My story I have chosen for the radio news cast

My Story:

Controversial 'free school' offering taster days to London teens

ELAM (East London Arts and Music) college, a new ‘free school’ scheduled to open in September 2014, is now offering 16-19 year-olds the chance to sign up for a series of free ‘taster days’, despite criticism from some quarters regarding the employment of unqualified teachers.

Based in London’s Tower Hamlets, ELAM was founded by one half of UK pop act Chase & Status (William Kennard) and Sir Nick Williams, who served as head teacher at the BRIT School for ten years. The school will feature state-of-the-art facilities and aims to provide young people with “potential but no direction or knowledge about the industry” a greater understanding of the arts via a group of experienced music industry figures. All, of which, will be free of charge to the student, yet, although stated-funded, will operate outside of local authority control.

While some have championed free schools such as ELAN for their potential to educate children and teens who otherwise wouldn’t have access to such educational facilities, others have called into question the notion of employing unqualified teachers and not teaching the national curriculum.

One such dissenting voice was that of deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who said that free schools and academies should only employ professionally qualified teachers. He also said in an interview with the BBC that "children using taxpayer-funded schools had a right to expect basic standards."

In contrast, Mayor of London Boris Johnson has been vocal in his defence of free schools and their right to employ unqualified teachers. Speaking to the BBC, Johnson commented: "Some of the greatest teachers in the world don't necessarily have the full set of qualifications.I think you need to be flexible, look at the individual and see what they have got to offer the pupils.

"I think back to my own childhood and the people who taught me and many of them didn't have an educational qualification at all, some of them were in Japanese prisoner of war camps... and they were fantastic."

In its first year, ELAM will offer 72 places, with the selection of candidates based on a standard application form process and an assessment day.

source: http://www.mi-pro.co.uk/news/read/controversial-free-music-school-offering-free-taster-days-to-london/018240

My views on this story:

I personally think that the school should not have untrained teachers because I am a student studying in school and I wouldn't want any untrained teacher teaching me because I want to pass my exams and having someone not trained to teach a subject means that they don't know that subject inside out to teach it properly to the students.

Planning

Our radio station is called Fusion FM

This table shows what me and my partners story are which we will use in our newscast:

• What angle we are going to take
• How we will we attract our audience
• How our newscast will be different from other newscast's
• How our news will be interactive

There are 4 people in our group consisting of myself, Tahera, Asiya and Ouarda. We decided to divide the group and do it in pairs to find our story.

I have decided to do another angle which will be a Voxpop on a teacher a parent and a student to get their personal view of what they think about untrained teachers.

* Tahera is not present in our group anymore

My Preliminary Task

Preliminary Task:

Me and my partner did our preliminary task by writing a short script for our radio and then recording it to edit on audacity.This was our final audio after it was finished.

Our script involved an interview whereby my partner was the radio presenter interviewing me and i was the guest who was the author of a new book for teenagers. She asked me a couple of questions where I answered them and then read a few lines from the opening chapter.

We added music to the background to make it more interesting to listen to and we also edited it to make the music not overlap our speech so the listener cant hear, so we put the music lower than our speech so its clear to hear.

What I learnt from doing this preliminary task is how to choose a story that was suited to my audience which was teenagers and how to write the script so that it contained the important parts and also information that was relevant to my audience. I learnt how to sound clear and loud whilst I was recording which ensured that I know how to sound in the final product. I also learnt skills from using Audacity as I became more confident in using it and was able to successfully edit my audio properly.

How to use Audacity: Practice

Audacity The Basics:
Audacity is a free audio recorder and editing software which is also free. I will be using this software to do my radio show as it is simple to use once you get used to it, I already have experience with this software from my ICT GCSE controlled assessment where I had to record a short advert for a charity event I was doing.

Once you have downloaded Audacity you will also need a decent microphone you can plug in or you could just use the microphone built into the computer and also speakers.

Recording:
Click the big red button and start speaking into the microphone. 
The stop button is the yellow square and the pause button is the 2 blue lines if you have paused you can play it back and continue pressing the green button.

Adding audio to the background of your recording:
To add another audio such as music you should click File then Import and then Audio. Your audio will appear under your recording. 
You can add background music to your audio by inserting a sound clip of your choice and it will appear under your audio.

Deleting mistakes:
The selection tool is shaped like an 'I' once you have chosen what to select you click on the area and drag your mouse up to the part you want to stop at and then press the 'delete' button or press 'cut' from the 'Edit menu'. You can do the same for copying or pasting by right clicking your mouse or going on the 'Edit menu'.

      Before the cut                 







After the cut

Distribution of Stories for our News cast

As a group we chose our news stories for the radio.

Me: Controversial 'free school' offering taster days to London teens.

Asiya: 55 year old man that raped an 8 year old girl

Ouarda: Cyber bullying 

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary: Asiya & Ouarda