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.

Just been reminded that TONIGHT we are having a MFL Flashmeeting, just like the one we had on May 4th! I was sure it was next week as there had been a suggestion of possible activities for Bastille Day due to the proximity to 14th July but it seems that it is today – 8.30pm – 10.30pm.

You can check out details here on the wiki and see who else is joining. There is a waiting list for places, but do not despair as some people may be unable to attend for thw whole time and others may have had to change their plans since signing up.

So why not pop along here at some point during the 2 hours and see what we’re up to!

Heres the agenda!

AGENDA ITEMS

1. If you are a blogger, what is your favourite post and why?
2. Getting into podcasting. Where do you start?
3. Ideas for celebrating The European Day of Languages on 26th September 2009 using Web 2.0 tools or otherwise (How about a massive VoiceThread?)
4. CPD opportunities for next academic year. Would anyone want to organise a one or two day face to face event somewhere in the UK? (@josepicardo – I am not able to make it tonight, off on a staff do, however, I would like to volunteer that we might be able to use my brand new sixth form center at Nottingham High School for a one day f2f probably Easter or October 2010. Discuss if appropriate. José Picardo)
5. Cunning tips: how do you save time in blogging/podcasting/resource creating and so on, to keep work/life balance & prevent divorce/forgetting names of children, etc.?

Having never been to Stoke on Trent previously, I was there twice in three days! This time I’d been invited to speak at a ‘Creative Spanish’ afternoon for Primary Language teachers, organised jointly by Lorna Harvey from Staffordshire and Helen Thomas from Stoke on Trent. I really enjoyed the presentation on using Art by Shirley Kliment-Temple and was sorry to miss the salsa and skipping!

My presentation was a repeat of the one I did at the Primary Language Show in Liverpool about the QCA unit based on SaintSaens Carnival of the Animals, and I have posted the slidecast from that event below so that you can listen and watch the slides! If yu want any of the resources, they are in this post.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

It was great to be asked by Helen Thomas to talk to some teachers from Stoke about International Dimension and especially eTwinning a couple of weeks, and I’m sorry that it’s taken me this long to upload my presentation.

As promised, here is the presentation (it’s the same presentation but from a previous date – nd you get it with sound!) and the case study from my school below it. If you have any questions, please get in touch with me or with the eTwinning team at the British Council. The West Midlands contact is Isabel Lalsingh who is lovely and very helpful.

As I don my Spain shirt to watch Spain take on the singing might of Bafane Bafane, I thought I’d share with you a clip of the ‘guapísmo’ ‘Nando Torres scoring a hattrick against New Zealand earlier this week.

(thanks to Year4 at Green Park School for sharing this originally!)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piLVaZ1ilsY&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca]

Can’t believe I haven’t blogged for nearly a fortnight! Blame reports, three presentations and a morning of preliminary meetings / observation with TeachersTV in one week, and a short break in Spain!

There will be more posts soon, but to keep you going, here’s another of the reasons I’ve not being blogging recently. Enjoy!

I picked up the above tweet earlier from Chris Craft, a teacher at CrossRoads Middle School.

Intrigued, I checked it out and found the following.

A few things struck me;

• Kids did this without being asked.
• They genuinely enjoy their lessons.
• They appreciate the use of technology.
• Kids are the best people to be persuading their peers.
• And, as Chris said in his blog post, ‘Kids, they’re too cool!’

You might also want to check out SpanTube, Chris’ channe on which you can find videos made by his classes. they include a series of films featuring Eugene who really should pay more attention in Spanish class as she seems to misunderstand lots of signs around school!

Can I join your class, Sr Craft??

Jayne Jackson, one of the delegates who attended the Next Steps in ICT for the Primary Languages Classroom (And active member of Talkabout Primary MFL) has made the following in response to the course. She tried to embed it as a comment on the blog post but unfortunately the comment feature in Blogger is limited in its use of html code so I’ve posted it here.

Jayne also let me know that she’s started a wiki for her school following on from the course.
It’s always good to know what happens ‘after the event’.

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PS I’m in the middle of making all the Slideshares of my presentations into Slidecasts – it is taking some time but the first session is done!