How Global Teaching Techniques Empower Your Child's Learning With Mark Taylor Of Education On Fire

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the binge factor.

Hey, welcome back to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard and we have Mark Taylor Today, Education on Fire. He's been a professional percussionist for 25 years and has had the opportunity of performing in some of the UK's finest orchestras and theater companies. So he is a no stranger to the audio world, right? Finding his passion and voice through music gave Mark the desire to share this understanding. Through his drum and percussion teaching, which he provides in schools and in his private practice, Mark wanted to share the creative, inspiring learning he was witnessing in the schools. From his experience of delivering whole class music workshops around the country. This was the start of Education on fire podcast in December 2016. The podcast has now released over 350 episodes downloaded in 147 countries. Simply put, Mark interviews educators from around the world so that he can enable you to support your children to live, learn, and grow to their full potential. I love that. I love the mission of Education on Fire. He's got tons of resources and other things that he shares with this audience. I think that's really the key when you're going to be a deep expert in a particular area and especially an area like education. Not having resources is a huge mess. So he's going to talk a little bit about that with us. He's going to talk a little bit about YouTube and some other things that he's doing. But think of it podcasting as continuing education. I just love that thought. So let's talk with Education on Fire's host, Mark Taylor.

Mark, so glad to have you here. Really excited to talk about Education on Fire. Marc, you have been podcasting well over 300 episodes as we record this and you have been very prolific in the growth of the show. What though, was that impetus that made you start the show?

Well, Tracey, thanks so much for letting me come on the show and share this podcast binge ability as it were. It's always great to talk about podcasting as well as education. So I think the main thing was, was I sort of got involved probably about 2015, 2014, 2015 I started listening to podcasts and just thought, this is something I really like, because I like the personal touch of it. I like the earbuds, like now to go for a walk or listen to it in my car. And at the same time, I was also sort of coming across. There were some people doing some free courses, and it seemed like there was an easy in, as it were. And I don't know, there was something about the sense of what it felt like to maybe do that. And I think that went back to, I guess, probably five years before that. As a musician, I was putting on kind of productions for professional musicians and singers, and that was within the education space as well, and it was great putting that on. But as part of that, we went and did some publicity for local radio stations, and I suddenly had this sense of sitting behind the mic and chatting to the presenter and feeling very kind of excited and very, very comfortable, which I think is partly my sort of music background. But also there was just something that I couldn't quite put my hands on. But I sort of thought, yes, there's definitely something here, which I really like. Didn't think anything more of it. And then I think as those years then went by and podcasting a possibility and a thing, I thought, I can do this in myself. And I sort of saw the steps. And as we all know, there's a lot more work and a lot more to it than that. But the essence of sitting behind a mic and chatting to people was just something I thought, yeah, I can take into this. And then it's part of my journey. It was just that having seen teachers in a staff room banging their head against a brick wall, saying, I want to do something different. I got into this to change lives and support children, and I'm swamped by tests and marking and all of that kind of stuff. I was just lucky enough to be in a position of being in schools, doing some teaching and seeing lots of other opportunities and other schools doing it a different way, and charities and organizations providing great value. And I thought, oh, maybe there's the podcast. It's just chatting to these other organizations, which maybe will help support that one teacher banging their head against a brick wall. And the great thing about podcasting is you can give it a go and see how it goes, and the rest, as they say, history.

That's so, so true. I love this idea that podcasting as self education was kind of what drew you to it, and then not being afraid of the mic is the next level. So you're like, not only Do I want to educate myself through podcasting, but I want to then bring that to others and support them. It's been so interesting to me to see those of us that started in those early days to how it is today. And starting today is. Do you think it's easier? Do you think it's harder?

I think it's easier in terms of maybe the setup. And I think because it's more. There are two sides of it. One is the fact that when I first started, people were like, pod, what podcast? Yeah.

You had to educate them on what it was.

And then it was just.

Kind of the tools and things that you needed. Whereas now it's so sort of mainstream, as it were. You can just Google hosting and this sort of thing and then there's so many options and then you can dive into all the material that's out there. So I think that's the main difference is the fact that you kind of only had one or two entry points and then you kind of found your way. And whereas now the community is much larger and the opportunities are much more widespread.

