I need some creative help. My kids and I want a new idea for TeachJeffSpanish.com. He knows about it, and will be watching this year. Last year’s idea of a Scavenger Hunt was so great it’s hard to top. The ideas kids have come up with they admit to not really wanting to even do. Our goal is to come up with an overarching idea that could carry us through the year.

A few caveats…

1. I want something that is fun, new, and fresh. I want something explicity not “schooly” to borrow a term from Clay.

2. I want something that my kids would watch if they happened upon it on YouTube. That’s sort of my litmus test. If it’s not interesting enough to get you to watch it, why bother?

3. I want something not cheesy. Kids come up with ideas that seem to fit the school mold but are unable (seemingly) to come up with something more creative. Granted, my kids are 11-12 years old so developmentally they’re just not there yet.

That said, I want something that folks can learn along with us. Something fun, interesting, and that also teaches Spanish. I think teaching Jeff is a fun gimmick that folks might want to learn along with Jeff.

Ideas?

Thanks..

Chris

The project is a bit beleagured since I lost my hosts, and I’m not sure what direction it will take. Anyway, here is the link..

http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/teacher_feature/teacher_feature174.shtml

Fun stuff! Thanks to Cara for the great write-up.

Have you taken a look lately at www.teachjeffspanish.com?

I’m most impressed with the Scavenger Hunt for Spanish episodes (1,2)which are written, directed and edited by students.

My question is, how can I get more folks to come and see the goodness we’ve got going on over there? I mean, we’ve got Youtube video love, a cool ClustrMap going on, word-of-the-day posts, and a whole lot more!

So what should I add to the site to make it better? Stickier?

What about you? Have you subscribed to the iTunes feed to get new episodes of the show? Are you subscribed to the feed to get new posts? You should be.

Anything you think I could add to make it better?

Don’t walk, run over to TeachJeffSpanish.com and check out the first episode!

We’re going to offer a few different things that I think will be fun for a lot of folks to be able to learn Spanish along with us! We’ll offer a word of the day post directed to Jeff as well as a weekly episode of Scavenger Hunt for Spanish. This idea was totally done by my students, with only minimal coaching on some of the more technical details. I handed three students (actually, three girls) my MacBook Pro (yup, my personal computer), a Panasonic GS-300 3CCD camera and a tripod and they went to town. The young lady that did the editing had not really ever more than played with iMovie and I think she did a jam up job.

I’ve got the iTunes link working, so feel free to subscribe to the episodes! Also feel free to leave a comment on the episode 1 post (comments are seriously moderated, as you might imagine) to tell my students how you like it!

I actually really could use the comments, because without an act of Congress, I’ll lose these students in January and have to either ditch the project or start over with new students. Then, I’d get new students at the beginning of April. I need these same ones for consistency, but let’s see how you like the project.

So if you like it, blog it, would you? This is all student-made work here, and these are sixth graders. Help me show my school these kids are as great as I keep saying! If you do blog it, please use blog tag teachjeffspanish.

Our goal is to create a blog and vodcast to help folks around the world learn Spanish. That’s a tall order, and one that’s been done before in a myriad of methods. Some of the most amazing ones are TryMango and LiveMocha.

We want to do something a bit different, with a bit of 6th grade flair. We in our class often watch short clips of the Jeff Corwin Experience (from DE Streaming) as he explores Central and South America and tries to use his limited Spanish. We then break apart what he says and correct it.

A few days ago we came up with the idea of publically trying to help him. And so, www.teachjeffspanish.com was born!

We decided on teaching Jeff because we felt like it would be so much fun for people to come and learn along with us without feeling like we were teaching “them” necessarily. This just felt like such a fun way to teach Spanish with a focus on Jeff, who seems like the type of guy who would love this kind of thing. And to answer a question in the comments, this would absolutely be appropriate for anyone, anywhere who wanted to learn Spanish or maybe brush up the Spanish learned in high school, etc.

For what it’s worth, this is an all-kid idea and I’ve just implemented what they wanted, and guided them along the way. Cool, eh?

Here is what we’re thinking…

1. A daily blog post, posted and edited by kids, with a new word of the day. We’ve already developed a category structure in which to place the words, and it looks good. There would be one post per day, one word per day. We’re working on ideas such as pronunciation, etc.

2. A weekly vodcast with student hosts (permission slip pending). This is where we’re stuck. We want something amazingly fun and quirky that will help you learn/improve your Spanish in a practical way, but without it being cheesy or corny. For as silly as it was, Guinea Pig TV was so much fun!I wish it was still around.

That’s what we want, something viral, something fun, something that will catch some notice because of the quality. I’ve got a kid who knows iMovie so I’m going to let *her* use my personal MacBook Pro to cut the video.

We just need a great idea. Can someone contact Marco Torres for me?!

Any feedback is welcome, and remember, my kids are watching this like a hawk, so talk to them!!