Practical Proficiency Podcast
Where world language teachers gather to transition to proficiency oriented instruction through comprehensible input. All through practical, real-life, teacher-friendly ideas that make teaching language more joyful! Hosted by Devon of La Libre Language Learning.
Practical Proficiency Podcast
#26 - Wildly Engaging & Easy Activities with Music: An Interview with Roxxem's cofounder Shawn Lee
Ready to transform your language classroom with the power of music? Discover how Roxxem, an innovative platform co-founded by Shawn Lee, is changing the game for language educators. By turning popular songs into engaging lessons, Roxxem offers flexible resources that enhance student participation, improve listening skills, and deepen cultural understanding. From complete lesson plans to quick activities that energize the classroom, Shawn shares how these music-infused tools make language learning memorable and culturally enriching.
Sign up for Roxxem for FREE here* (affiliate link)
Ever wondered how a song could ignite a lifelong passion for languages? Tune in to learn about the incredible impact of music in Spanish classes, as we share personal stories of cultural curiosity sparked by the hits like Manu Chao's "Me Gustas Tu." Music doesn't just teach vocabulary; it connects students to a world beyond the textbook, encouraging them to explore and embrace new cultures. With Roxxem’s vast array of resources, educators can seamlessly integrate music into their curriculum, providing students with an unforgettable learning journey and genuine cultural connections.
Explore the transformative potential of Roxxem's platform, featuring customizable tools like Whack-A-Word and Lyric Puzzle. Shawn guides us through the platform's robust search function, which helps educators find the perfect song for their classroom needs. From beginner to advanced learners, Roxxem offers comprehensive resources that save teachers hours of planning, ensuring that music becomes a central, dynamic part of language education.
Join us as we celebrate the fusion of music and teaching, and discover an exciting upcoming music challenge collaboration designed to take language learning to the next level!
*affiliate means that I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you choose to upgrade to premium. Thanks for helping to support the show!
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What's up? Que lo que Et salut world language teachers. Welcome to the Practical Proficiency Podcast, where we make the transition to proficiency-oriented instruction in your world language class in a way that works for you, your unique context and teaching style, and doesn't sacrifice your well-being along the way. I'm your host, devon Gunning, the teacher author, conference host, curriculum creator and consultant behind La Libre Language Learning. This podcast is for the creative world language teacher like you who's ready to ditch the overwhelming pressure of switching to acquisition-driven instruction and CI overnight. You're ready to discover how using more target language in class can actually bring you and your students more joy instead of adding to your plate. With practical, authentic and down-to-earth strategies that don't require reinventing the wheel or more training, we'll work together towards the magic of a community-based, target-language-rich classroom, rooted in the power of community and comprehensible input.
Speaker 1:Let's go of the Practical Proficiency Podcast in video or in your beautiful ears. I'm so happy to have with me here today. Sean, the co-founder of Roxum, is here to talk to us today about the importance of using music in the classroom and some ideas to make it easier for us as world language teachers today, sean, this is so exciting. We love using music and I can't wait to hear your ideas on this. Thank you so much for being here. Can you tell us a little bit about you and how you came to be a part of this whole Roxham amazing music experience?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Devin. Thank you so much for having me and for the teachers who are out there listening. Thanks so much for tuning in, really excited to share my story and a little bit about the company that I'm building. My name is Sean. I'm a co-founder of Roxum and we're building at Roxum an app that really allows language teachers to teach with popular music their students' favorite songs or your favorite songs and other catchy tunes as well. You know, our goal is really to make life easier for you guys, and you can turn any song into a fun lesson, a live activity, so that your classes are more effective, more engaging for your students and easier in terms of the effort and the preparation that's required on your end.
Speaker 1:All right, triple threat. That's so exciting. So, with Roxham is blowing up the scene, this is really exciting to see all the world language teachers that are starting to use it. So tell me a little bit more about how do teachers use this in world language. What does this look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we've been so grateful for all the support from teachers. We'll get into some of our background and story in just a second, but you know we've been built by teachers and so just grateful for the tens of thousands of teachers that have been on Roxam and, yeah, we're growing very rapidly. But over those thousands of teachers, they really use Roxam in different ways, so it's really a choose your own adventure. We have folks who use entire lesson plans, like you hear about Musica Miracoles and you know where teachers really deep dive into a song or artist for an entire class period. We also have ways for teachers to just use fun, small, engaging mini activities 5, 10, 15 minutes in class for them to start class in a really exciting, engaging manner and also to have students to make sure that they arrive on time because, hey, who wants to miss out on a fun game to start class or just a way to end class?
