Seven useful tips for creating enhanced podcasts in GarageBand and Keynote

The first five of these tips are very general and apply to any teacher creating podcasts. The final two tips are a bit more techy and refer specifically to creating artwork in Keynote with a view to adding it to GarageBand to create an enhanced podcast.

1. Always start your podcast with the title and episode number or date. Remember that your learners may not have an mp3 player with a screen, so they’d rather hear the podcast title than a lengthy jingle before they know they’re listening to the right episode! A clear, announcement, eg. “French Verbs Revision Podcast, episode 3″ before any music or jingle will help your podcast sound more professional.
2. Think more “late night radio voice” than “teacher voice”. As teachers we’re used to addressing a whole class using our “teacher voices”. However, it’s likely that your learners will be listening to the podcast on headphones or earbuds, so you need to change your voice accordingly.
3. Teach one learner, not a whole class. The listening experience will be improved if you imagine one learner rather than teaching to a whole class. If you can’t think of one learner, think of explaining a concept to a son, daughter, niece or nephew! This will change the quality of your voice and your intonation.
4. Short and sweet and often is best. It’s often best thinking of a podcast as a review of one piece of learning which you have perhaps covered in class. If a podcast lasts five minutes and covers one concept or topic in an interesting way, ideally with an example or two, then it’s more likely that you’ll engage your learners and that they will listen – and perhaps even listen again!
5. Silence is golden. Leave thinking time for your learners. Ask them questions, give them thinking time and then work through the answers with them.
6. Try to use a square image for your artwork. You can create square slides in Keynote by going to the Document tab in the Inspector and choosing “custom slide size” from the drop-down menu. An appropriate slide size is 600×600 pixels. GarageBand is set to use square slides by default, so if you’ve made your artwork square this will work well.
7. Think carefully about font sizes. If you’re using text on screen, think carefully about the font size you use: your learners will probably be viewing the podcast on a small screen so don’t use small fonts, and keep the words on screen to a minimum. It’s better to have two or three words in 96 point text than a full sentence in 18 point text!

First of all, I run the Radio Lingua Network of language-learning podcasts, and our educational branch is called Radio Lingua Schools. On our Radio Lingua Schools website you can read about all the digital creativity workshops we run, working in the field of languages in primary and secondary schools up and down the country.

Introductory Discussion

I spoke about Twitter – sign up for your own Twitter account at http://twitter.com and you can then start following me – @markpentleton – and all the other MFL Twitterati I mentioned via Joe Dale’s MFL Twitterers group.

I also mentioned Wallwisher where you can “build a wall” and have your students post their homework as graffiti on the wall. You can read more about Simon Howell’s use of Wallwisher within MFL and there are more details of Helena Butterfield’s work here.

Another technology we had a brief look at was Voicethread which is a tool for talking about and sharing images, documents and videos. Jo Rhys-Jones has discussed various ways of using Voicethread in primary MFL here.

Fiona Joyce has created a wiki for MFL teachers using Storybird and Lisa Stevens has some examples on her site, including video versions of the Storybird stories she has created.

I suggested that using Google Maps, and specifically Street View is an excellent way of bringing the foreign culture into the classroom. It’s worth using http://maps.google.fr rather than the English language version, so that the interface is also in French. Google Maps and Street View are particularly useful for talking about the town, working with prepositions (eg. next to, opposite, etc.) and for practising giving directions. In addition, using “real” shops and services, street signs and even adverts and notices can bring added authenticity to a lesson.

Creating content

I showed examples of animations and film-making projects. Useful software links include:

• Kudlian’s I Can Animate
• Boinx iStop Motion
• Windows Moviemaker
• Audacity
• GarageBand

The two podcast hosting services I mentioned were Podomatic and Libsyn.

For further information on making podcasts and using the apps mentioned, see these previous posts:

• Making use of free educational content for mobile devices
• Effective language-learning through creative technologies

You may also be interested in our Creative Classroom series of tutorials and screencasts from CrunchEd Productions.

iPod Touch Project for Gateshead Schools

Peter has asked me to remind you that if you want to be part of the MFL iPod Touch project then please email him at p.haywood [at] hgclc.org.

