Day: July 7, 2009

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9EZ25NIjJA&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&border=1]

On the day of his funeral, here’s Michael Jackson singing in Spanish. For a 2001 special edition of his “Bad” album, Jackson recorded “Todo mi amor eres tú,” a translated version of his hit “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.” He performed it as a duet with Siedah Garrett.

(Thanks to About.com for sharing this)

Today I took part in a Primary Language workshop at Plantsbrook School.

My contribution to the day was called You and Youtube and addressed the use of video and slideshows to facilitate and enhance primary language learning. Below is my presentation. If you click on the videos or the titles, they are all hyperlinked to their source. I’ve added a few of the clips I used as well.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkQCtzdQFto&hl=en&fs=1&border=1]

Additionally, to address some of the questions posed:

I was asked a few questions about ANIMATION – can I direct you to Oscar Stringer’s wonderful site for guidance ideas and resources – particularly his useful PDF that gives directions on how to animate.

Putting SOUND in POWERPOINT – check out this post from the ubiquitous Joe Dale.

Good places to find RESOURCES – ready made – are Talkabout Primary MFL and TES Staffroom.

All my bookmarks are available to access here – http://delicious.com/lisibo so if you need some ideas on festivals, click on the link, then click on ‘festivals’ on the right hand side and you’ll find all the sites I’ve bookmarked.

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Spanish Hand Gestures, originally uploaded by KatsAsleep.

Just picked up the following from Twitter via @josepicardo who was alerted to it by @luciax.

Published by The Guardian in its Language Resources – Spanish area, ‘Learn Spanish gestures’ is a guide to some typically Spanish gesticulating that you could employ to look truly authentic as you complain of being fed up or tell your friend how busy the bar was at lunchtime.

Gesticulating is something that I can’t help doing when speaking, especially in Spanish so this is just up my street. And I can see that this would be a useful resource for intercultural understanding activities, comparing typical gestures. I recall discovering the hard way that gestures that are innocuous in one country can cause offence to other nationalities – not my fault that Greece lost 5-0 in the football and noone had told me that holding up five fingers with my palm facing a Greek was rude!

Well, something exciting happened yesterday and I was too busy at the MFL Flashmeeting to notice.

My blog received its 20, 000th hit at some point – when I checked today the counter stood at 20,095 which shocked me rather!

Thank you to all those who have read my blog over the last 20 months. Hopefully you’re still finding it helpful.