Don’t be fooled by the glum looking expression; this guy is Andrés Bautista and he is a very nice chap! Andrés worked for the now-defunct SierraVision TV service in Arcos de la Frontera, the beautiful town in which Speekee was filmed (and where I remain fortunate to be living!). He was one of the people I used to deal with when the filming of the Speekee episodes was taking place. What fun that period was!
Much of Speekee was filmed not just outside in the town’s streets, parks etc., but also inside the SierraVision studio (the image of Andrés is, as you can probably tell, taken from inside the control room).
You can easily imagine, then, why SierraVision – not a TV station blessed with a surfeit of quality programming – asked me one day if they could ‘borrow’ the DVDs of episodes and put them on local TV. And so… they did.
To put this into some context, we are not talking about Speekee beinig beamed around the world, but rather shown on a local TV station plus a few others nearby.
Anyway, the point of this story is to tell you about the warm reaction it received from parents and, more importantly perhaps, to point out that the youngest TV-watching Spanish kids here in Arcos were captivated!
Well, when we designed Speekee it was with non Spanish speakers in mind. I was not expecting Spanish kids to love it too! But they did.
And it was a chat with my new hairdresser yesterday which prompted this blog entry today, because he had recognised me from the program his daughter (now six years old) so loved.
Cool! Speekee works for Spanish speakers and non Spanish speakers. A double whammy!
How Speekee TV watchers leave feedback
About 30% of users kindly reply with their opinon, which helps us improve the product and plan for the future.
Here are some comments we received today:
1. What made you cancel your Speekee TV subscription? For example: too expensive, not suitable, too young/old for my child, we came to the end of the course.
The videos were great! The songs worked, helping them learn some Spanish. The lessons, however, required more attention from me than the time I have to give them because they require higher reading skills than my 5 and 6 year old have at this time. I was using this as an independent project they can do, when I really should have been sitting down with them, the video, and the accompanying lessons.
They watched the videos twice, then they were “done.” I didn’t do a good job convincing them they didn’t really KNOW Spanish yet! Basically: my fault. If I spent more time with them on the Spanish it would work. I just haven’t figured out how to fit it into my homeschool day yet with me involved as well.
2. How could we improve Speekee TV?
Maybe more videos? (The kids got through the videos and thought they were “done” because I hadn’t utilized the lessons included. More formats for emergent readers? But you can’t please everyone. I think it’s really a neat program, actually.
3. Have you any other comments?
I hope to come back to Speekee next year if that’s okay. I am so thankful for the monthly pay ability. It enabled me to try Speekee for 6 weeks at a reasonable cost.
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