Background

I run the Radio Lingua Network (website | iTunes link) of language-learning podcasts, and our education branch website can be found at radiolinguaschools.com.

iTunes

iTunes is a tool which allows you to organise your digital content: music, audio files, movies, tv shows, podcasts and much more. It can be downloaded free from the Apple website and is available for both Mac and PC. It comes bundled on all Macs and on many HP and Dell PCs. Anyone who has an iPod, iPhone or iPad must have iTunes, so there are millions of copies of iTunes worldwide, and many of your students will be very familiar with iTunes.

iTunes Store – Podcasts

In addition to allowing you to organise your own content, iTunes lets you access content from around the web, and around the world. Click on the iTunes Store link in the left hand menu of iTunes to access music, movies, tv shows, etc. This content is available for purchase, but the iTunes Store also offers three main areas of free content which are of huge interest to educators:

• iTunes Podcasts
• iTunes U
• the App Store

Examples of podcasts used are:

• Coffee Break French
• News Time Spanish
• Mr Allsop’s GCSE History Podcast

iTunes U

While the range of materials available within the iTunes Podcasts area can be daunting and at times difficult to filter, iTunes U provides an area of content categorised by subject and organised by institution which has already gone through a quality assurance process. Examples quoted include:

• Open University Exploring Sports
• Birmingham City University
• MOMA
• HTMi: How to open a white wine

iPod Touch / iPhone apps

Time does not allow for a thorough demonstration of iPod Touch and iPhone apps. However, the following apps were mentioned:

• Dress up and make up (£1.19)
• Make a Martian (free)
• Decibel Meter (£1.19)
• Coastermate / XSensor (free)
• iRevise (£1.19)
• iStudiez Pro (£1.79)

iPad apps

I discussed various ways of using the iPad bundled apps in the classroom. Links for third party apps and content I mentioned can be found below:

• Walk Talk and Learn French podcast
• iWork for iPad (Apple website)
• Pages – Word processing (£5.99)
• Keynote – Presentations (£5.99)
• Numbers – Spreadsheets (£5.99)
• Omnigraffle – planning, mindmapping (£29.99)
• National Geographic Atlas (£1.19)
• The Guardian Eyewitness Photos (free)
• TypeDrawing – (£1.79)
• Pianist Pro - (£5.99)
• Korg iElectribe – (£5.99)
• forScore – (£2.99)
• Vuvuzela – (free)

Other resources

The Creative Classroom – a series of video podcasts produced by Apple Distinguished Educators including episodes on creating content for mobile devices.

iPad in Education – a new website created by ADE Ian Wilson looking at using the iPad in classrooms.

iPods in Essa Academy – Times online article about Abdul Chohan’s introduction of 1:1 iPods in his school.

Mobl21.com – Create mobile learning content quickly and easily, and serve it on your students’ devices

I believe that GarageBand, part of the iLife suite of applications, is extremely useful in classrooms as a tool for providing rhythm to help learners repeat words, phrases, equations, formulae, etc. and I demonstrated this to the assembled delegates by teaching them some Zulu. Having visited South Africa for the first time last month I picked up a few phrases (which may find themselves included in a future podcast series…) in Zulu and I decided that I’d begin by teaching the word sanibonani, which is how you say “hello” to a group of people. I wanted to get in one of the lovely click sounds of Zulu, so I also taught the phrase ngisaqala ukufunda isiZulu – “I’m learning Zulu”.

The Voices and World Music jam packs for GarageBand provide some fantastic African sounds, so I prepared a backing track using some loops and a simple melody based on the two phrases. I then got everyone repeating the sounds, using the African rhythms as a background. We split up the audience, giving one half the tricky ngisaqala, the other half ukufunda, and then everyone said isiZulu together. Finally, I recorded them a couple of times chanting these phrases before putting everything together in GarageBand.

I only had 15 minutes for the entire Keynote, so I didn’t have time to put the final piece together there and then, but the idea was that the recording could then be shared among the learners, further consolidating their learning as they listened on their own iPods etc. To be honest I’d forgotten about the whole project as the rest of the ATI took over, but I remembered about the GarageBand file this morning so I’ve put together a performance using the backing track and the recordings made at ATI and you can have a listen here and let me know what you think!

Ngiyabonga (thanks) to everyone at ATI, and I hope you like it.

I’ve copied the full text below, in case it disappears from the TES site – I’m not sure if these articles are permanent or not.

An award-winning language teacher’s podcasts and film workshops are bringing Mandarin to life in the classroom

The number of people in the world with some grasp of Mandarin has just gone up, as a North Ayrshire primary class took a month to learn the rudiments of the language. It’s a tough one for English speakers, say the pupils, but their teacher’s methods helped make it pretty painless.

