Mark Pentleton

Γεια σας! If you attended my sessions today at the ECIS Early Childhood Conference at the American Community School in Athens, then you should find the following notes useful.
First of all, I run Radio Lingua Ltd and we produce language courses made up of audio and video podcasts and ebooks. We have over 30 language courses [...]

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been involved in a number of events where I needed to use my iPad to deliver a presentation or demonstration. I wanted to use AirPlay through Apple TV to allow me to mirror my iPad wirelessly on the screen but I knew that the projectors in the conference [...]

The problem
We have started publishing ebook versions of our Radio Lingua language courses on the iBookstore but earlier this year we encountered a problem when trying to upload our ePubs through iTunes Producer. We use Pages (part of Apple’s iWork productivity suite) to generate our ePubs. Through simple paragraph styles, Pages allows you to create [...]

This afternoon I’m running a session on creating podcasts for MFL teachers in the Cornerhouse RTC in Manchester. This presentation and walk-through should be useful for teachers who attend the session. I’ve also included seven useful podcasting tips which I’ve found useful when producing our Radio Lingua podcasts.

Seven useful tips for creating enhanced podcasts in [...]

I’ve just spent three days working with inspiring educators from across Europe at the Apple Distinguished Educator Institute, welcoming the “class of 2011″ to the ADE programme. It has been fantastic being surrounded by so many engaging and committed teachers from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. We decided [...]

Since 2005 I’ve been part of a community of educationalists from around the world who are recognised for “doing amazing things with Apple technology”. I first became an Apple Distinguished Educator while I was working on the Partners in Excellence languages and technology project where we were using film-making, animation, music production and podcasting to motivate [...]

As we reach the end of 2010 I thought it only right to have a think back through an extremely busy year and make some notes for posterity!
Radio Lingua
Four years ago, in an attempt to keep my language teaching roots alive while focusing on other things working with the East Ayrshire education team, I decided [...]

There’s really only one song a Scot could play on Hogmanay: Auld Lang Syne. Our national poet Robert Burns wrote the poem in 1788 and along with the traditional tune known as Roud, it has become the traditional song of the New Year. Many versions of the song exist in many languages. Last year students [...]

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I suppose this should really be the final song in my collection, but there’s something typically “Hogmanayish” planned for tomorrow, so I wanted to get the Abba classic Thank you for the music in today. The song was recorded in summer 1977 (I had just turned five at the time!) and was included on The Album, [...]

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I couldn’t end my 365songs project without including this classic. Originally a French song, Comme d’habitude, by Claude François, the English lyrics were written by Paul Anka after he heard the French version while on holiday in the south of France. Anka wrote the song for Frank Sinatra and it was recorded on 30 December [...]

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We’re into the final few songs in my 365 collection and today I’ve decided to play this classic song from 1940. The piano part to the song is notoriously difficult to play, so I ended up doing a few takes of this and decided to do a full backing track with strings, kit and bass. [...]

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Today’s song dates from 1947 and was written by Frank Loesser, the lyricist of over 700 songs from films and musicals including Baby, it’s cold outside, On a slow boat to China, Two sleepy people and the musical Guys and Dolls. The first time I heard this song it was sung by Harry Connick Jr [...]

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Today’s song was chosen by my son Matthew, who insisted that it should be played after Christmas because, after all, the lyrics are “Mary’s boy child, Jesus Christ, was born on Christmas day”, so it wouldn’t be right to play this song until after Christmas day! It dates from 1956 when it was released by [...]

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Here’s the second song for today – probably my all-time favourite Christmas song. I hope you enjoy this song and I hope you enjoy your Christmas day wherever you are!
Podcast: Download (Duration: 5:55 — 8.2MB)

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Happy Christmas to one and all! Here’s a wee bonus song for Christmas day: Jingle Bells was published in 1857 and, curiously, was the first song broadcast in outer space in 1965! I’d like to wish everyone who has tuned in to my daily tunes for the past 359 days a very happy and peaceful [...]

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There’s only one song I can play today and it’s my favourite song from my favourite Christmas film, The Muppet Christmas Carol. We used this song last year at the church Nativity and I’ve based my version today on that one. Have a lovely Christmas Eve everyone! Here’s the song from the film on YouTube. [...]

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I asked Matthew and Ewan which Christmas songs they’d like me to play and when, so today Ewan wanted me to play his favourite, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. It dates from 1949 and was first performed by Harry Brannon New York radio and then recorded by Gene Autry. Since then it has been recorded hundreds [...]

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Today’s song is the theme from the 1982 film The Snowman based on the children’s book Raymond Briggs. It was written by Howard Blake and sung by Peter Auty in the film, but popularised by Aled Jones in a single which reached number 5 in the UK charts at Christmas 1985. It has been parodied, [...]

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This isn’t actually a Christmas song, but I’ve always associated it with Christmas because it was one of our standard programme numbers from the Mearns Castle choir days when we used to perform at Princes Square in Glasgow at Christmas. It was written for Céline Dion by David Foster and Babyface for the opening ceremony [...]

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For years Christmas ‘pop songs’ conjured up images of Cliff Richard in a woolly jumper and scarf swaying back and forwards singing Mistletoe and Wine. I’m not very fond of that song, but I do like Little Town which is based on the carol Oh Little Town of Bethlehem. As far as I can gather this was [...]

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