Category: video

I first used Animoto during the Voices of the World project last year when we made a short 30 second video featuring pictures that the children had drawn of Spain accompanied by a rather dubious rendition of the Spanish Himno Nacional by most of Key Stage 2.

Animoto describes itself as follows:

Animoto produces TV-quality music videos using your photos in just minutes.

It’s so simple to do too. Choose a song as the soundtrack to your video and Animoto will analyze every nuance of it. Producing a totally unique video each time, no two videos are ever the same.

I thought it was a good tool then although the limit to 30 seconds for the free version was a little annoying. A while back, I saw it reported that educators could have a free account (saving you $30) and I was sure I’d registered then. However, it seems I hadn’t as when I went back today, I didn’t have an account. So I rapidly registered and began playing!

I’d been reminded of Animoto by a Twitter message saying that you could now add text to Animoto. So, having uploaded lots of pictures of flowers taken in my garden from iPhoto as a test Animoto video and then remixed it, I set about investigating the new facility.

I uploaded a set of photos from my Flickr account entitled Spanish food and drink. Next I sorted them a bit so that they were grouped vaguely. My first text screen was the title page, then I added a section title – Tapas and a comments about gazpacho – Me gusta mucho :o) . I then thought I’d make use of a set of pictures to tell a story – a man choosing from the menu and then enjoying his morning break – thanks to my model ;o) I was a little disappointed that you couldn’t subtitle the pictures as I’d envisaged making a slideshow to teach food words. However, you could insert a text slide before or after each picture for revision I guess! Having selected a suitable piece of music from the Animoto library, I let Animoto work its magic and voilà – a video that can be emailed, uploaded to Youtube, downloaded and embedded as it is below.

If you want to learn more about Animoto, why not check out the site or the case studies section where you can find out how educators have used Animoto in their classroom.

I’ll be exploring further and will keep you informed of how things go!!

Estigiu preparats!

The notes accompanying the video say:

“Hi, I was looking for something interesting at archive.org and I found your (lonebanana)short film ‘What to do in a zombie attack’. I have to say that I found it terrific, i was laughing out loud the first time i was watching it! I’m a high school teacher in Barcelona (Spain) and I was thinking to translate it into catalan (a language we talk in Catalunya, in the north of Spain and south of France) to show it to my pupils. Also I was thinking about giving a translated copy to a couple of friends who work in horror festivals to see if they can be interested in showing your short film. Great film!!”

Fun idea – you never know when you’ll be be attacked by zombies ;o)

Avui, estic molt constipada. No puc respirar bé. Tampoc puc pensar – a l’anglès i encara menys a català.

Per això, un conte bonic que m’agrada – i també coneixo molt bé :o)

[PS – In case you’re puzzled, I have a cold. As José Picardo kindly explained when I tweeted my condition yesterday, it’s English that is scatalogical ;o)]

With the Beijing Olympics a couple of weeks away, here’s a news story from China about one policeman’s efforts to make visitors feel welcome.

In an effort to help tourists, he has learned how to greet people in English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Japanese, Russian, Finnish, Italian and Portuguese. Phew! And he did it by chatting to tourists from those countries – just the advice we give to learners – have go!

Not sure about his taste in movies though ;o)

Although Fernando Alonso let the side down, Spain are at it again, winning!

On Saturday, Alejandro Valverde opened the Tour de France with a win on Stage one from Brest to Plumelec.

And then on Sunday, Rafael Nadal finally conquered Roger Federer on grass at Wimbledon after a roller coaster of a game. Without the good old English weather, Rafa would have won in straight sets, and saved much nailbiting, but we’d have missed an epic tussle between two incredible tennis players.
And to cap it all, he became the first player to ever climb into the Royal Box!!

Not sure how Rafa’d feel about the assertion that he’s ‘ante todo, español’ as a proud Mallorquí, but all of Spain is proud of him!

In advance of this evening’s main event (sorry boys, there’s something more important than the ETR flashmeeting this week!) I’d like you to watch the following videos, consider their message and then ….

¡Hazte de la peña de la Selección!

And in case you haven’t got the message yet as you can’t speak Spanish, here it is in English!

Whilst searching for suitable clipart for the previous post, I came across some quirky flamenco / sevillanas related videos that I thought deserved a post of their own!

A woman dressed in sevillanas dress is a classic image that means Spain to so many – I’m sure there are at least 25 little girls at school who have a sevillanas outfit (they wore them on EDL day!!) As part of their Spanish lessons, I think it’s important that pupils learn more than the language. They are very curious about life in Spain and particularly fascinated by anything that is different to England. We’ve had a go at flamenco ‘palmadas‘ before – a challenge when the class find clapping a regular rhythm hard – and certain classes enjoy watching me demonstrate the first compás of sevillanas – probably as I end up dizzy!

There are many videos of ‘real’ flamenco but I can’t wait to get back to school to show these little videos as I know they will appeal to this curiosity as well as their sense of humour!

Firstly, a simple animation using the image of the sevillanas dress.

The second is a clay stop-motion animation – not sure I could do that, but could have a go!

And the final one, my favourite – a flamenco dancing frog! What could be better, eh?

As part of QCA Unit 11, El Carnaval de los animales, 4AT have been learning a song that may yet replace La Vaca Lola in their affections. Well perhaps not, but it’s quite popular!

Here’s the video from Youtube – I’ve downloaded it, converted it via Zamzar and uploaded it to the school network so that everyone can access it (and other things). Youtube is not currently blocked, but you can never be sure how long that will last.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJVib32-kf8&hl=en]

Finishing off a display based on the topic – come back soon for the pictures!

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 was just having a look at my Google alerts and was reminded that I’d signed up for TeacherTube ages ago. For those who don’t know, TeacherTube is like Youtube but for teachers!
Surprisingly for me, I remembered my password and managed to find my account, including the videos I’d bookmarked.

And I once more came across this lovely video called Three little men. Made by children with severe learning difficulties at Frank Wise School in Banbury, it use Playmobil men greeting one another in Spanish as the pupils practice speaking skills.

There is often debate about the merits of teaching MFL to children with ‘special needs’. I’ve always found that MFL has been a good leveller – by that I mean that pupils who are struggling in other areas of the curriculum find themselves on a fairly equal footing with their peers, particularly if their difficulty is with the written word as there is so much speaking activity.
And as to it being a ‘waste of time’ as I’ve heard many times – well, having watched the video, judge for yourself!