“Chinese is hard at first, especially learning the different tones,” says young Lauren Bell. “But it gets easier as you get more used to it. We were doing the one-minute podcasts that Mark made.”

A language teacher whose interest in educational technology led to spare- time production of podcasts, Mark Pentleton eventually “gave up the day- job to concentrate full-time on Radio Lingua”, he says. “The podcasts often top the iTunes charts in the education category. They’re popular worldwide and have won awards, most recently European Professional Podcast of the Year.”

So why is Mark back in the classroom, and why has he got the P5 pupils at Glebe Primary in Irvine working with clay models and goose-necked webcams? “I’m a teacher,” he says. “It’s where I want to be. We’re increasingly working in primary and secondary schools. We’ve got our one-minute podcasts in 19 languages online, free. But for schools, we also do a teacher’s guide and we deliver workshops.”

During today’s workshop – the culmination of four weeks’ Mandarin classwork – the pupils are creating stories using only the words and phrases they learned through the introductory podcasts. “Then they’re bringing it to life by creating clay characters, animating the stories and filming them,” he explains.

There’s a lot to learn, says Reece Jamieson. “But if you like languages, Chinese isn’t too hard. We’re used to working in groups, so deciding who does what for the animations was somewhere between hard and easy.”

That’s also a good description of what it’s like to teach Mandarin using the podcasts, says teacher Kelly Russell. “The hard part was that I knew nothing about the language. It takes time to pick up the four different tones. If you use the wrong one, for instance, you could get ‘horse’ instead of ‘mother’. The kids pick it up faster than adults.”

A follow-up workshop will put the children’s dialogue on to their animated films, says Mark. “They’re using I Can Animate today to create stop-motion movies, frame by frame. They’ll then import the footage into iMovie to add titles and transitions, and then export to Garageband to record their dialogue – in Mandarin, of course.”

The finished products will then be uploaded to the Radio Lingua Schools website for the whole world to see, and there will be a presentation to parents, says Miss Kelly. “We’ll also be getting them to demonstrate the skills they’ve been learning to the P6s and P7s.”

While the language course is relaxed and spread over a month, its culmination in the two-day animation workshop takes concentrated learning and teaching, with Mark circulating, demonstrating and dispensing advice.

As lumpy, colourful characters move jerkily against a painted backdrop, he points out the biggest problem for apprentice animators. “You’ve moved them too far between shots, which is why you’re getting that jerkiness. You need to think in millimetres. Who knows how big a millimetre is?” Thumbs and forefingers, variously spaced, are held up for inspection.

“Take a look at your rulers,” Mark says. “It’s only this big. To get good animation, you need to move your characters just a few millimetres. Did you notice any other problems?”

A child’s hand had appeared briefly in shot, so he demonstrates the simple remedy – deleting that frame during editing. But there’s also a lesson to take back to the shooting stage. “Have you watched Holby City when they’re trying to resuscitate somebody?” he asks. “When you’ve got your characters in place, the person on camera should do what they do – shout ‘Clear!’ to tell everybody to get out of the shot.”

The 10-lesson language courses could easily be used in class without the animation workshops at the end, Mark says. “But what they do is give kids something they can keep and show to parents and friends. It makes it much more memorable. You can see it’s exciting for them.”

The former teacher indicates the busy little groups around the room, moving their characters, taking their shots, talking, learning, laughing – then confesses something that’s obvious anyway in his eyes.

“Actually, it’s quite exciting for me too.”

Douglas Blane, Times Education Supplement, 12 February 2010

Gillian Penny – head teacher and fellow ADE – asked me to come into the school and do some work with the pupils and we identified together the kind of phrases they wanted to include in the course I would create for them. I then worked with some original recordings I had made for the One Minute Languages courses with Ann (Russian), Dag (Norwegian) and Yoshiko (Japanese) and created five lessons for each language. The full courses and lesson guides are now available over on the Radio Lingua Schools site. I hope they are useful to teachers and pupils in other schools too!

In many ways it’s really just a huge iPod Touch with lots more screen real estate. All existing iPhone apps already work on the device, and Safari looks great (though still no flash…)

We’ve expected the new device to have some kind of eBook reader, and the iBooks app provides this. It looks like a really well-designed eBook reader, with adjustable fonts and font size, although it’s not using the e-ink format used by the Kindle and other devices. E-ink is apparently easier on the eye than a traditional screen – more like reading an actual book, I guess. Unlike Amazon/Kindle, iBooks will use the ePub format which is an open format, theoretically allowing anyone to publish an iBook. More on that in a moment.

