and effective sketch notes. This is a book I wish I’d had when I was teaching.” In this blog post I’ll be introducing the concept of podcasts and talking about how they can be used within a teaching context. What are Podcasts and how can they be used in teaching?