So Much to Learn...So Little Time

Re first slidecast

Told my S2 French class about the slidecast to help them with their revision and played it in class and had them drill the words....they loved it.
Every single pupil in the class listened and repeated the words in unison. WHY?

Any answers?

Record You Tube Videos for keeps

Ever come across a great video on you tube and thought you'd like to record it for posterity (or for use in classroom when you can't access you tube in school).

Try vixy.

It doesn't seem to work with every video, but I have had some success. But you can covert to AVI for windows, MOV for Mac, MPEG4, MP3.

Two Events

What a week, but it was worth it.

Well last week was one of my more busy ones. My S3's took part in the Institut Francais' Rencontres Theatrales on Wednesday. Of course I was worried about how they would perform, but once again they were awesome. It was quite a shared learning experience because I'm not exactly a drama teacher but I had ideas about what I wanted to see on stage. Some of my actors however perform regularly and were able to contribute some excellent ideas about how to stage our little masterpiece, so I am really quite pleased to say I learned a lot from them as well.
If you just happen to be curious about their play ("La jeune fille, le chef et la grenouille: une Cendrillon africaine") you can see it on the departmental blog, along with a slideshow of some pictures I took of the whole event. At a later date I will be posting podcasts of the other acts as well.

Next on Thursday I took part in Joe Dale's Flashmeeting. It was an hour of sharing practice and just decent conversation between hardworking teachers. Check out Joe's post rather than me going on about it...no pint in reinventing the wheel.
It was great to see and here from folk whose names I have come across on the web and it was even better to find out more about their work.

Now I've only got to worry about Communicate 07.

Ride the bandwagon

Something else for free.

Thanks again to Ewan i have found something for free again. I am just away to back up my iTunes library via bandwagon..and i should get a whole years free subscription.

An interview with Joe Dale

My first interview...other than for a job.

Last Saturday I was interviewed via Skype, by Joe Dale. Joe Lives at the other end of the UK on the Isle of Wight. He teaches languages at Nodehill Middle School  and is a bit of a Guru where the use of ICT in language teaching is concerned.
We spoke for about an hour in all, which he edited down to about 40 mins worth of me talking about what I've been up to in the last year or so. At first I found the idea quite daunting but Joe was a kindly interviewer.
Rather than go over everything we discussed here I think it is better to direct you to Joe's post which contains the interview as he has done an amazing job of putting together notes from the interview including links which cropped up in conversation.
Thanks Joe, you did a great job. I wish I had smiled in the photo.
If you do happen to have a listen, the screaming in the background is my 2 year old daughter, Aïcha, wanting to watch her Dora the Explorer DVD for the millionth time...it teaches her some Spanish (well thats my excuse)

Download interview_with_adam_sutcliffe1.mp3

Cameroonian Comedy

This is a must see.

I discovered this on You Tube whilst looking for Cameroonian music vids. Its typical Cameroonian humour. Not as dodgy as it looks at first sight.
See if you like it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of broadband

Great Joy and amazement.

A whole new world has just opened up before my eyes. I've got broadband at last. As I'm writing this I'm downloading swathes of linguistically minded podcasts. I've already updated the missing album covers on iTunes and I took my first peek at Google Earth.

To paraphrase The Fast Show "I'nt broadband great".

More seriously, as befits a reflective log (use a grave tone of voice), I can now really start to research all this web 2.0 technology to help with my continued drive for improving my teaching...does that sound good? Good, HMIe are in next week.