The iBooks shelf GUI flips over to reveal the iBookstore where you can browse books iTunes-style and add them to your library with a click. Jobs demonstrated this in the keynote, mentioning that “books can include images, audio and video, whatever the author wants”. This is perfect for educational content and I’m sure that the publishing world is already very interested in the idea of being able to include multimedia within books.

Five of the six major publishing houses in the US are already signed up and producing content for iBooks: Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Harper-Collins, Macmillan and Hachette. Interestingly McGraw-Hill wasn’t mentioned, despite the slip-up by Terry McGraw on Monday. However, will independent publishers be able to create iBooks and add them to the iBookstore? This is the key question for independent content producers like us. The details are still fairly patchy on iBooks and the iBookstore, but if Apple allowed a 70/30 rev share for iBooks as they’ve done with apps, and made it possible for independent authors to submit their self-published books, this would be revolutionary! Could Apple just go that step further and give us ePub export from Pages and a button to submit to the iBookstore?

It’s difficult to define exactly whether there is a precedent for this: it doesn’t appear to be particularly easy to self-publish music or audio into the iTunes store. Indeed, when we looked at getting our language courses into the audiobooks section of iTunes, we were directed to Audible. That meant poor audio quality for listeners and not a particularly interesting rev share model for us. There is obviously a precedent with the App store, and many publishers are jumping on the app bandwagon (we’re getting there, but we want to do it right!) Is there a need for a verification process for iBooks the same way app publishers have to wait for their apps to be approved? I’m not sure. I guess things will become clearer as time goes on, but I don’t see any reason why independents couldn’t be publishing their content straight to the iBookstore.

From an educational point of view, there are of course many possibilities for using devices like these in the classroom. The price point in the UK has yet to be confirmed, but the base model in the US is $499, possibly making it a realistic option for classrooms. There are already a number of projects where class sets of iPod Touches are being bought. I wonder, given the choice of 30 iPod Touches or 15 iPads, which would teachers go for?

The UK details for release and pricing will hopefully be confirmed in the next day or so. The one really frustrating thing is that the wifi version will apparently be released first and the 3G version will come a month later. I guess I’d prefer the 3G one but doubt I’ll be able to wait a month! Maybe the wifi one would tether to my iPhone through bluetooth?

What’s it missing? Well there are the obvious things like Flash and the fact that it’s not a widescreen device (I don’t really understand that one actually, given the new iMacs). There is also the fact that there’s no GPS and no USB ports. The dock connector is ok but it’s a bit restrictive, although I’m delighted to see that there’s a video out dock connector – will this work on the iPhone too? That would be very useful! However, if this device is really to be useful in the hands of creative learners, where is the iPad version of Apple’s creative suite of iLife apps? Yes we can manipulate our photos, but where is the camera? We can import our photos via an SD-card reader accessory, but where is the built-in SD slot? Where is the video camera and the iPad version of iMovie? We can record audio on it with the mic or external connectors, so where is GarageBand for iPad? Perhaps these are yet to come on iPad v2, or perhaps a new breed of accessories will allow us to connect cameras to the iPad and edit our movies on new apps. I suppose something also has to differentiate the device from the MacBooks.

But I don’t want to complain just yet! Whether it’s just enjoying the experience of browsing the web from the sofa or watching a (4×3 or letterbox!) movie on a flight, or using it as a glorified picture frame or eBook reader, or creating apps for the device and self-publishing iBooks, this device provides fantastic opportunities, and I’m looking forward to getting one in my hands!

The long-awaited day has arrived and in about nine hours’ time Steve Jobs will take to the stage in the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco and announce Apple’s “latest creation”. Speculation has been peaking over the past few days and weeks as to what form this creation will take, and I think that there are huge possibilities for this device, particularly in the world of education, both in its traditional in-school sense, and in a wider lifelong learning sense. However, I think that today’s event may well be more about the creation and delivery of content, and this is where the real news will be.

The rumours suggest that this device is likely to be some kind of keyboard-less tablet device, bridging the gap between the iPhone / iPod Touch and the MacBook. In my Mobile Devices presentation at BETT this year I looked at using the free content currently available through iTunes podcasts, iTunes U and on the app store on iPod Touches in the classroom. There are some amazing opportunities for engaging learners, young and old, using existing content, whether it’s fantastic language-learning podcasts ( ), learning about the history of Jazz from McGill University’s iTunes U content, or Making a Martian with your primary school learners, then thinking about how to describe it in English or indeed in any other language! Now, this same content on a larger device makes things even more interesting.