What do you think the biggest challenge to doing a show at over 300 episodes is?

Probably the time commitment, but I think more than that, it's actually knowing how you want the show to grow and how you want it to be part of your life. And by that I mean at the moment I'm releasing one episode a week as an audio and then I've got a sort of a spin off YouTube channel which I'm sure we'll chat about. But I did also go down the route of releasing two episodes a week for a while, mainly because I had so many guests on my waiting list that was like, well, I have the opportunity to release this and I've still got a waiting list that I can do more and more value for my audience. But with that came a kind of a trade off because twice as many guests, twice as many episodes, twice as much work, and it's not a full time job for me. I'm going to do have a sponsor and have had for a long time. So it kind of gives me the ability to mix and match my sort of freelance world of being a musician, being a teacher and a podcaster. But I just sort of found it took me too much in that direction of it became right on the edge of what I was able to do. And I asked my audience and said, what do you think? Could I take it back to one episode or can we focus more on the quality? And they were like, we love what you do just do what works best for you. And that kind of freed me up a little bit, because I was then like, okay, well, now I've got the stamina and the way to go, and I can plan it differently and I can put systems in place that are going to work for me. And I didn't feel like it had to go to two shows and then three shows and then four shows or whatever. It was really about the quality and the ability to pull it together and create Education on Fire as a brand, I guess, but certainly as a place that people felt connected with.

I'm so glad you asked your audience, because I think that we have a perception in mind of what the audience thinks, and we don't always ask them straight out. And that's what we were talking about a little bit earlier, is that you did do this YouTube spinoff. And what I really like about the concept of it, it's not just replaying your episodes on YouTube or playing them on YouTube and then replaying them as podcasts, which we see as well. This is not just a replay. This is. It's a spinoff. It has its own life. Talk to us a little bit about the development of that.

Yeah, so that's very new. And it sort of came out of this sort of same conversation of sort of speaking with my audience as well. And I had a Facebook group or have a Facebook group, and we have a community there as well. But of course, you have to be in the order to have these conversations. And I wanted to be a bit more sort of general and the people that sort of came across us. And as you know, when you're recording a podcast, if you're recording it as video as well, that kind of makes a different setup and a different way of interacting with the people that you're sort of interviewing as well. And I thought, well, actually, rather than just go down that route, and I had in the past put old episodes that would just repurpose straight onto YouTube many years ago. And there was no real point other than the fact that you kind of doing what everyone said you should do. So this particular idea was the fact that I love video. I'm a big fan of ecamm and being able to do lots of things live and lots of sort of graphics and the ability to kind of mix it up. So it's not just a talking head necessarily, but it was a way of bringing the audience together in one place. It was a way for me to maybe talk about the episode. This week, I bring up an archive episode which has maybe a great resource that's worth sharing. I give a shout out to other podcasters and people in the education space. I can also then do it as an interview show as well, as long as they're happy to come on and be live video. And to say this isn't going to be edited, we're going to be here and we're going to do it as live. So therefore that particular feel of it is going to be different than the audio podcast. But it kind of brings people together. And the great thing, of course, is that with the comments and the ability to interact, if people have a question themselves in real time or they want to follow up on something, just as I might do when I'm listening to a podcast walking down the street, I think I wish it sort of went in that direction or I just didn't quite get this. They can interact as well. So I thought that's sort of a good sort of way of bringing the two things together, but in two different formats.

Starting to have more conversation in a sense. And community. And it's just a little bit different vehicle for doing that, but it still tailors together so they kind of knit together in a great way. And you also look at how you can support that community. And you have a resources list, a top 20 resources that when you. Somebody gets invited into your community, they can access that and it helps them navigate your large episode library. But it also is a way for you to give them a grounding and a foundation into how to participate in your community. But did that come out of the conversations with them as well?

