The presentation is basically broken down into three sections:

• The first is a quick run through of what pod casts are and why they are (a really good) tool, suitable for language learners.
• In the second section we look at podcasts used for active listening practice. Personally I think the fact that there are so many different topics of podcast available, as well as those made specifically for language learners, means that there are a great way of introducing regular listening practice to your learners.
• Then the third and final part of our workshop looked at using the brilliant Open Source sound recording software, Audacity. At first sight audacity can be a bit intimidating. I don’t really mind admitting that I only ever use about 5% of Audacity’s capabilities, but the ability to edit and mix sound recordings really make your recordings sound more professional. At the end of the day I’ve used Audacity with a class full of 15-year-olds, and it went very smoothly. A surefire sign of simple software.

Please feel free to take a look through the slides, and even share them with your colleagues if you wish. If you have any questions or if anything is not quite clear, please do ask any questions in the comment section below (these slides are of course designed to be used in a face-to-face seminar with me present, online they lose something.) Of course, if you would like me to come to your school to deliver this seminar in person, just drop me a line for a quote:

Twitter: @sethdickens
email: i n f o (a t) d i g i t a l a n g . c o m

Finally, I promised the teachers at Die Sprache who taught languages other than English, that I would find a few podcasts suitable for them. I didn’t find a great deal of sites, but here’s what I’ve found so far:

Radio Lingua Language-learning – Possibly the best group of language learning podcasts I’ve seen yet!

Schlaflos in München – der Podcast mit Annik Rubens – A very classy podcast from Munich.

http://www.andreasauwaerter.de/ – Andreas Auwerter’s Posdast

Podcasting for Learning » Zwei neue Interviewpartner im Bidcast online – Andreas Auwerter’s blog about podcasting
In addition to these links, I also have a list of links that (might) useful for teaching German and Spanish on my Delicious account:

• German http://www.delicious.com/sethdickens/german
• Spanish http://www.delicious.com/sethdickens/spanish

If you know of any more links good for teaching these languages, please do let me know in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Best of The BETT – Part 4
2. Best of the BETT – Part 3

I saw two or three of the presentations Google gave at their stand, in particular one given by Dana Nguyen on the Google Apps for Education and the Google Certified Teacher programme really stood out. Both of these programs are worth a much closer look.  I’m thinking of blogging about these in the future, so I’ll save the space here and talk about them in depth later. Apart from the fact that I’m quite a fan of Google anyway, I really was impressed by what the company is doing to try and make technology more accessible for students and teachers. In many respects, while the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in teaching is still a “new” innovation, the free services that companies like Google offer can often act as a gateway for teachers to start using technology. This is even more true when the technology being used is the same as, or similar to that which teachers are used to in their everyday lives.
I guess it still remains to be seen whether Google apps for education will end up being as much of a game changer as YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail and the other successful Google services have been. Without a doubt though, the other VLEs like Blackboard, Frog, Moodle and Fronter will be keeping a careful eye on what Google is up to. What’s more, now that Apple have announced their entry into the educational market with their iBooks 2 launch last week, I’m sure that Google are going to continue to press ahead with innovations, making Google Apps for education a very interesting suite of tools to keep an eye on.

On the final day of the BETT show, I was lucky enough to score a bit of a scoop, and I got an interview with William Florance, Google’s Head of Education, for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Apart from the fact that he rushed back from his lunch early so that I could do the interview and catch a train, he seemed like a really nice guy, and as might be expected, a really strong believer in the potential of Google Apps for Education.

So before I pass over to William, I think it’s right to just say in this final BETT post, that the show was incredibly helpful for me as an educator interested in technology. I really highly recommend it to anyone interested in this field. Although the selection of hardware, software and services dedicated to language teaching wasn’t as big as I’d hoped, there is just so much to see, that it really will be a valuable experience to anyone who chooses to go there. There will be something for everyone, I’m quite sure. I’m definitely going again in 2013, if you fancy a coffee and a bit of advice about what to see, I’ll meet you at Excel, London next year!

Related posts:

1. Best of The BETT – Part 4
2. Best of The BETT – Part 5
3. Best of the BETT – Part 1

Frog is a virtual learning environment (VLE) that has something of the social network about it, something of Google IG, something of English360, and generally speaking looks really nice. It’s not really possible in just a short four or five-minute demonstration to get a good in depth idea of  the strengths and weaknesses of something as complicated as a VLE, but the first impressions of frog were very good. What’s more, the guy that I got to do an interview for Digitalang was none other than the CEO Gareth Davies.

I asked Gareth the same three questions I asked everyone else: “Why do you come to BETT”,  “What have you been talking to people about most?” and ” What are you doing to make teachers’ lives easier?” I thought Gareth gave some good answers.

Related posts:

1. Best of the BETT – Part 3
2. Best of the BETT – Part 2
3. Best of The BETT – Part 4