For example, I’ve just finished the latest enhanced podcast for Coffee Break French (episode 73, available later this morning) and when creating this content we have to think about the screen resolution, using really large fonts in Keynote when preparing the slides to accompany the audio. We also produce pdf lesson guides for learners to print out or to view on screen either while they listen or as an additional support before or after they listen to the lesson. The pdfs aren’t really practical to use on an iPod Touch or iPhone because of the screen size, but with a 10″ screen things could change somewhat!

It has been suggested more than once that the new device will be a “Kindle-killer”, that it will introduce a new class of ebook reader, and that it will be possible to read newspapers and magazines on the device much more intuitively – and enjoyably – than in the past. I think the key to all of this will be how this content is delivered to the device, and I would expect that it will involve podcasting. I’ve always thought that podcasting pdf documents has been one of the most underused possibilities of podcasting. It’s as easy to podcast a pdf document as it is to include audio and video in a podcast feed, and iTunes is quite capable of organising pdfs too (see Adam Burt’s work on Photocopier Podcasting for a brilliant way to distribute information in an institution). It is quite possible to include video and audio in a pdf document, but as far as I know the only way of doing this is with Acrobat, and I’ve just double-checked that you can’t export a pdf from Pages with an embedded video. So are we perhaps going to see a new version of iWork today which will allow us to create pdfs with embedded videos in Pages? Or perhaps Apple will come up with some proprietary format which combines text, images, audio, video (I’m not going to mention Flash…) and we’ll be able to create and consume the content on our new devices. I hope they don’t go this route – it’s always going to be more difficult to make a new format become standard, and makes things more difficult for content producers…

According to Wired this morning, it’s perhaps more likely to be HTML5-based, similar to the iTunes Extras content which was recently released. iTunes is already capable of presenting content which combines text, images, audio and video. So will iWeb get the much-needed makeover which would allow us to create fantastic HTML5-based content destined for this iTunes browser (and obviously also for other devices, not least standard web browsers)? Or will there be some new app added to iLife or iWork? It’ll have to be easy to use, and the creation tool I think is key. We don’t want to go back to a world where only the big publishers are capable of producing and distributing content!

Will we see a new element in the iTunes Store today? One where books, magazines and online content can be purchased? Where in-content purchasing will allow users to buy more content? Where consumers can subscribe to magazines and have them delivered automatically to the device as soon as they are ready? [Sounds very familiar...] And will there be a new App-Store-like element which allows independent content producers to deliver and sell their content? Even with a 70/30 revenue model like the App store, this presents a massive opportunity for companies like ours for a new revenue stream.

It seems that Apple has already been working with some of the major content producers: McGraw-Hill’s CEO Terry McGraw apparently let slip last night that they’ve been working with Apple for quite a while. I have to be honest and say that I’m not quite sure if it was actually a slip – perhaps it was the work of the Apple PR machine helping to push the fever further! Anyway, McGraw-Hill seem to have 95% of all their materials ready in a format which would be usable on a new device.

When iTunes U first appeared, I got the impression that some of the content was very much “videos of lectures”: you were transported into the lecture theatre with the professor standing at the front, delivering the same lecture he/she had delivered for 20 years to groups of students. While this is fine if you’re the student who missed the 9am lecture because you were out the night before, it’s not really maximising the potential of the platform. Now there’s much more content on iTunes U which is ‘made for the platform’, providing short-form video reviews of lessons, concentrating on the important points of learning. The institutions have seen the potential of the medium. I doubt that McGraw-Hill have recreated 95% of their content in a new format which combines text with images and multimedia, and I think that the real power of this device in the world of learning will come when content-creators see the potential of the device and the formats it can use. And when I say “content-creators” I’m not just talking about the big publishers or even independent content creators like Radio Lingua: I’m talking about the learners themselves. With an Apple iSlate (or iPad or Canvas or whatever it’s called!) in the classroom, a new creation tool which may combine handwriting, text entry, photos, artwork, audio recordings, music and video recordings together and packages them in a format viewable on other iSlates, iPod Touches and indeed on other devices, the possibilities are endless.

