Category: podcasts

If you’ve read the Lisibo Ltd page of this site recently, you may have read the following under my activities for 2017:

An exciting project for young learners of Spanish – sworn to secrecy but all will be revealed soon!

Well ‘soon’ has arrived and I’m pleased to tell you all about it!

Teaching Spanish to Primary pupils??? Listen our for School Radio’s new Spanish series, ‘Mi Madrid’, next term! pic.twitter.com/mt7YnHXnWX

— BBC Teach (@BBC_Teach) December 20, 2017

In July I was asked to join with Afónica  (a sound production company specialising in fiction and documentary in English and Spanish) to write a pitch for an audio programme, aimed at KS2 learners of Spanish (7-11 year olds), to be broadcast by the BBC. In August we discovered that our idea featuring a Spanish boy, Quique and his new friend Charlie who has moved to Madrid from England, had been chosen. And that’s where some really hard work began, writing ten 15 minute episodes in which Quique and Charlie explore Madrid, discussing culture and language as well as visiting some iconic places like the Retiro Park, the Rastro market and the Real Madrid football stadium, and meeting some of their neighbours. Those scripts were then recorded in Madrid by some wonderful actors, some songs were added (wish I could claim that I’d written them as they are brilliant but I’m not that talented!)and Nicolas of Afónica worked his magic, putting it all together. And at 330am (UK time) tonight, episode 1 will be broadcast on Schools Radio. I am so excited; I may even be awake at 330am I’m that excited. However, you don’t need to get up in the middle of the night as each episode will be uploaded to the website and available as soon as it has been broadcast. What’s more, you can listen to the separate ‘chunks’ already by going to the Mi Madrid Schools Radio website and accessing the Clips section The idea is that the broadcasts can be listened to as an entire episode but also in chunks and that they are used to support the teaching of Spanish at KS2, particularly to students who have already learned some Spanish and are now 9-11 years old. The programmes are predominantly in Spanish with some English used to clarify and explain. Charlie asks questions that the students may well be wanting to ask – about Spanish life as well as the Spanish language – and Quique and especially his mum, Sofía, answer them. I tried to include as many quirky facts and interesting words as I could get away with because that was what grabbed my attention as a young learner, and I hope that this comes through as you listen. Here’s the episode schedule so you can see what’s coming up.   I am really proud of this project and hope that lots of teachers and learners enjoy it. I’m also really pleased that Clare Seccombe of Light Bulb Language fame, has written the Teacher’s Notes to accompany the series as I know they will be amazing. They will be available very soon I hope, and will give ideas on how to use the audio as well as notes on what happens in each episode, vocabulary, and some visuals that will support the content. Please let me know if you listen, if you enjoyed it and how you used it. My favourite episode to write was Episode 8 ¡Hala Madrid! although Episode 6 Masterchef  was a close second. I’ll tell you which I think has turned out best when I’ve heard them all but please leave a comment about your favourites too!   SaveSave

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Not quite sure what to do today? Nor is our hero. Read on to find out what he decides to do.

¿Qué voy a hacer hoy? on Storybird

It’s a long time since WCPS Spanish was updated – very
remiss! However, we’ve been recording all sorts of things, and i’ve finally got around to podcasting some of the soundfiles this evening, having downloaded 140 files from our Easispeaks – and there are still two Easispeaks ‘AWOL’ ;o)

I was really touched to read the latest post on Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom in which Joe Dale talks about my podcast Lisibo talks!
His opening sentence – ‘Primary language teacher and MFL blogger Lisa Stevens is an inspiration to many thanks to her indefatigable enthusiasm and willingness to experiment with new technologies’ – made me blush furiously as did many of the other kind things Joe said. However, I really do hope that those who read the post choose to watch the video clip from Teachmeet at BETT09 as I really want to encourage people to have a go and experiment with technology and new ideas. And I’ve added the video here too.

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/Ae74ZJO3Pw]

PS Just posted a new episode of Lisibo talks! from the eTwinning Spanish links meeting in Manchester last Tuesday.

In order to make a Slidecast, you need to have a URL for the audio you want to synch to your Slideshare. So, the easiest way was to use Podomatic as I knew how that worked.

My first Slidecast – Ten top tips for Primary Language Learning – was created with the kind assistance of Joe Dale who saved the audio for me and emailed me the link, but I like to do things for myself and was determined to sort it all myself this time.

And, as I was putting the audio on Podomatic, it seemed silly not to publish it as a ‘podcast’.

So, you can also take advantage of just the audio of my PLS sessions (And any future ones!) by listening to my new Podomatic channel – Lisibo talks! or by subscribing on iTunes (link to follow when I’m approved!)

Mark Pentleton of Radio Lingua Network fame has one more worked his magic and a few days ago, launched a new addition to the plethora of products already available to help you learn languages.

