Podcasting for the classroom

tortilla española de patatas, a photo by joannova, a/k/a foodalogue on Flickr.

Podcasts can be a great way to introduce authentic accents, pronunciation, and content in the Spanish classroom. Español Podcast is one of a great resource for this very practice. This website has fabulous podcasts, pictures, vocabulary explanations, and a blog. I found this particular podcast, Platos españoles, very interesting. I could use clips of this in the classroom when teaching food vocabulary or when doing a unit on traditional dishes from various Spanish speaking countries. The women are both Spanish and are talking about the gastronomy of the different regions of Spain. This podcast could be used as a listening activity, students could hear a Barcelona Spanish accent, a reading activity, students could focus on the different types of food by region, or to learn and practice food vocabulary. This is a great resource!

I really enjoyed exploring the Epals website. There are tons of great opportunities available on the site. I liked that I was able to find classrooms in specific countries. This would be helpful when studying specific countries and enable my class to make authentic comparisons. I also appreciate the projects that teachers share on this website. It's neat to see what other classrooms are doing and the ability to join them or replicate their activities in my own classroom. The storytelling component on Epals could be a really awesome way to give my students a wide audience to share stories they've written in Spanish. They could probably get tips in the writing process and produce an even better end product. Epals is a great website and definitely one that has many applications in the Spanish classroom.

Educational Voicethreads

VoiceThread Edit Directions, a photo by shareski on Flickr.

I think the best class Voicethread was Descriptive Writing created by Alyssa Pantano. This is a great educational Voicethread because it uses the tool in an effective way, to have students collaborate and see examples from each other of how to make writing more descriptive. I enjoyed the variety of creative prompts and think they are well suited for a classroom.

I also think Emily Galus' Voicethread Espanol was a good educational tool. I like this one because it has students practicing pronunciation and spelling of vocabulary words. This would be a good tool to use on a consistent basis as a formative assessment. Students could do it at home or during study halls at the school and practice their Spanish additionally. It might be helpful to have the teacher pronounce all the words correctly first so the students can hear and practice the correct pronunciation.

Stupeflix and Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

This show is a compilation of my own pictures from my study abroad experience in Spain. I would definitely use this in my classes to show my students architecture, historic places, and culture of Spain. I love that I can include images of maps to also distinguish the particular cities in which the pictures were taken. Although Stupeflix only offers one free video and the rest are created through a paid subscription, I think I would pay to use this particular program because of its ease and simplicity. It's only $5 a month. However, if I had my students create presentations, I could use a free program like Flixtime. It was a little more tedious uploading pictures using this program, but overall would be great for students. I could use this digital storytelling for country or culture projects. It would also be interesting to have students create an advertisement using one of these programs. With other programs text can probably be added, and that would enable the use of such a program for stories, movies with subtitles, etc.