Like many geeks and non-geeks around the world, I’ll be following the event tonight (6pm UK time) on the various feeds. I hope Twitter survives what undoubtedly will be a massive load on its servers as it’s always one of the best ways to get and share in the information which appears.  I think while the tablet device will get the headlines tomorrow, the real story today is going to be about content, and hopefully about the creation of that content. Yes, it’ll be a fantastic experience consuming that content on a beautiful 10″ glass screen, but I think if Apple does for text-based content what they’ve already done for music, tv shows, films, and apps, this is the game-changer. And we’ll have a lot of thinking to do in the coming days, weeks and months! Bring it on, Steve!

Links for this presentation

(Please note that many of these links are iTunes links, so you should have iTunes installed in order for them to work. Download iTunes here.

Coffee Break Spanish
Mr Allsop’s GCSE History Revision
Sinclair Mackenzie’s Higher Fizzics podcasts
iTunes U: MoMA Visual Descriptions
iTunes U: Stanford
iTunes U: Learning and Teaching Scotland
iTunes U: Arizona IDEAL eLearning Platform
App store: Dress up and makeup
App store: Make a martian
App store: Decibel meter
App store: Coaster mate

• create audio in Garageband
• export aif of voice only
• use Levelator to process voice audio
• bring aif from Levelator output back into Garageband
• send to iTunes as aac
• create mp3 from aac in iTunes

I tried this at different bitrates, removing the Levelator from the process, and re-recording new files, but nothing seemed to work. It seemed that there was something wrong with the way the server was processing the audio.

After about 8 hours of trying to solve the problem, I suddenly remembered that when setting up a new membership plugin I needed to transfer something to my server using ASCII ftp rather than binary, so I set things back to ‘automatic’ in Transmit and suddenly everything is working again! I hope this is of use to someone out there who has a similar problem!

We started by looking at the excellent "Podcasting in Plain English" video from CommonCraft.com (Catalan-subtitled version here) and discussing what podcasting involves.

Finding and subscribing to podcasts

We then looked at how to find podcasts and subscribe to them either via a web search (including podcast directories such as LearnOutLoud and PodcastDirectory) or through iTunes. The screengrabs below show the steps involved in subscribing to a podcast in iTunes:

Download iTunes here. Remember that it is possible to change the iTunes Store country from the homepage of the iTunes Store. Scroll to the bottom and select the appropriate country. Although you will not be able to purchase music, tv shows or films (unless you have a credit card registered to an address in that country) you will be able to access podcasts within the store.

Creating podcasts

Having learned how to access podcasts, we considered how to create a podcast. The example was given using Apple's Garageband software, but similar results can be achieved with Audacity which can be downloaded free. Two example podcasts were created and uploaded to libsyn. The examples can be downloaded here and here (I hope Joana and Josep don't mind their interviews being featured around the world!) A popular alternative to libsyn with options for free accounts is podomatic.

Why should we be using podcasts in languages education?

Useful links about education podcasting can be found below:

• Teacher José Picardo's wonderful walkthrough, Podcasting in Five Easy Steps
• Teacher Joe Dale's podcasting links 
• Catalan podcast directory 
• Fem un podcast from MediaWiki
• Links to the Radio Lingua site, Coffee Break Spanish and One Minute Catalan 

Ara, en català: com ja he dit, que perdoneu les fallades! Espero que les presentacions hagin estat interessants i útils. Aquest matí, després de la meva presentació he fet un volt per Girona i em va agradar molt. Espero tornar i passar més temps al descobrir la vostra ciutat! Moltes gràcies per haver-me convidat a parlar i fins la propera vegada! 

One Minute Catalan is going very well – we’re seeing good metrics, helped along by the One Minute Languages series being featured on iTunes in the UK and US!

It has been really interesting working with 玲玲, especially because of my own interest in Mandarin. Simplifying Mandarin into ten short lessons (surely you don’t need any more clues by now!) has been quite a challenge and it’s been fun balancing the two criteria for the phrases in our course: keeping it as simply as possible and trying to ensure that the chosen phrases are the most natural way of saying things.

We talked at great length about the whole issue of tones, and I often feel that too much concentration on tones puts learners off. Given the type of learner we’ll be aiming … ok I’ll say it … One Minute Mandarin at, putting learners off is the last thing we want to do. The whole point of the One Minute Languages courses is that they’re a structured approach the absolute basics of a language, hopefully helping learners catch the bug to learn a bit more. They are absolutely not intended to create fluent speakers, and this comes back to my own feelings about fluency.