That was kind of there before. And I'd had a few ways of offering people things when they signed up because I wanted to sort of give some value, but I wanted it to be relevant to what it was that I was doing. So I had a few ideas and a few projects that I'd done in the past. But I thought this specifically was, like you said, there's a big back catalog and people don't necessarily know what all of that is. Whereas if they come in and sign up, not all of those resources may be specifically for one person, but there's a real variety there. So they can go. I wouldn't have come across that. I can then go and listen to the episode. But also I know this is where their website is and if it happens to be something I don't know, like we chatted to the BBC and some of their resources that they had on their BBC bite size or BBC teachers, then they can go, oh, Great. Fantastic. I've come across that in a way that maybe I wouldn't have done in a different way. It's just a cool spreading that message, really. And that's really what I see myself as almost is sort of a conduit between all these people doing amazing things and people who are looking for things as well. And we can just sort of do that in this sort of unique world that is the podcast.

And it just builds great trust because if you're providing them great resources, they're just going to come back to you when they're looking for something new next time and then hopefully participate in the conversation and the lives and become a part of that community. So it really invites that in. I love that continuity that you're creating there.

Yeah, I mean, that's. That's exactly it, I think. And I think the continuity, the community, the sense that we can kind of do all this together, I mean, from an education point of view, I mean, you'll know as a parent yourself, it's that we might like a silver bullet that's going to change everything. You know, we talk about young people's well being, we talk about how the education could be more supportive for what people need and certainly what's more supportive, the world and the world they're going to go into for work. I certainly didn't study podcasting or anything related when I was at school, but I think what we are able to do is to know that there are lots of people out there doing certain things in their way related to education or to learning, whatever that happens to be. So even if one of my shows is about the way you think about learning and how you go about it, and be the person that wants to ask those questions rather than starting class thinking you should know it all, that's going to change the way that you feel, the way that your classmates feel, the way your teachers might interact with you, and then maybe you'll be the person that creates the podcast in the Future or the YouTube channel or whatever, because you're kind of feeling like you're on this, this route of the world is your oyster rather than, oh my word, I've got to get through this next set of exams and then who knows what's going to be after that.

One of the things from listening to your show that I struck me as so unexpected is that I expected to have such a difference in your education system in the UK and our education system here in America, of which I having three daughters navigate. And you have as well, you've had three kids navigate as well. So thinking about that, I thought there would be greater differences. Instead, I found a lot more similarities. And I think that really surprised me.

I think it's a sense the world is trying to compete against each other. So this idea of testing and standardization and how do we get all of these millions of people through this system in one fell swoop? And it's. Everyone sort of copied each other and they've sort of learned probably not the best bits, but they've kind of incorporated, separate it into. Into what they do. And it's like a tanker, it's really hard to move. And the pandemic was an interesting thing. The education world changed. It all went online. People interacted differently, the kid interacted differently. The way was given and showed us in the real sort of clarity, I think, of how education could change and keep changing. But it did a 180 after that and it was that kind of we need to get back to what we were doing before. And so in some ways we've almost gone further back than we. Than I think we were sort of in 2019 or so. So I think that's a shame, you know?

Yeah, you know, I think that's the thing is like, because you were obviously doing this show before the pandemic, so you have this sense of there's flaws, there's problems, there's things going on that are unsustainable in the education system and then you have a stressor on top of it. So it's not like it's going to get better, it's going to stress it even more. Right. And it may cause it to completely break apart. And I think that so interesting because I think the podcasting industry did the opposite of that, is that there were kind of some dysfunctional things, but it was on a path to improving those. And then the pandemic happened and those things accelerated because more people wanted to jump on and hop on. And so those things actually got better instead of getting worse. It's so interesting that you can have that like opposite happen in an industry.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a weird thing, but like you say, the podcasting world in its essence I find incredibly friendly and supportive and forward thinking. I mean, that might be due to the infancy of it relative to other things, but I love that sense in that field. I just think that's why I like being part of it because it kind of gives you that sense of community. It gives you a sense there's someone at the end of, not necessarily a phone line, but certainly on your group, your Facebook group, or your YouTube video chat or whatever it happens to be or within your community that's able to go, yeah, I can help you out with that. I'll jump on a call, we can sort this out together. And that's the kind of world I want to live in and want to work in, which is why I think that, like you said before, that sustainability and keeping growing and keeping going is something which I'm sort of relishing rather than having to worry about too much.