Called School Run French, the series of 6-7 minute episodes allow you to take advantage of the school run, football run, Brownies / Badgers / BB run – in fact, any short journey to learn or practice your French. As Mark explains

Many of our listeners have been asking for materials which they can use
with their children or grandchildren, and we’ve been working for some time
on the development of materials aimed at this group. We’re delighted to
announce “School Run French” as the first in a series of shows which will
be aimed at younger language learners.

Picking up a language at an early age equips children with valuable skills
for life, and just as our many hundreds of thousands of adult listeners are
learning a language in their coffee break, so too can children learn a
language while they’re doing something else, for example in the car on the
way to school, football practice, ballet class, or whatever.

School Run French breaks down the French language into short chunks of 6-7
minutes, and every episode contains an interactive audio game which helps
children consolidate what they’ve learned.

School Run French is available on iTunes to download and sample audio
episodes will be put there on a weekly basis. However, the first ‘pack’ of five
lessons with colourful pdf puzzle sheets is now available for £5.00 (+VAT for EU customers).

I’ve had a listen and I love it – so do my ‘testers’ – marvellous having two kids who are a acaptive audience! They like the fact that it’s fun and there are games and challenges to test whether they know the answer.

Just itching for Mark to do School Run Spanish as I am constantly asked for such a resource by the parents, grandparents and carers of pupils at school. How about it, Mark? ¡Por favor!

I’ve had the pleasure this weekend of finally meeting Mark Pentleton. Can’t believe we have never actually met before! Mark is a really busy man so I grabbed the opportunity to find out more about why exactly he is up from before dawn to way after nightfall!

I first heard of Mark when he worked on Partners in Excellence (PiE) in Scotland, a project with the purpose of raising achievement in East Ayrshire by establishing a virtual school with pupils contributing through such things as film making, animation and latterly podcasting. The project involved 29 schools across islands and down to South Ayrshire, a very large geographical area with diverse sizes and types of schools. For some, the project became a case of expanding peer group of pupils in tiny schools by use of VLE to develop a community.

The PiEcast was a way of keeping everyone in touch as well as a learning tool for the particpants. It began as a podcast containing news about events, interviews and news reports to give the community a voice. As time went on, this expanded to include a learning element such as listening material in French, Spanish, German and cultural element. This then led to something else – the Verbcast. This was an intense 10-12 minute nightly podcast for four weeks for 25 young people, looking at French verbs. Having listened to the Verbcast, pupils received a text message each day testing them on what they had learned the previous day; the answer was posted to the website – very interactive! Verbcast used relaxation techniques – feedback was good from pupils and teachers were really pleased with the grasp that pupils had of verbs after participation. (Note to Mark – do it in Spanish please!!)

Radio Lingua Network
Mark saw a gap in the market for beginners Spanish podcasts – Notes in Spanish is good for intermediate. So he started Coffee Break Spanish with Ciara in October 2006; a premium version with access to extra materials was launched in January 2007. Lesson 79 was looking at imperfect subjunctive so it wasn’t all easy peasy!!

Mark then began his quest for world domination as follows:
February 2007 – My Daily Phrase German / Italian
September 2007 – Coffee Break French – on episode 41
October 2007 – One Minute Languages x6 in response to requests for basic phrase podcast – Norwegian, Polish, Luxembourgish, German, Gaelic, Russian – 10 lessons
Another 6 just launched – Mandarin, Catalan, Danish, Japanese, French, Romanian
September 2008 – Show Time Spanish – after first few episodes of preparation got soap opera for show – to be released at end as an entity in its own right
October 2008 – Write back soon – EFL podcast tackling phrasal verbs – emails between students using lots of phrasal verbs that are then explained.
Although he didn’t mention it, I particularly like his idea of a week of podcasts leading up to Valentine’s day last year entitled Love Lingo that taught the language of LUUURVE in Spanish, German, Italian, French and Norwegian!

Podcasting fits our lifestyle – it’s hard to learn from a course that is linked to a text book when you’re driving, walking etc. It’s so much easier to listen alone- and less obvious too!! And that’s why podcasting is so successful!

Mark then shared some future projects for RLN – but I’m not allowed to blog those so you’ll have to wait and see ;o)

So, to the lessons learned:

Learning –
Podcasts give-

• content in the learner’s context
• ‘secret learning’ – lack of peer pressure
• massive storage opportunities – 670 hrs in 5 years lang learning/1000 on an iPod
• access – if it’s there, they might just use it! If it’s not, they don’t have the opportunity!
• just in time delivery via RSS – time things to happen just before an exam, at a particular time etc
• learners learn most by making podcasts

Sharing information
Podcasts show that

• learning not just for pupils
• podcasting inherently builds community
• collaboration

Style of delivery
Podcasting should NOT be recording of classes delivered – must be created eg four main points rather than whole lesson
Should they be scripted or non-scripted – most of RLN’s are non scripted

Technical lessons

• equipment – CO3U Samsung USB mike
• mic techniques
• recording
• systems
• ‘respecting the ear’ – if people are listening through headphones, avoid crackles!!