I firmly believe that the vast majority of learners of a foreign language do not need to be fluent, or indeed anywhere near fluent. They need to be able to communicate at whichever level is most appropriate, and at the level which will serve the purpose they require at a given moment. In my experience being able to say a few phrases in a language has literally opened doors which would have otherwise remained closed. Through learning the basics of a language with our One Minute Languages courses, learners can say things like “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I’m learning (Mandarin/Catalan/Russian, etc). It’s quite difficult. Can you help me?” and I believe that these are the phrases which native speakers will appreciate.

I don’t intend this blog to be somewhere where I advertise our products – absolutely not. But it’s quite nice being able to share the ideas behind what we do.

Ultimately we decided to take a low-maintenance approach to tones and have introduced them once the learner is well into the course. Even then it’s linked to the fact that listeners have already learned 是 (shì) and then need to learn 十 (shí). I hope our treatment of tones goes down well with learners when we release the show. For info, when we release our larger-scale Mandarin projects there will be more help with getting used to tones!

So, instead of saying bona nit tonight, I’ll be saying wǎn ān – 晚安！

The first time I spoke in broken Norwegian to a Norwegian the reaction was one of surprised delight. Since then I’ve learned much more Norwegian and the ongoing reaction helps to encourage me further. The One Minute Language courses teach learners to say the standard basics like “hello”, “goodbye”, “my name is…”, etc., but they also teach learners how to say “I don’t speak much (Norwegian) – I’m learning it. Please help me with it!” and it’s this kind of interaction with a native speaker which will demonstrate a learner’s willingness to learn the other language.

I’m looking forward to working with Ana on One Minute Catalan, and we’re delighted that we’ll be launching it live in Barcelona on 26 September.

Introduction
Within the presentation we’re going to cover three aspects of podcasting: we’ll begin by looking at what podcasting is (and what it isn’t!); we’ll then look at some language-learning podcasts; we’ll cover some ideas for DIY podcasting and how it can be used within the languages classroom; and finally we’ll make a podcast ourselves.

What is podcasting?
We “asked a ninja” what podcasting is – you can view his words of wisdom here. In reality, I’d describe podcasting as using audio or video programmes via the internet. These can be viewed directly from websites or downloaded to computers and transferred to portable media players. This way you can access content when you want it, how you want it and where you want it. More about that later.

Listening to podcasts via websites
Our first venture into accessing podcasts will be through plain old Google. If we do a search for “learn french podcast” in Google, we get these results. The top answer (which doesn’t necessarily mean the best result!) is Learn French by Podcast. By clicking on the play button for one of the lessons we can immediately listen directly from the podcast’s website. We can also see that further materials are available from Learn French by Podcast. These materials carry a small fee. This is very common among language learning podcasts: the basic podcast is free but learners can purchase extra materials to aid the learning process.

Subscribing to podcasts
But that’s not all there is to podcasting. It’s about more than just clicking on audio files and listening to them online. What about the “where, how and when you want it…”. With podcasts you can very easily set your computer to download all future episodes of the particular podcast you’re interested in. This is called subscribing to a podcast. You could go into your local newsagent and purchase the latest edition of MacWorld or Hello Magazine, or Good Housekeeping. Equally, if you wanted to be sure of getting all the latest information on celebrities, or computing, or whatever, you could subscribe to the magazine either through your Newsagent or directly with the publisher. You would then receive your copy of the magazine as soon as it’s available, without having to do anything else. It’s the same with podcasts: when you subscribe to a podcast, the next edition comes dropping through your virtual letter box as soon as the publisher releases it.

To subscribe to podcasts you therefore need some kind of application which will manage your subscriptions. This is called a podcatcher or an aggregator. The most well known and widely used aggregator is iTunes, Apple’s music management software which included podcasting for the first time back in June 2005 with version 4.9 of iTunes. If you don’t already use iTunes you can download it here. iTunes is available for Macs and PCs (though Vista users should be aware that a finalised stable version of iTunes for Vista is not yet available. One very important point to make is that although “subscribing” to a magazine normally costs money, subscribing to 99% of podcasts is entirely free. Indeed, every single podcast on iTunes is free of charge. Some, like Learn French by Podcast which we’ve already mentioned carry a fee for extra materials, but all the podcasts I’m mentioning in my presentation today are free to download the basic podcast.

