Retro Retrieval

Nicosia video makers

We’ll continue our review of previous Gaelic recordings into the winter months, given the popularity of our autumn social media season. But we’re going to start the New Year with something a little bit different – and warmer – while sticking with the Gaelic unifying theme. We’ll kick off with some earlier films made “in the style of” or “about” Island Voices, before returning to more classics from the original series.

Island Voices in fact owes its inception to the stimulus provided by the EU’s Leonardo funded POOLS project of 2005-2007. It was through that successful partnership that the Guthan nan Eilean idea came into being – and won the 2007 European Language Label. POOLS turned out to be just the first of many follow-up projects that built on the original theme, with Island Voices linked to many of them.

POOLS-2 (2009-2011) was an early example, again with a video production element included, which enabled us to link with other European islands like Cyprus and Malta. In these demo clips from a 2010 video workshop in Nicosia, the fundamental learning point is made that serviceable video-making need not be the exclusive preserve of industry professionals. And in language teaching terms, it can be a highly productive process, with multilingual knock-on benefits potentially within reach in return for the initial creative input.

These videos were put together as a demo for language teachers interested in the use of ICT in language teaching. Participants spent a morning taking pictures. The following day, after pooling their resources, they each edited together their own short film, using this demo as an exemplar.

They were recently “rediscovered”, and the Gaelic version has now been additionally equipped with the learning assisting enhancements that have since become available – including the now standard Clilstore transcript (Unit 11794), plus optional YouTube subtitles (that can further be auto-translated through the Settings Wheel).

A bheil Portagailis agad, neo am bu toil leat beagan ionnsachadh?!

Tionndadh Gàidhlig:

English version:

We’ll place direct YouTube links to more Gaelic films on a similar outward-looking and multilingual theme on Facebook and Twitter in days to come…