I found all this fascinating – I am not going to launch a business empire like Mark – for a start, he’s too good and I wouldn’t stand a chance against that competition. However, the lessons are applicable to all podcasting and podcasters. It also all showed exactly why Mark never seemingly sleeps – he has no time!!

If you’re going to the Language Show this weekend, you can catchup with Mark and the RLN crew yourself on stand 20!

Keep up the good work Mark – and I look forward to the next lot of RLN projects in the pipeline – they sound very exciting – but my lips (and cheeky tweets!) are sealed ;o)

So – for all your language needs – check out RLN – there’s something for everyone!!

One of the highlights of the IoW conference was learning how to podcast on a Mac. Not so much for what I learned as to how I was taught and by whom.

Don’t get me wrong; it was very exciting learning how to use Garageband to podcast and great fun too. But more important to me than that was the fact that the session was delivered by four pupils from Heathfield Technology College with little or no ‘teacher’ input.

The pupils had written the presentation themselves and taught us what they had learned from Shirelands CLC, represented by Lesley Hagger-Vaughan of whom I have heard many great things! They were confident, cogent and very professional in their delivery- first of all , explaining the ‘W’s of podcasting – why/when/what/how/where before demonstrating the whole process of making a podcast and then splitting it into manageable chunks. Each stage was re-demonstrated before we were set off in small groups to try it out. And at all ties, there was a pupil at hand to check we were getting on OK, or to give us extra help if we needed it.

• A storyboard was produced.
• We rehearsed using an iPod with a microphone attachment.
• We recorded using a condenser microphone, splitting the audio into manageable chucks to allow for easier editing. At this point we were encoraged to make sure that we ‘acted’ with our voices and didn’t keep it monotone!
• Next came editing the audio chunks to eliminate pauses, create space for the intro music and ensure that it was all corectly recorded.
• Using the ‘Jingles’ option, we added music to the audio, lowering the music so that the voice could be heard over the top of it.
• Finally we added photographs to illustrate the podcast.
• (My group even managed to add a Powerpoint slide ours!)

The session concluded with a showcase of the three finished podcasts – all about our visit to the Isle of Wight. I had to rush off to my round table presentation with Jo Rhys-Jones so didn’t get to download our podcast onto my memory stick so I can’t post it here, but it was very good! ;o)

Apparently, it was the first time that these pupils had done such a session but you’d never have known. They delivered clearly, supported one another, answered questions when asked and kept perfectly to their timings – other presenters weren’t so good at that – especially the ones talking about Primary MFL ;o)

And, with the Brummie accents, it was like being at home!

I’ve mentioned EdTechRoundup on ¡Vámonos! before and have to say that I continue to be enlightened each Sunday night (when singing permits) by the chat about all things technological (and not so technological!) at the weekly Flashmeeting.

Therefore, I’m pleased to say that we’ve decided to share the conversations with others who cant attend or access the replay of the meeting, and today we’ve published the first of ‘ETR Weekly’ podcast in which we talk about starting out in the edublogosphere. You can listen to the podcast and see the show notes on the ETR blog – http://edtechroundup.com

I recently discovered Ben Curtis‘ Notes from Spain blog (via a Tweet from Mark Pentleton I think). The sub heading, Travel -Life -Culture, gives a flavour of what can be found on the site, but doesn’t adequately describe the breadth of information and insight offered. There’s are 3 podcasts, and the excellent Notes in Spanish section quite apart from great and varied blog posts – recent favourites of mine include photos from Spanish fiestas and ferias , a video of the madness of walking El Camino del Rey and a post about the Patios Interiores that brought flooding back the memory of descending two floors to knock on the door of a neighbour I had yet to meet in order to retrieve my smalls that had fallen off the washing line. What an icebreaker that was ;o)

Today when I checked my Google Reader there were two articles , one about news reports from Spain and the other about a new feature of Google Maps which excited me!

Entitled – Kill ten minutes in Spain with Google Maps, it points out the addition of geotagged photos and Wikipedia entries to Google maps. Really interesting and useful too as now it’s possible to look at the physical geography, satellite images, street maps and photos of places (and I’ve just discovered, you can check on traffic in the USA!). And it’s not just Spain – there are images and information from all over the world (the W is for a Wikipedia entry) Year 6 will be my first guinea pigs as we investigate the area around Wasquehal, France in Geography- they’re already very impressed by GoogleMaps and had a great time finding sites in Wasquehal on PlaceSpotting (anyone else doing this unit, there are about 8 or 9 puzzles if you use the search facility and input ‘Wasquehal’)

So I’m now off to do some virtual sightseeing before I really go to Spain next week. (click on the map to make it bigger or go to here.

[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=spain&ie=UTF8&lci=lmc:panoramio,lmc:wikipedia_en&ll=39.909736,-4.350586&spn=14.482836,29.53125&t=h&z=5&output=embed&s=AARTsJq093neKo-thtF9_LkAgDNU_Gr0Pw&w=425&h=350]

Thanks Ben for the inspiration on this – and for your site which makes me feel so much closer to Spain :o)