Looking at word clouds today during the course I was delivering, I came across these wonderful topical word clouds.

Like them?

This one is about a certain psychic sea creature…..

And this one is – well, this is one is ‘lo mejor’ ;o)

Today I was part of an ICT and Creativity in MFL day run by Links into Languages West Midlands at Aston University.

Below is my presentation about free tools that can be used to enhance language teaching and learning.

No necesito decir más ¿eh?

Here is the Slidecast of my second presentation from Brighton.

Apologies for the audio cutting out before the end – no idea what happened there!  Perhaps the iRiver overheated!

Apologies to @wizenedcrone for forgetting her real name – it’s Fiona Joyce!!!

And the German site I mentioned was called GenkiGerman.

Two weeks after the event I’ve finally got around to editing and synching the audio of my presentations from the Linguascope Conference in Brighton.

Here’s the first one – You and Youtube about the use of Youtube and other online video / slideshow sites in the language classroom.

I normally make Slideshares of my presentations and add the audio for Slidecasts.

However, the lovely @eyebeams was UStreaming the MFL Show and Tell from Nottingham today so I’m able to embed the video of my presentation!

Hope you find it useful.  Although my pupils are primary aged and some of the ideas are very ‘primary centric’, I think that there are many things that secondary colleagues can take and adapt to their situations.  teh fun doesn’t have to stop at the end of KS2, you know ;o)

Tomorrow sees the MFL Show and Tell event at Nottingham High School.  I blogged about it here and will blog after the event too.  Additionally, I will try to tweet my thoughts and impressions ‘on the go’ so to speak (although I may have my hands full with other duties!)

To keep you a sneak peek as to what I’ll be talking about, here’s a word cloud of my presentation!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya85knuDzp8

Wow!  Just discovered that there are starter clips in Spanish too!

This time they’re set in Mexico.  They cover similar themes – traditions as well as daily life.

One particularly caught my eye – La cultura folclorica de Veracruz .  This short clip is about music and musicians, and a story telling festival.  This links with Unit 14 of the QCDA scheme – and I happen to be doing that at the moment with year5!

Hopefully this will help them understand what ‘la música folclórica’ is all about!

TeachersTV is, I think, an increasing useful source of clips and materials, not just for CPD but also for classroom use.

Here they present some lovely lessons starters set in Martinique, set around preparations for carnival, the school and the local area.  Not only good for the language – for example, Une chasse au tresor  looks at vocabulary of directions – but also for ICU as the setting of Martinique allows comment to be made on the surroundings, comparing and contrasting, and also raises awareness of the Francophone world.

Another episode focuses on the preparations for Carnaval and the Carnaval itself – always fascinating to pupils in the UK where such festivities are unusual!

And another looks at the route Matis takes to school – an eyeopener in terms of what the route is like!

At about 2-5 minutes long, they’re a great way to open a lesson, or for those 10 minutes activities that can spread out over the week.