The PLN 3 rationale is to use ICT as a learning and teaching tool to raise attainment in boys' writing. Part of this process involved the production of a radio play or play for voices. Basically, each school was alotted a section of a traditional tale - that of The Little Mermaid. Schools showed their targeted children a film of this story and then these sections were written up by each group of children in turn. Thus a cohesive and well-rounded series of episodes was completed.
Why was a traditional tale chosen? Traditional tales tend to offer a simple story structure with stereotypical characters. This enables children to flesh out or develop the characters and the action or plot. In other words, it acts as a simplified planning frame in a format that is part of children's everyday experiences. It is, therefore, a much less threatening method of putting a story together than more traditional approaches offer. It also dovetails well with the re-newed Literacy Framework with its emphasis on multi-modal texts.
As for the technical bits...schools attended a single session in the use of Audacity - a piece of freeware used for recording and editting sound. Children involved were quick to pick this piece of software up. They cut out unwanted elements and added sound effects - either downloaded from the Internet or made themselves - in order to produce professional sounding audio files. Some schools also experimented with rap and performance poetry.