How good is your ear for accents? How different do you think one word could sound in a variety of accents? A new interactive site entitled Sound Comparisons by Edinburgh University in conjunction with the Arts & Humanities Research Council allows you to hear the same word uttered in dozens of accents. I tried out […]

Caroline Gibson is sharing her preparations before departing in three weeks for a summer of teaching in Malawi, from how to communicate in the native tongue to working out the kind of classroom equipment you need to play Scottish music cassettes when there is very little or no electricity.
Living with a host family, Caroline is […]

I was reminded of this quote today:
“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826); 3rd president of US.
The reason it came to mind was that while thinking about apparent serendipity, an alternative perception occurred to me which might best […]

Here is the full transcript of the interview with Kay Livingston, Head of International Education at LTS, as part of the Broaden Your Horizons story in Issue 20 of Connected magazine. There are also plenty of Chinese culture and language links on the MFLE website:

Chinese language special
Teaching Chinese at St George’s School for Girls
What it’s […]

In an attempt to refresh mind and body between school and a twilight Parents’ Evening, I recently spent an hour in the pool and health suite of North Berwick Sports Centre. In the steam room I found myself, inexplicably whistling*. Apart from the fantastic acoustic and the apparent contribution of the steam to the quality […]

It’s not often you get a glimpse into - far less a listen to - pre-history. Michael Wood’s The Story of India (BBC4 last night - sadly not available on iPlayer) visited Brahmin priests in Kerala taking young trainees through vocal preparations for a 12-day celebration of Agni - the god of fire.
The prayers being […]

It’s always nice to have your intuitions nudged in the general direction of scientific fact by reputable specialists. That’s why I was delighted to read on Simon Ager’s excellent blog Omniglot about a new book by Oliver Sacks called Musicophilia.
I’ve long been persuaded by the parallels between music and language so I’ll be very interested […]

Many guitarists involved in tuition at school become experienced over the years in reading both traditional musical notation and TAB. Occasionally you can sense a drift in focus, during which errors and omissions begin to occur.
The best fix for this, whether in notation or TAB, is to ask pupils to recite the note names or […]

As the working week ends at MGS, I found myself present at the Teach-Meet Roadshow featuring digital video, online publishing, digital photography, animation & podcasting. I sampled the podcasting workshop.
An interesting site which David flagged up was find sounds from where little snippets of music and sound can be downloaded to spice up your podcast. […]

Gordon McKinlay has been thinking about how we are going to work with the ‘Glow Groups’, small online communities in the national intranet. Jimmy Wales, at this week’s Online Information Conference, also gets us thinking about building communities from his experience as Founder of Wikipedia, and maybe offers some ideas as to how these Glow […]