Podcuentos del Profe

My podcast blog has moved back to Blogger. Please update your bookmarks.

http://podcuentos.blogspot.com

A brand new French episode is up. I hope to create more videos in the coming months.

Hello to all the Podcuento viewers and subscribers. Our school year is nearly over; final exams are in the latter half of this week! This year I have not given myself enough time to produce as many episodes as I would have liked. For that, I am sorry. Episode #12, which will be posted very soon, will be the last one for the 2007-2008 school year. I have been working on it off and on since April! There are also a couple of scripts that I never recorded that will have to wait for next year.

For the 2008-2009 school year I will be teaching 6th grade Spanish and 8th grade French, so the content of the episodes will be different. Thank you for your comments and emails. Your feedback is very valuable, and I appreciate it very much. I hope you all enjoy your summer!

EDIT: Edublogs has updated to the most recent version of Wordpress, and many of my embedded videos no longer work. I’ll be fixing those, but in the mean time, you can use the Flash Video link or the Download link.

Many viewers have requested the episodes be made available via YouTube. Although YouTube is blocked from our school computers, I realize that for many, it is the most accessible way to view videos at home. Therefore, I am happy to provide you with the episodes on my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/mrtejeda.

I have added a Flash video link at the bottom of the posts for listeners who have trouble watching the Quicktime files. Flash video is an alternate video format that uses Adobe’s Flash Player to play the files. This is what Google Video and YouTube use.

So now there are three ways to watch the podcast.
1: You can subscribe via the feed and have new episodes come to you automatically.
2: You can check the website and see either the mp4 or flv files.
3: You can download the episodes and save them to your computer.
I hope this will provide more accessibility.

I want to give a great big THANK YOU to all who have written me email and have left comments on this blog! Your suggestions are helping me improve my podcast!

Welcome to the new school year and another year of Podcuentos. This podcast has evolved since last year. Not only will you be just listening to Spanish with audio-only episodes; I’ve incorporated scripts, images and videos to help you make sense of the Spanish you hear. Enjoy the episodes, leave feedback, and listen often.

I’m sorry that I have not posted in a while. But rest assured more episodes are in the works. While you wait for the next installment of Lucho, below is the bilingual script for “Chato: Episodio 2.” The PDF file also includes some cultural information about the episode. Thanks to all who have written comments and sent me email! I appreciate your feedback!

Lee el guión aquí.

Several people have asked me how I did the Chato episode. As you can see in this picture of “Profe Film Studios,” the setup was quite simple. I sat behind my movie camera which was mounted on a tripod. I spoke for and moved the puppets, whose stage was a platform constructed of a book and a box. The background image was actually a photo on my PC’s monitor that I paused in slideshow view. In the end, I wound up not using the audio recorded on my Samson C01U USB mic connected to my PowerBook G4: because I was sitting so close to the camera’s microphone, the sound was actually quite clear.

Students have also asked me to post a bilingual script to the Chato episode. Here it is. It also includes some cultural tidbits about things Peruvian seen in this episode. Enjoy!

Lee el guión acá.