I have to confess that I am a bit of a fan of the Eurovision Song Contest. Admittedly it has more to do with Terry Wogan’s hilarious commentary and the even more hilarious subtitling mistakes made by Ceefax than the music but I do enjoy some of the offerings from our European neighbours. Whilst the British entry gets more bizarre and desperate by the year (see Daz whatever-his-name-was in 2006 and Scooch last year!), I used to look forward to the Spanish entry.

This year, it has been brought to my attention by Ben Curtis that it’s not exactly the kind of song I’ve come to expect – Baila el ChikiChiki by Rodolfo Chikilicuatre may well be very catchy and will probably be the hit of the summer like Macarena by Los Rio, Asereje by Los Ketchup or Saturday Night by Whigfield but it has some decidedly dodgy words and I’m a bit concerned at the prospect of being asked to translate it come September when all the pupils return from their continental holidays! And is this really the best Spain has to offer?

Having said that, Ireland (with their proud tradition of Dana and Johnny Logan) are being represented by a turkey and you could say that the British entry is a turkey so perhaps it’s a sign that I should find something more interesting to do come 24th May – I’ll be in Spain so I’m sure the Chiringuito Ana y Antonio will be enjoying my custom :o)

Back to more important and relevant matters later!

I’ve mentioned before how I think that language learning should not be a stand alone but creatively integrated into the curriculum. Today I’ve been alerted to a couple of videos that I can see being used to do just that, using works of art as the stimulus for speaking activities.

Helen Myers (of ALL President and MFLResources fame) passed on a tip from Glynis Rumley about Women in Art, a lovely video compilation of many female faces from works of art morphing into one another.

And whilst I was there, I came across the following video – similar to Women in Art, but solely about Picasso. It could be used in a similar way to the above videos – descriptions, family members etc, and also for cultural awareness of the life and times of a Spanish artist, linked to the art curriculum.

Any more ideas of activities, or suggestions of other video clips you’ve discovered of a similar vein?

PS more ideas on integrating art and languages in Mira Miró.

I love singing and enjoy using song in my lessons. I’ve written before about the values of using song, rhyme and rhythm to aid learning whilst having fun. Although I’m not averse to making up my own songs, I’m always on the lookout for more songs to add to my repertoire.

In the summer I purchased a CD from Early Learning Centre called Fun with Spanish.
It has traditional songs from Spain (such as Tengo una muñeca) and England (such as Polly put the kettle on) sung in the original language but also translated into the other language. This is good as the tunes are familiar and the gist of the song already known to the pupils, meaning they have no hang ups about meaning.

The CD costs £5 – quite reasonable I think! And if you want to use it, here are the animated presentations I’ve made to go with the traditional English songs in Spanish plus the concluding rap.

Uno_ dos_ tres_ cuatro_ – Get more documents

El barco zarpó – Get more documents

Lingo rap – Get more documents

Me pongo de pie – Get more documents

Polly pon agua a hervir – Get more documents

En la parada – Get more documents

One of the disadvantages of a Blogger blog is that you can’t upload documents to it as you can in say Typepad blogs. I’ve managed to ‘get around’ the problem by using My Box of Goodies as a repository in my sidebar.

Having read a post by Adam Sutcliffe, I thought I’d give .DocStoc a try. As Adam explains,
‘ You can use Docstoc to embed any .doc, .pdf, .xls, .ppt into any website which will allow embed codes. You can also change the settings of the embed. It’s also free to sign up and all you really need is a username a password and and email address.’

So I uploaded a Powerpoint – my own take on Go away Big Green Monster! and had a go at embedding it below – let’s see!

Señor Cabeza Naranja – Get more documents

I know that I can do this with Slideshare for Powerpoints, so I’ll try a .doc as well!
Here’s the 1,2,3 Chocolate rhyme I love to use with KS1 and Foundation.

Bate bate, chocolate – Get more documents

I’m impressed – didn’t even need to log in (although I will now so my name goes on my resources :o) )

PS I did have to fiddle with the size of the embedded documents after I published as they covered the sidebar – but I managed to teak the embed code – I’m learning :o)

No, I’ve not decided to go back to university, nor been bitten by the urge to row (although if it meant getting near to Matthew Pinsent, I’d grab those oars like a shot!)

