I'm always looking for ways to reinforce concepts in my Spanish classroom. My students come to class without a true working knowledge (that they'll admit to) of English grammar, so presenting Spanish grammar can be a challenge. One of the most challenging topics at the beginning of study is the gender of nouns. Why is a word considered masculine or feminine? Why do adjectives have to agree in number and gender? "Can't people just speak English?" Umm...no!
I love websites that are interactive. My students lose focus when forced to sit for too long. (At least that's what I tell them because I don't show movies in class!) Study Spanish has great FREE activities and podcasts for use in the classroom. Even podcasts like The Gender of Nouns 1 wait for a response. It's time to create some of my own to make them even more personal!
With my upper-level classes, I would like to have my students create podcasts using PhotoStory or MovieMaker for different units that we do. They can choose to do one on Activities to do on a Beach (using current vocabulary of course), a specific country, or a holiday celebration coming up like Las Posadas in Mexico.
Thanks for the link to Learn Spanish podcasts. They look good. I agree with you that using iMovie or Moviemaker would be a great way to involve students in their own learning. Many of them are probably already using one of these tools and so there would be ample tutors for everyone else!
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