Speaker 2:You know we often hear teachers saying like, yeah, you know I teach a bunch of middle schoolers. They're always waiting on the lunch bell, but every time we play a rock, some game or a song lesson they don't need. You know the bell rings and they don't even hear it and they just continue playing. And so fun ways to start and end the class and then last, also just things that you can assign homework, classwork, assignments where students are actually learning song lessons and that they're actually excited to do so. All kinds of ways to really integrate into your classroom in a really effortless way and we're trying to focus on this experience of four teachers really in a seamless, practical manner, being able to have class be more engaging, more exciting and increase learning for students.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's like literally. It's so perfect. This is music to my ears to hear that moment that every teacher is looking for. Of like, my kids don't even know that the bell rang and they want to hang out and play more music and, like for world language. Music is such a key part of what we do. That's so cool. So I'm curious to hear how did Roxum get started with this mission? Like what motivated you to be a part of this tool?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. I appreciate you asking, devin. So my co-founder, my colleague Hugo Schoen, started Roxum about two years ago. He was a classroom language teacher for over 10 years and he incorporated a lot of music into his own classrooms day to day. I think there's a lot of science behind why teachers love music for retention, recall. Music is repetitive, it's catchy, there's earworms, there's repetitive choruses. Beyond that, it's great for listening and pronunciation, it's cultural and then it's just plain fun for students. And so Hugo really realized this and incorporated a lot of music into his class.
Speaker 2:But what he found was that it's really hard to do Everything from choosing the right song that aligns with what you're teaching, making activities, printing worksheets, creating clothes activities, and then with new songs coming up every year and students requesting different songs, it's really hard to catch up and really be able to tailor each of those activities to your learning. I think one I spoke with a teacher recently and she recently talked about yeah, before Roxam, I had to print out these lyrics. You know, cut out the missing words, have students. You know, place the missing chunks of paper into the. You know the line that's missing. And she just said yeah, you guys, you know what you're doing saves us so much time and I don't even have to think about cutting out worksheets or cutting out words anymore. And so, yeah, he just found that a lot of teachers were having this problem, a lot of his own colleagues in his school. And so during the pandemic, you know, some people learned how to bake, other people took on a different hobby.
Speaker 2:Hugo chose to learn how to code and so, without a coding background before he took some classes, learned how to code and created Roxum, all based off of his own need, and so you know what's really awesome about Roxum is, and what we're really proud of from the very beginning, is that we've entirely built our platform, our kind of DNA of who we are based off of what teachers' needs are. We're built by language teachers for language teachers, and that's really important to us. Even beyond just Hugo starting, we continue to have a panel of teachers that advise us on what should we build next, review all of our work, our songs, our new activities and things, our games as well, and that's just a critical part of our DNA is ensuring that we stay really close to our mission of helping language teachers like you guys out there.
Speaker 1:That is not surprising to me that a world language teacher would learn how to code during the pandemic, because it's actually actually, even though it is so impressive, it is a language that's actually really cool.
Speaker 1:That's so cool also, that teacher is me, that exact person who was cutting up pieces of paper in order to fit that into like a closed listening activity. Genius that you found a way to. But like we all, we all do these crazy things to make music happen in class. Because tell us a little bit more about I mean, hugo demonstrated that it's important in class. Why is it so great for students to be using music in class and how can we make this a little bit easier? How can we stop doing all of the cutting and pasting and the yearly got to refresh the song list and everything? How can we make this important piece easier in class?
Speaker 2:Yeah, happy to dive into the specifics of Roxham in just a second, but to answer the first part of your question of you know what's the actual impact to students.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you my personal reflection and my personal story for joining Roxen. So I was a Spanish student and I was actually a really good student, but the one class that I was really bad at was Spanish. I took Spanish off. Yeah, exactly, I took Spanish all four years of high school and two years of middle school, actually took all the way up to AP Spanish and it was always my worst class. I'm not, I'm not exactly sure why. I think maybe it was a listening thing or something, just not, you know, just really clicking in my head. But you know, after AP Spanish, my senior year of high school, I was excited basically to hey, I'm done with this, I don't ever have to take another Spanish class again. And it's crazy, you know, reflecting on those times and you know thinking about what I've learned.