Tomorrow I’m off to Oxford for Language World, the Association of Language Learning‘s annual conference. Officially spread over two days, the fun and games actually start this evening with an event at the OUP bookshop, from 7pm, followed by a meal for those who have already arrived in Oxford. The official site says
‘Join us for a glass of wine : the perfect start to your conference and a great way to meet your fellow delegates while browsing in a relaxed atmosphere. There will also be some great special offers available. Anyone attending the conference is welcome, as are ALL members and all languages teachers and lecturers who live in Oxford or nearby.’

So if you meet the criteria, off you go!

I’m looking forward to two days of interesting exciting and inspiring PD – if it’s anything like last year, I’ll be exhausted but buzzing by the time I get home on Saturday night. It was really hard to choose my sessions, although 9 year old insisted I went to Ewan McIntosh‘s seminar- last year, he inspired me to buy a NintendoDS – my son wants to know if I could be persuaded to buy a Wii this year?? Actually, didn’t need much persuading! I’m also looking forward to the followup to a session I attended last year on using videoconferencing at Tile Hill Wood School and Language College to deliver PLL to feeder schools, and also to Stephen Fawkes’ session on learners being creative with language.

I’m also excited about being invited to take part in the London ALL Branch Show and Tell on Saturday by the President of ALL , no less, Helen Myers – I feel like I’ve been invited to a Royal garden party but without the need for a hat :o) I’ll be talking about my blog, and sharing tips and ideas for creative PLL.

And of course, the chance to meet friends, old and new is a big draw. Last year I missed the dinner as I decided to appease Mr Lisibo and spend a night away with him – but only succeeded in getting two enormous blisters on my feet as I insisted that my shoes were comfortable enough to walk in (underestimating the 4 miles I needed to walk back to the hotel) then keeping him awake telling him about all the things I’d learned. So this year, off to the dinner for me.

So see you in Oxford Joe, Chris, Marie-France, Lesley, Rachel, José, Helen, Ewan and Quentin et al. No doubt missed someone but that’s who I know is going!

If you’re an NQT or student teacher, you could get in for free – have a look here for details!

PS Find out what I thought about last year‘s Language World – pre-blog and pre-NintendoDS!

I had made a lovely Photostory of my photos but it wouldn’t upload, so I was pleased to find I could use Splashr to put this slideshow of my Flickr photos on here for you. Enjoy!

I am now home from my three day visit to Prague for an eTwinning PDW on training teachers. I had a great time, made lots of friends, laughed a lot, talked incessantly, drank significant quantities of beer, got lost, saw the most beautiful buildings and sights ….. and worked hard too!

Here’s an advertisement for eTwinning made by my group, the Turquoise Delights, as part of the workshop.

If you want to find out more about what we did in Prague, visit the Prague PDW wiki space and see what each group has added to their page by clicking on the coloured rectangles. I’ll write more about it later when I’ve had time to reflect!

And, just to show I have a sense of humour, here’s another clip from the PDW as a Czech pupil is interrogated by a Kate Adie wannabe ;o) Enjoy!

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Dali in Prague, originally uploaded by George*50.

Whilst searching for a picture for my previous post, i came across this one. As a fan of Dalís clocks and a soon to be fan(?) of Prague, I thought I’d share it with you. You can view the ‘real’ clock in Prague here and have a look at it in a computer simulation programme.
It’s an astronomical clock showing the current state of the universe at any point in time for six hundred years – sounds very impressive!

And, in case you’re stuck for a craft project to keep the kids amused, here are instructions on how to make your own Dalí clock– anyone got a 12″ ?

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Hradcany, Prague, originally uploaded by stevacek.

Tomorrow I’m off to Prague for an eTwinning Professional Development Workshop (PDW). I’m very much looking forward to it as I had a great time on the last one in Nottingham, and also as Prague is a place I’ve always fancied visiting!
I hope to meet up with lots of other eTwinning Ambassadors from across Europe and share ideas and experiences of making cross country links. No doubt I’ll tell you all about next week when I return.
And there is a four hour sightseeing tour to anticipate too as well as dinner on a boat. All work and no play …. ;o)

Photo from Flickr

I picked this cartoon up from a Lucy Gray and Silvia Tolisano aka Langwitches in my Google Reader this morning – it not only made me laugh, but it also made me think!

