The first track...

Having a brand new numu account in a brand new school (in which I still have to build up the respect (man) ) is fairly terrifying. A bit like being faced with a blank piece of manuscript paper. So I have decided on a plan on attack which will follow more or less what I did at the previous school.

Get KS4 involved, play loads of examples of other students' work, get them writing their profiles and then get recording. As soon as you have a high quality track from year 10 or 11 students at your school, you're winning - a buzz will start doing the rounds and before you know it, random kids will start saying to you on the corridor "that mumu/munu/thingy (sic) website is great miss!"

So I have spent a lesson with my BTEC year 11s introducing the website, getting them writing and entering their profiles, and thinking about what tracks they'd like on there. Because they're more musically mature (and fussy) they will typically take longer to record something - but you may already have recordings you can just bung on there. Purists may shoot me down but I don't think the quality needs to be superb at this point - it's all about getting the buzz going. So pick something which will appeal to the kids but don't worry if it's not great to our ears.

At this point then a word about the first track on www.numu.org.uk/spark (which appears at the bottom): yes, it is me leading the call and response, and yes it is terrible. So there. But it has had over 5o listens, including the vast majority of the year 7 class who performed in it. Let me spell it out - these kids, from one of the most deprived areas in Britain, S2 in Sheffield, have gone home and listened with enthusiasm to a piece of music they performed in their music lesson. Can't say fairer than that (I seem to have reverted to Estuary English. Must Do Better).