PiE Blog

PiE on Le Podcasteur

Bonjour à tous les auditeurs du podcast de Bertrand Lenotre, Le Podcasteur. We're delighted that Partners in Excellence and more specifically the PiECast and VerbCast featured on the 50th edition of one of France's most listened to podcasts. To hear the programme, click here. Et félicitations à Bertrand pour ses 50 podcasts!

PiECast gets a mention in International Education Journal

The internationally recognised Language Learning and Technology journal has recently included an article on "Disruptive Technologies for Language Learning", in which the PiECast gets an honourable mention! Read the article here.

Géographie de France: selon la CNN...

Slightly worrying how CNN rearranged France recently when reporting on the rioting... not only did they move a few cities, but they seemed to have extended the country to take in most of Switzerland, half of Austria and a fair chunk of Germany. Lille is now a lovely seaside town, Cannes and Lyons have moved about 200km west, Toulouse is now a beautiful Alpine town in the north of Italy, and best of all, Strasbourg is that little known Austrian town where apparently half of the Sound of Music was filmed.

To view the map, click on the image!

Lights... Camera... Action!

The film-making work of Partners in Excellence was featured at London's Centre for Information on Language Teaching on Monday 7th November. As part of a two-day residential course, Mark Pentleton, Project Co-ordinator, worked with a group of teachers representing 10 different Language Colleges in England, who were about to embark on a film-making project.

In the course of his presentation, a number of films created by students on film-making weekends were shown. These included Schneewittchen, the animated film Autour du monde avec Bob, and the winning film from our 2005 Film Festival, Mon professeur est un extra-terrestre. The audience seemed to be very impressed with the films and commented on the professional work of the students.

To all teachers who took part in the seminar: it was great meeting you all and I look forward to hearing how your projects progress. Sorry I couldn't be with you at the BBC on Tuesday! Please feel free to get in touch with me through this blog.

(Pas) sous les ponts de Paris

At the moment we're supposed to be enjoying a short break in Paris with 25 Advanced Higher students, practising language skills in a variety of situations. Given the current situation in France it was decided on Friday that it was not the best time to visit Paris, and the visit has now been postponed until January. Dates will be confirmed as soon as possible.

The postponement of this visit has also meant that the English version of LanguageZone, due to be launched on Tuesday 15th, will be postponed too. We'll provide more details of this in the coming days.

E111 vs EHIC

We thought this would be useful, especially for parents of students who are preparing for our German Immersion visit in December. The Department of Health website provides full details about the E111 form and the new EHIC card.

The London Language Show 2006

Just spent a great day down in London at the Language Show 2006. It's been really good seeing loads of useful and interesting things, speaking to lots of people, meeting some old friends and learning some new languages! There are six of us down here (missing Kay who should've been with us but who's a bit under the weather back home!) and we've been making lots of audio and video recordings which we'll include in the forthcoming edition of the PiECast, and in other resources on the site.

In particular it wa a pleasure to finally meet Helen Myers of the Ashcombe School. To anyone who is arriving on the PiE site having heard about our work in Helen's presentations, you're very welcome. Contact us if you have any further questions!

You can look (or listen!) out for more info and lots of interviews with and by our young podcasters who were with us down here. Updates and a couple of photos coming soon!

Put yourself (and PiE!) on the map

Just discovered this via Adam Christianson's MacCast podcast. Basically it allows you to add your name and your location to a map, thereby allowing everyone to see where everyone is from. No security issues, assuming you don't provide your email address and I'd suggest everyone sticks to first names. Hopefully all our PiECast and VerbCast listeners will add their entry and we'll quickly see how far afield the word about PiE is spreading. Click the button below.

PiE features on iTunes Music Store

Out of twelve language learning podcasts (some of dubious quality and content!) featured on a special section of the iTunes Music Store, PiE features TWICE with both the VerbCast and the PiECast listed in the special section. We're delighted that in less than 24 hours there has been a significant increase in the number of downloads of both of our podcasts.

For more information about the VerbCast, see this story on the PiE website. The PiECast can be downloaded and subscribed to from here.

To access the podcasts via iTunes, subscribe to the PiECast or the VerbCast by clicking on the links.

Bienvenue à notre nouvelle blogueuse française!

Today we've published the first blog from our new French blogger Marie on LanguageZone. Marie lives in the outskirts of Paris and is going to be blogging from time to time on LanguageZone for us. We're delighted to be working with her and wish her "bienvenue" to PiE and to the site!