What's your biggest challenge now for the show?

I think the biggest challenge is navigating the professionalism of it and the indie podcaster side of it. As effectively an indie podcaster, you know, I have a. An amount of time, I have a systems that I've put in place. I have a way of working. But on the other side of that, you have your guests and some people just come to you through podmatch or something like that, and everyone knows how that works. They may come directly, but you also have PR firms and lots of people coming at you from a commercial standpoint, in a position of having a salary, and they want to ask lots of information, they want to do lots of things to show that they're providing value for their customers, which is fantastic. And I think it gives their customers a really good sort of insight into what's going on. However, most of that information and most of the things that they need to know, I've already given them in some form or another. And navigating that kind of keeping the professionalism from my end and trying to be as helpful and respectful as I possibly can, but not wanting to double my workload at the same time is something which is becoming more and more of something. I'm sort of thinking about the best way of navigating because it's becoming more prevalent. And it's something which I've got great relationships with many of the PR companies, but it's a new way of working for me because it started as most people do when they start a podcast. I asked people that I knew in my very small social network and within my sort of education community, whereas now they're coming from all around the world. Navigating that as a learning on the job, as it were, is probably the biggest challenge.

You know, I think it aligns with what you were saying earlier. It's like early on you were trying to educate people on how to access you. There's a podcast. This is what a podcast is. Here's how you go and get one. And now we're educating these publicity firms and these professional organizations who still don't get. They think that this is radio, they think this is tv, and it just plugs into the same model. And you're like, I'm an indie guy, I'm an indie girl, and I just don't want to comply with your system. You need to understand podcasting better, and we're educating them in that process.

Yeah, I think that's a great way of looking at it, and that feels really positive because then you can kind of see the two separate strands that you're talking about. Like you say, from that sort of radio side to the podcast side. And. And they do meet brilliant in some way. But like I say, just getting that information across and making sure we're all on the same page is the key focus.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think I'm like, I'm at about 3,000 episodes that I've done total across all my shows, so I'm probably a little farther along. But when I hit that stage with my very first podcast, it was really in added infancy because I hit 650 episodes in 2018. So it was really early on, and the PR firms were coming out of the woodwork at that moment in time trying to get on my show, and I was just like, look, I don't have the time to educate you. Here's what podcasting is about. If you want to comply with this and if you're comfortable taking the risk with me, I don't have the time to serve you. And you know what? They were okay with it, and that's what really surprised me, and how open they were to just trying it, I think.

You don't know what you don't know, do you? So, like, you're being trained as. This is the way the PR world works based on all the bits of PR that they actually do. And I think there's something about me being a little bit older now as well. You sort of. Some of the PR people at live events. When I've done shows at a live event, and I think you're really not much older than my daughter is at the minute, so I can understand, you know, some of the conversations and things that we're having. You know, that just sort of those different types of relationships and how you're interacting and that kind of thing. I kind of think, oh, yeah, now I understand how I can kind of make this work better. And I think being really secure about yourself and how you sort of do that, like you just said, in terms of your podcast, I think that comes with a little bit of sort of understanding of how you want to move forward with yourself and takes a little bit of kind of strength and within but like that sets your stall out properly and then people know how to work with you and what it is that you need.

Well, every time I do one of these shows, I always want to highlight the podcasters bingeable factor, their binge factor. And so Education on Fire has an interesting binge factor compared to some of the other shows. When you're so deeply entrenched in a niche and in this particular case the points of education, sometimes it can go too deep into your perspective and viewpoint on that. And instead you've kept that real broadness across all of your episodes and you're constantly bringing new perspectives in. You brought in a parenting coach expert as your most recent episode that as we're publishing this, you also have just all aspects and all the areas that touch around it to bring this broad perspective to the education space. And I think that that's really unusual. It's too easy to be just say focus is like I'm only having teachers listen to my show, so I'm only focusing on this side of it. And I think you're in keeping that broadness within the education space. You've done a beautiful job of making me want to binge on your entire catalog.

