Mark Pentleton

Jornades de Llengües in Girona

I'm in Girona, Spain delivering two session on using podcasts in language teaching - the first of these was this evening and was in a mixture of Catalan and Spanish. The second is tomorrow morning, so I'm trying to get a bit ahead of myself and putting up the notes and links from the presentation in advance.

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! 

Please give feedback by posting a comment!

Aprendre idiomes podcast a podcast...

I'm sitting in Heathrow on my way back from Barcelona and was having a quick check of emails etc. (flight delayed...!) and noticed that VilaWeb has published an article about One Minute Catalan. Very pleased with the article (although slightly concerned about the "abandonament" referred to - not quite what I said! Anyway, si parles català, pots llegir l'article aquí. I si no, doncs hi ha un podcast que pots utilitzar per a aprendre'l! (If you speak Catalan you can read the article here, if not there's a very good podcast you can use to learn ;)

More feedback from NME

I must get back to this soon - I've got lots more to report back on, but it will have to be put on hold for the time being. Since I got back from the Expo things have been extremely busy catching up with everything. I'll report back as soon as I can!

NME: Keynote - Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk started off the convention with Thursday's keynote. Gary runs the very successful WineLibrary.tv and is something of an internet celebrity to say the least. These are some of the key points I've taken from his presentation.

If it's not in your DNA then you're not going to be able to do it
As a podcaster I should be creating podcasts which include 'parts of me'. If I'm into Sci-Fi, or travel, or Eurovision (!) then I should include these idiosynchrasies in what I do. This makes the podcast more 'me', and theoretically that's what attracts listeners and fans. The key word is authenticity: don't try to be something you're not.

I guess this in many ways puts into words exactly what I've been doing for two years (and indeed throughout my teaching career): the lessons I teach - and the content I produce - have always included a bit of 'me', especially in terms of my music, and indeed the cheesiness of the podcasts sometimes!

Content may well be king, but marketing is queen - and the queen runs the household!
Marketing your brand is the key to success and recognition. Marketing can be both traditional marketing with advertising etc., but it can also mean simply 'becoming part of the conversation' by joining discussions, posting on forums and blogs, and becoming a recognised source of opinion or information.

We have done very little 'marketing' as such with Coffee Break Spanish, and our other podcasts. Indeed, we haven't really 'needed' to so far in that iTunes drives so much of our traffic and our prominent place on iTunes helps to maintain this. Of course, relying on iTunes or any other one source of traffic can be dangerous. What happens if iTunes stops pushing podcasts? We need to look seriously at the bigger plan for marketing, but that's not really for this public blog at the moment.

Editing? Screw editing!
Gary doesn't believe in editing - it slows up the creative process and holds back publishing. Indeed in a recent episode he needed to verify the cost of a bottle of wine he was discussing so he left his place in front of the camera and went to check the price online, leaving the camera running. Apparently his viewers enjoy this because it's real.

I think there's definitely a place for this kind of production. However, I'm not 100% sure if it fits into what we're doing. On the one hand, we can easily produce that kind of 'live', raw content, and I'm sure that it would be successful, assuming we had the correct host and the correct location, be it studio or otherwise. However, I think the wider non-tech appeal of language-learning content may mean that our production needs to be higher standard. This needn't necessarily mean that we go back to the type of Buongiorno Italia production, but perhaps the best solution would be a show which "feels" live, but which is actually produced deliberately to achieve that effect. Perhaps something along the lines of Walk, Talk and Learn!

There were undoubtedly other pieces of wisdom covered by Gary during his presentation, but these were just a few of my thoughts. I'll add to these once I've heard the podcast version of the keynote.

New Media Expo: Initial Impressions

I'm currently flying at 37,000 ft above Nebraksa on my journey home to Scotland after spending five days in Vegas for New Media Expo. This has been my first visit to Vegas, and indeed to the US, and it's been quite an experience.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from New Media Expo. I'd obviously followed previous Expos in Ontario from the various blogs I read, and this year I decided to see what it was all about and experience the Expo for myself. I have to say that overall I'm a bit disappointed in my experience. Perhaps it's because of where I'm currently at in podcasting and in particular where I'm at in terms of monetisation of my brands. I felt that the content was perhaps aimed more at those who haven't got as much experience in making their podcasts and brands pay for themselves. While Paul Colligan, Jason Van Orden, Leesa Barnes and co. provided great ideas for podcasters who hope to take their podcasts beyond the hobbyist level, I felt that there wasn't enough content on how to take that next step.

I spoke to Don McAllister about this and I think that Don's probably in a similar position: we've both achieved success with our respective podcasts, we've both efficiently monetised our brands and indeed we've both reached a stage where podcasting (and the ancillary activities) is our 'day job'. And yet the big 'profitable podcasting' sessions at the Expo were still saying similar things to what they've been saying in the past, addressing that prospective profitable podcaster, rather than providing any advice as to the next steps for those of us who are already successfully monetising our podcasts.

Of course, as Tim Bourquin (and many others) said at the opening of the conference, it's more about the conversations you have with people in the corridors, in the coffee queues and in the bar which are as important, if not more important, than the sessions, and I've had many of these. It has been great getting to know Don (and his family) and putting faces to the many names I've been reading and listening to over the past few years. Special mention goes to Jason Van Orden whose presentation was both enjoyable and useful, and who, as I've suspected for a long time, is a really nice guy. It was great to meet Jason, his Internet Business Mastery partner Sterling, and indeed Melanie, his wife.

i plan to blog about the sessions I've attended, sharing the most important messages, and I'll probably do this over the next few days. This post is more a "first impressions" of the Expo, rather than anything with too much detail. There are a few things I also have to mention about Las Vegas itself! Quite a city, quite an experience. But more of that in coming blog posts.

Was New Media Expo for me? Was it worthwhile travelling 4000 miles via Iceland, Toronto, Windsor and Detroit to Sin City in order to attend the convention? I think I'll probably hold off before answering that question, primarily because I still need a few days to think through everything. I've enjoyed my trip, but any final decision or comment is coloured at the moment by the fact that I really feel it's time to get home. I've been away for eleven days and that's more than enough for me. It's time to go home.

About me

I'm currently working as the co-ordinator of the Partners in Excellence project (PiE), for East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire and Argyll & Bute Councils in the west of Scotland. The aim of the project is to promote languages education among young people and to raise the profile of languages within the three participating authorities. More about the PiE project here.

I am also an Apple Distinguished Educator and work with Apple on a number of projects involving creative learning through film, animation, music and podcasting. I'll be working at the forthcoming Apple Teacher Institute at Cheltenham College, Gloucestershire after Easter and look forward to working with lots of inspiring teachers from across the country.

In my spare time I run Radio Lingua Ltd with my wife Catriona. Radio Lingua Ltd is a new media company providing language-learning by podcast. We currently offer courses in conversational German and Italian and our podcast Coffee Break Spanish is one of the world's leading Spanish podcasts with in excess of 100,000 listeners per episode. More podcasts to come in the future!

It's probably fairly obvious that languages play a large part in my life! I speak French, Spanish and Italian and am relatively confident in Norwegian, German, Portuguese and Catalan. I've recently been dabbling in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese too, but time doesn't allow for much more than a dabble!