We’ll now take a look at how to subscribe to a podcast in iTunes. The example given was Coffee Break Spanish, and there are further details on the Coffee Break Spanish website to help you get subscribed. Also covered in this section were:

• Daily French Pod

• MyDailyPhrase German

• LearnItalianPod

• Chinesepod

• Japanesepod101

• A Spoonful of Russian

Make sure that you don’t miss some of the most effective features of iTunes for using podcasts. First of all, use the charts to give you an indication of what other users find enjoyable and useful (but don’t believe everything you see!) Secondly, every podcast is reviewed by its listeners. Read the reviews to gain an overall impression of the ratings on a particular podcast. You can also visit the websites linked to a particular podcast by clicking on the “Website” button for individual podcasts. You can double click on any episode of any podcast within iTunes to get a flavour of the style, the quality of recording, etc. If you want more then click subscribe.

The final tip for using iTunes is that you should “go global”. iTunes is a global music store, and there are slightly different versions aimed at the different markets across the world. In terms of commercial music this means that consumers in France, or Japan, or Sweden will have different stores and access to different music than we have in the UK. Indeed the regulations surrounding rights management of music mean that certain items aren’t licensed for the UK market, or for the US market, etc. Unfortunately this means it’s impossible to go onto the French iTunes website and purchase commercial French music, unless you have a French credit card registered to a French address. However, when it comes to accessing podcasts which are free, there’s no restriction. So, if you want to hear which podcasts are popular among French people then simply head to the French iTunes and you’ll find a wealth of material aimed at native French speakers. Don’t forget that there will also be French material in the iTunes Store for Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Canada, etc. The same goes for German with an Austrian and Swiss store.

Do it yourself
Podcasting is not just about “appreciation”: it’s also about creating podcasts yourself, either as a teacher for your classes, or with your classes, allowing your students to “star” in the podcasts. You don’t need expensive equipment to create podcasts: most computers have built in microphones, or you can buy cheap microphone headsets (like this one or this more expensive one) in Argos. The better the quality of your mic, the better the quality of your podcast. You may therefore consider getting a USB microphone which will improve sound quality. One of the best is the Samson CO1U – it’s not cheap, but the sound will be excellent. An alternative is the Q1U by Samson. The most important item you can own for better quality podcasting is a pop filter. You can buy these for about £8 in Maplin or a more school-friendly option for ordering may be CPC. The pop filter reduces the amount of air going into the microphone and therefore avoids “popping” and overloading of the signal.

When it comes to software to produce podcasts, if you’re on a Mac then you already have one of the best podcasting solutions as part of your standard system software: Garageband. If you’re on a PC then you can download the free program Audacity, used by tens of thousands of podcasters across the world. Both programs work in a similar way. We’ll be using Garageband in today’s demo.

So what can you do with podcasts? How can you use podcasts within your languages lessons?

• Make revision podcasts for your students with vocabulary or grammar tips
• Get a native speaker to record some listening practice
• Finish off a topic by creating a radio show (example here)
• Create a class podcast where students record their speaking assessments as practice (or indeed as the actual assessment!)
• Run lunchtime or afterschool clubs producing your own languages radio show
• Be cooler than other subject areas!

Podcasting fits beautifully into current ideas in Scottish Education. Adam Sutcliffe and his colleagues at the Gordon Schools in Huntly are doing some fantastic work using podcasting and blogging within the context of AiFL: see Adam’s Rate my Mates site. Equally, what better way to develop our learners’ confidence and their ability to learn independently by allowing them to prepare for assessments by podcasting? Or promoting citizenship by creating a radio show about their school or local area in the FL? Many aspects of A Curriculum for Excellence can be targetted with podcasting too.

The presentation continued with a demonstration of creating a podcast. This podcast will be uploaded to the site here as part of the presentation.

The Podcast
Download Live podcast from seminar. This podcast was created during the session and featured recordings made in different ways:
• the internal mic of the computer
• the PMD660 portable solid state recorder
• a mobile phone used to record the interview and then file bluetoothed to the computer.

The podcast also features the inaugural recording of the soon-to-be chart hit On va faire un podcast en français. If you want to sing along, here are the Grammy-Award-winning lyrics:

On va faire un podcast en français
Bien que nous soyons tous très fatigués
Les élèves seront contents
C’est quelque chose de différent
Though no-one told us we’d have to chanter!

For any further information about today’s session, please contact me at info [at] markpentleton.com. Thanks to everyone for your enthusiasm and to our assistants for their help!

Access the podcast site of the conference here.

Download PQG-POD01-update.pdf: Introduction to podcasts

Download PQG-POD02-update.pdf: Recommended podcasts

The pdf guides include live links which should allow you to click directly on the links to access the podcasts in iTunes or on websites.