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Charlie Wilson is a fascinating figure who participated in "the great train robbery" in England, was arrested and escaped. He lived for few years under an alias (Ron Alloway) in Husdon Quebec in late 1960s. Of course, there are many residents of Hudson who knew the Alloway family and who were surprised to learn of his real identity. His story grows even more interesting after Scotland yard came to apprehend him.
So far I consider myself very lucky to have stumbled onto such an interesting topic and to have quite a few resources available. There is even quite a bit available on the internet about this infamous man. I have had my students do some very general web searches, pose further questions and return to the web and practice some interview type questions.
I am just in the process of making contact with local residents (have been busy with exams, etc.), and getting permission from school council to allow students to make trips off school property for interviews.
Difficulties I foresee: familiarizing students with the script format. After reading the post about what exactly a podcast sript is, I think it might take students a bit of practice to get used to this form of writing.
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Hello All. Some general comments stemming from the post by James Roy, whose juicy topic involves a famous criminal who hid out in his town of Hudson for a while before being discovered and removed by the British police.
1) I figure the easiest way to get the students to tackle a story is to break them up into five groups and give them each an aspect of the topic to delve into, based on the five standard questions of investigative journalism, and that is what we are really doing here, and then presenting it in a very interesting and no doubt novel way for them -through the ears instead of through the eyes. The five standard questions in journalism are, Who What Where When and Why. Of these Why is usually the hardest to get your head around but also the most essential, because it provides the point of the story, and that needs to be known ahead of time, because near the end, in production it will be easy to lose sight of the point and concentrate the bells and whistles instead.
2) A way of getting to the heart of a topic, and of providing a guideline, or a quick path for the topics to take, is to decide what genre it falls under. Ask the students, If this was a movie what kind of movie would it be? Action, drama, comedy, mystery, romance, thriller, and so on. Then the way the story is presented- style of music, narrators voice, tone, are predetermined. It also provides the listeners with a shorthand way to get into the podcast..
3) If you want to hear some slightly longer (about twelve minutes) but often well done podcasts, go to the CBC website cbc.ca/outfront. They have lots of past shows the students can listen to, and even a tutorial on how to make a radio show like the one we are making. The students should listen to as many of these as they can, 'cause there are lots of good ideas bedded in them; and as they say; you get better at tennis by playing someone better than you. Study the good stuff, and it will rub off.
4) I agree with Linda at Hudson that the script for the podcast the students will draw up after the interviews is a little daunting. Perhaps the teachers can be supplied with standard template sheets of script that need the blanks filling in and the right boxes. I'm sure there are such things, and forgive me if this has already been thought of.
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