Well, I really appreciate that that was probably certainly a focus, if not a struggle was how that was going to be. Because as I mentioned at the beginning, sort of it was that teacher in a staff room banging their head against a brick wall. But the thing that I sort of realized as I chatted to so many people was their education experiences were all based around a teacher that made a difference, someone that saw them or someone that kind of made them feel comfortable about what they were doing. Ability to refocus was actually more about the fact that we're all basically looking after a child, Whether they're our pupil, they're our own child, whether we're a mentor, a coach, or an outside of school club. And whatever we can do to support you or to support them directly to make their life basically the way we wish it was, like we said, with that silver bullet within the school system so that they're supported and well and understanding about how they can learn and move forward, then that gave me the freedom to keep that broadness. But within that focus of kind of, we know why we're here and why we're talking about it, and we are stakeholders for these Children going forward. And yeah, it was a combination of both of those two, I think, which enabled me to do that.

I believe you must be having an impact out on the world and you must be seeing things change just in the education space. What positive changes are you seeing as an impact of your show and in the space in general?

I think in terms of the impact of the show is I was worried that it wasn't niche enough, like you say teaching maths on a Wednesday afternoon or whatever. That happened to me because you're involved and you only know what you know. I thought everyone was thinking this way and everyone was wanting to share these things, but actually they weren't. It's bringing these conversations that you said to people that maybe weren't thinking that way or didn't realize there was another way. So I think that's the great thing I'm enjoying about the show as it's growing. I think the education system at large is the fact that there's a big move around the world to see how it can be done differently with a completely blank canvas. The idea of being able to have an online school, the idea of setting a school up where you go to different countries and you learn in a different country, embedding yourself in the community, doing real project led learning, it's very hard to fit that into the current education system, but it is being done and that's some of the things that we share. But to see this sort of wholesale different way of learning that people can literally buy into, sort of not just from a monetary point of view, but for an emotional and an environmental point of view, to be able to see some of those things happening and seeing that the real benefit they're doing for the communities that they're serving, but also the children that are involved, is a really, really fascinating thing.

Well, I'm very sure from having listened to you that you believe in continuing education and continuing to educate yourself. What resources and what things do you do to help improve your show and improve your podcasting professionalism?

So I listen to lots of podcasts because I think one of the things I like to be able to do is to listen to what I like and what I don't like. And so as you start to change up your own show, whether it's a format or you're presenting and how that style is, I like listening to my audience and seeing what it is that they like to do. And also a lot of the feedback comes back to, we've really enjoyed how this is developed, but also we remember what it was like earlier, and they're really enjoying my progression, which is very hard to do when you're sat in the behind the microphone because you just think you're doing the same as you were 300 episodes ago, except you're really not, because it sounds different, your interactions different, you're more relaxed. You've also got a different sort of set of circumstances which come in as well. So I think listening to what I like and taking myself out of the podcasting world as well. One of the podcasts I'm really loving listening to is one called Parenting Hell, which is run by two comedians here in the uk and it's a fantastic podcast, which is now specifically on Spotify, but they do everything. They have now got microphones properly, but I'm not sure how great the microphones were to begin with, but it's all about the content. It's all about the relationships. When people said, we hate the fact you're going from Spotify to all the other platforms because I want to better listen to it on Apple, they were like, okay, then, don't listen. But we're going to be here because this is what we're doing and it's going to work. And I really love that kind of, okay, they're just doing what they're doing in a way that they're doing it and they're bringing people with them, which of course they did, and they've got the audience to be able to do that. But that kind of taking yourself out of it has to look this way because this is the way the world's working. Podcasting is changing and morphing all the time. So that combination of having your own experience surrounding yourself in the podcasting world as it is, but also sort of hearing how other people are doing it as well and being successful, I think somewhere in there you find the kind of a blend of what it is that you want to achieve.

Well, if you've got any advice for those who are maybe not grabbing hold of the mic yet, what is the advice that you give them?