In the last few weeks there has been much tweeting and blogging about Twitter – is it good for you or not?

I really like Twitter and tweeting, don’t get me wrong. I’m just wondering how much it is taking over my life, and how much it might be distracting me from other things that I should be doing.

Doug Belshaw really prompted this over the weekend with two very thought-provoking posts – The map is not the territory and Is Twitter bad for you?. (Read them if you haven’t already!)

The former, subtitled The changing face of the edublogosphere, made me consider how dizzy and confused I can sometimes become thanks to Twitter (and following URLs and recommendations) – as I wrote in my comment on the post, perhaps it’s out of my own ‘immaturity’ as a blogger and technochick (as I have been dubbed by colleagues!), and the wish to ensure I don’t miss out on the latest thing that my head starts to spin. I do need to be more selective and I guess with experience will come more wisdom.

That’s why I love EdTechRoundup meetings – lots of ideas backed up with uses in the classroom and also lots of debate about tools and their use. I lurk and listen quite a bit – and that to me is very important so I learn! That’s not to say I don’t contribute – I’m not completely clueless :o)
I lurk on Twitter too – but often I feel excluded from the conversations – sometimes because I only follow half the speakers, or because it’s over my head. Guess I could follow more people but that to me feels like collecting friends on Facebook just so I have lots of friends, or becoming a ‘groupie’. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when I have received really great ideas via Tweets – someone tweeted www.placespotting.com a couple of weeks ago – think it was @injenuity – and this site has infuriated, entertained and educated my family ever since. 9 year old spent over half an hour searching rivers in Holland this morning in search of a particular bridge – the clue did not enlighten but he found it, bless him! And @willrich45 and @davestacey pointed me a blogpost showing how to use YahooPipes to put all received Twitter messages containing URLs into Google Reader. However, there sometimes seem to be far too many seemingly great ideas floating around- as a commenter on Doug’s blog said, 95% are irrelevant but 5% are gems. Recently I’ve been off work and had the luxury of time to check out all the recommendations, under normal circumstances I wouldn’t. And then there are the ones that everyone raves about – then never to be heard of again. What happened to @teachablemoment ? And @bookgroup ? Both started off with lots of activity but seem to have fizzled.

So is Twitter bad for me? My husband would say it was – but that’s more to do with mobile tweets than Twitter! And there lies a key issue – should I switch off my mobile tweets? During Edtechroundup last night we talked about this. Several people have switched off their mobile tweets – Doug commented that they were getting in the way of teaching. My inclination is to keep them switched on – I’ve been careful with from whom I receive mobile tweets and chosen people who aren’t too prolific in the tweet department. Even so, most that I receive are not directed at me – and some are like the cartoon man’s! My reason for keeping them on in term time is that Twitter is blocked at school so the only way I can even begin to use it with the pupils is to use my mobile. As I’ve blogged before, Year 6 answered a question posed by Ewan McIntosh via witter – and were fascinated by it. And there are times when I let out my frustrations on the Twitterverse via an ‘end-of-my-tether-sympathise-please’ message.

Then there’s Tom Barrett’s post Twitter- a teaching and learning tool. It’s a really comprehensive guide to Twitter’s many possibilities for learners (young and older) – it’s one of those posts you have to go back to and read several times to really grasp all of it! As I commented when Tom asked about the use of Twitter in the classroom, it’s hard to use when it’s blocked but I’m working on that one!
Interesting that he was cut off from the world of Twitter when he wrote it – as he said,
‘I am removed from the network I want to reflect upon and away from the classroom that it can impact. This perspective is welcome as it offers me clarity of thought, as I write, that I have not had for a long time.’

So, if I switched off mobile tweets, followed more people and was more selective with things I pursue, would that be OK?

I think Doug’s post about Twitter hits the nail on the head – there are times when I need to switch off from Twitter, email, Facebook as I can’t concentrate. Writing this, my mobile has Spiderpig-ed 24 times – and that’s from 3 people in an hour – and I’ve not finished yet! I haven’t checked my emails but I guess there are several of those too. His model of outward facing and inward facing modes of working seems so simple and sensible that I’m quite cross I didn’t come up with it!

So perhaps it’s a case of there being a time and place for everything and not allowing Twitter to encroach on everything I do, whilst still exploring the possibilities of using it creatively ;o)