SYN Media

SYN delivers a large number of radio workshops through the Cityscape program run by the Education Foundation, a division of the Foundation for Young Australians. Every week, year 9 students who are attending Cityscape come to SYN for a Radio Workshop, enhancing their experience of the Melbourne CBD and all it offers. Through the radio workshops, students develop ideas for content, research topics, create scripts, learn technical skills and record a radio program in SYN’s professional production studios. They are taught about the broader media landscape and the role they can play within it as young people with authentic voices and perspectives.

SYN and the Education Foundation mutually value equal access to high-quality education opportunities for all students. This complimentary focus has meant that together SYN and the Cityscape program have developed the Radio Workshop into a great skill-building and horizon-expanding experience for middle years students. By providing creative and engaging way for students to think critically, work collectively and have their voices heard through a real media platform, the SYN Radio Workshops improve student learning outcomes for the state schools that participate in the Cityscape Program.

Just like this introduction from Costa of Maribrynong College says, students in the Cityscape Program use the SYN Radio Workshop as a way to think about their weeklong Cityscape experience. At the start of the week, students use the workshop to project their ideas and plans for the week ahead; at the end of the week, students reflect back on what they have learned through their research projects or from the experience of spending a week in the CBD. You can hear in our feedback interview with John, one of the most frequent responses students have to the SYN Radio Workshop: that they enjoy the workshop because it is a chance to learn outside of the classroom. By taking learning out of the classroom SYN Radio Workshops provide a creative platform for students to engage with curriculum in a new way that is both engaging and enjoyable.

During the development and production of their programs, students work together to present their own ideas, listen to those of others and view their own roles and responsibilities. Working in groups to negotiate the production of their program, students hone their social and inter-personal skills. Working in groups, each student plays a role in the development of their audio segments as well as in the technical production of their program. Students are able to work through their ideas and experiences as a group and to organize them in to a radio segment. Each group has a producer, audio technician, music coordinator as well as many presenters who talk ‘on air’ to present their ideas. In this segment from Essendon Keillor College, students discuss two statements about police use of alternative weapons and the link between alcohol and crime.

This example demonstrates how students can use the Radio Workshop to work through the findings of research project that they have chosen for the week. This segment also shows how through an on-air discussion, students are able to engage is a critical analysis of important social issues by looking at them from multiple perspective and having healthy and respectful debate about the issues.

Every week, the audios from all of the SYN Radio Workshops are posted on the SYN Media Edublog. Posting the audio online, gives schools and students the opportunity to share and listen to their programs online. This offers a sense of validity to young people that they are not speaking only to themselves but to a wider audience.

When asked what they enjoy most about the Radio Workshop these were the most frequent responses:

The opportunity to have their voices heard by online their communities and potentially the world, expands the experience of the SYN Radio Workshop beyond from a stand alone exercise in critical thinking into an opportunity for the unique voices of young people are heard via a real and relevant media platform. SYN Radio Workshops have improved the learning outcomes for state School students participating in the Cityscape program by offering a new context in which to learn about critical thinking, communication and their place within the wider culture.