I think the main thing is do it with a subject or whatever it is that you're passionate about or something that you're really interested in. I would start my podcast when I'm just before we go live with my guests. I'd say I want this to be as if we're meeting for a coffee, a glass of wine, a beer, whatever it happens to be. You tell me about your passions and why you're here and you're doing what you're doing, I'm going to do the same and we're going to have a conversation. So I think if your topic and your reason for doing it is around that sort of line, as it were, certainly as an indie podcast is setting up and not sort of getting going yet, then I think you're going to keep wanting to go because you're going to want to keep having those conversations or sharing the message that you're actually doing. And I think then you've got that sustainability factor.

Mark, I'm so glad you have Education on Fire in the ecosystem of podcasts, and I would be remiss if I didn't ask, as my final question here is, is there some kind of inspiration that was drawn from Entrepreneur on Fire, which was really popular way back when? And I say that from someone who named her very first show wtff, because WTF was popular back then. So I am not criticizing in any way.

It's a fantastic question. And there is a story behind that, because the free podcast course I took was John Lee Dumas course and Podcasters paradise is something I learned an awful lot from. But I went to Podcast Movement and John Lee Dimas was doing a talk with Kate and I was in the audience and I put my hand up and he said, yes, what's your question? I said, I have to apologize because I've named my podcast Education on Fire. And I tried really, really, really hard not to. I didn't want to do it and everyone was kind of doing it and I trying to think of all sorts of other ones. But the problem was was I kept coming back to the quote, which is, education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. And I use that in my episodes as well. And every time I was sort of saying these sorts of things and I said, you know, I'm thinking of using Education on Fire. And nobody in education knows anything about John Lee Dumas or Entrepreneurs on Fire. They were like, we love that. It's so memorable and it really fits into this, the way you're talking and what you're trying to do. So I thought, despite everything, I'm going to go with it. But I thought at least being able to chat to John and say, I'm really sorry, I felt at least I wasn't doing it behind.

Yeah, exactly.

What did he say?

He said, go for it.

Yeah, I could imagine him thinking that. Right? I love that. That's a great story. And you know what? I really do think when I read that quote, it's in your description of your show, I thought, oh, that makes so much sense why this really is there rather than just be a draft off of something else.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, wonderful. Well, Mark Taylor, thank you so much for Education on Fire and for being a part of the podcasting space.

Oh, thank you, Tracey. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat to you.

If there's one big takeaway from Mark's interview, I want it to be this idea of gradually progressive, right? Keep growing, keep progressing forward. Right? That's the whole purpose and that's the whole way podcasting. It builds on itself. It's progressive, it grows, and it improves with practice, which is a lot like education and a lot like music. Right? So you can see the tie in. And Mark's really done that. Like, I can really hear the progression in his show from episode one to three. 50. Right. There's such a difference in that. But when you're not educating yourself, you are not growing, and none of you fall into that category. Right, because you're here listening to the binge factor. So you must be looking for continuing education for your podcast that self education is critically important in anything you do. I don't know any musicians who just say, oh, well, I learned the chords. That's good enough. Right? That's not good enough in any educational field at all. It's not good enough Here in podcasting, we need to be open to what else is out there, what's next for us? How can we change? How can we learn from someone? How can we grow? How can we gradually progress our shows? Now's the time. There's so many great new tools. There's so many things that are easier for us to use today. There's things that are so different about it. If we're still stuck in our old ways of doing our podcast. For those of you who've been around for a long time, not good for you either. It's time to open your eyes to what some of the new blood's doing. Right? Open your eyes to some of the new tools that are out there, the things that could make your life easier. Now, what I don't ever want you to do is take away the thing that makes you most passionate about your podcast, and that's the thing that Mark has done. He's passionate about talking to people. He's passionate about learning from them. And when he's bored with that, then his show will not work. That's why it continues to work. So Education on Fire is still on fire. Definitely want to check it out. Go check out Mark Taylor's show, check out what he's doing there and go to the website that's in the blog post for this episode. Connect up and check out his resources because that's a really cool idea to have 20 resources that come from your show, articles from all over, different types of tools and books and things that you could be pulling from your podcast and compiling into one area. Instead of making everyone search all over the place, why not make that your opt in? It's a great idea. So go listen to Mark Taylor Education on Fire and come right back here for some continuing education for your podcast. And next time when I bring you another successful podcast and podcaster right here on the Binge Factor.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and video casting, success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed your Brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.