Speaker 2:And 12 years later, you know, I don't remember my Spanish three teachers name. I don't really remember the subjunctive tenses. There's a whole lot of vocabulary that I've forgotten. But what I do remember are the songs that we sing in class. That I've forgotten. But what I do remember are the songs that we sing in class. It's the Me Gustas Tu by Manu Chao. It's the Yo Quiero Ser Bombero, a song about what do you want to be when you grow up? I remember, you know, especially, you know, and I still sing it in my head sometimes, but the nursery rhyme to learn the days of the week to the tune of Itsy Bitsy, spider, you know, sometimes, when it's like when you're tired, and Wednesday, Thursday, I forget which one that you know, so I sing it back in my head right and so, um, you know, reflecting back, I'm really grateful for Spanish class because it exposed me to a lot of cultural, cultural elements, um, through the music where now, today, you know, I listen to reggaeton, I listen to Mexican banda music almost every single day.
Speaker 2:You know, spanish class taught me enough to where, even after Spanish class, even after high school, I continued to listen to Spanish music and that snowballed into me pulling up lyrics, learning more of the language. That turned into me feeling comfortable in traveling to Spanish-speaking countries and conversing with other people. That encouraged me to do more intercambios and talk to people and really be able to practice my Spanish, even beyond just the music I was listening to and the countries that I was traveling to, and this really enabled me to, I think, find the beauty in different cultures and the bridging of cultural understanding. And so Spanish class, I think, especially through the music, is what really opened me up to the world. And you know, when I talk to a lot of students and teachers today, and you know when I, when I talk to a lot of students and teachers today, it's, you know, I don't, I don't think there's, out of everyone who takes Spanish, there's very few students in high school Spanish that I think go on to take a, take a job as a translator or a role that really requires high level Spanish.
Speaker 2:But I think my story is something that's extremely common and very possible for all Spanish takers in high school, and it all started with the music that we were listening to. And it's funny, you know, the irony isn't lost on me that I went from hating Spanish class to now running a language learning startup, but it's really the real life content. It's really the music that I think, started the snowball of everything that piqued my interest, that encouraged me to learn more about cultures, that encouraged me to go and talk to more people, and the music is what really enabled me to start it, and uh is one of the biggest reasons why I'm at Roxham here, trying to make my impact, uh, through music and language learning today, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:So I was so excited to have you share with teachers what your story is, because it is true for over 85% of the students that we have in our classes every single day. There's only 1%, just like you said, of students that we have that our classes every single day. There's only 1%, just like you said, of students that we have that are going to go on to be language experts or teachers or yada, yada, yada, whatever you actually, even though you said that it was the class that you hated when you were in high school, you're actually the dream example Somebody who took an interest in it, who wanted to talk to people in Spanish and who was still involved in integrating the culture into your life in daily ways and using it to further understand people. That's actually the whole goal, and music really helps you do that. That's so cool.
Speaker 1:So I'm hoping that our that's a big thing for me is that I'm hoping that our listeners and watchers today can really get that. That. This is the power of what music can do for you. So thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, I think you know, the big thing for me is just how can we do more of it? Right, and that's through Roxam and that's through, you know, being able to bring more music into classrooms. And you know, the big thesis that I've kind of developed is that, like through my story, you know, the real sticking point in terms of, like, my exposure to Spanish was real life content, and I think that's something that's really critical for all Spanish teachers in Spanish classrooms.
Speaker 2:Right, it's you know I hear this all the time. Right, it's, the teacher plays a song and then they find that their students are adding that song to their playlists and listening to it at home on Spotify. Right, or it's you provide enough vocabulary and listening skills in Spanish class for a student to hear a Bad Bunny song on the radio, understand enough of the song that it makes him or her pull up those lyrics and listen to it in their free time? It's a student being provided enough through their class where they can see a Spanish telenovela on Netflix and not be scared to click it because they just, oh, I don't speak that language or I don't know enough about it? Right, and I think it's critical for just teachers to be able to provide enough of that real life content, because not only is it more interesting, but it's like, as it did with me, it's what will stick with them for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 2:No-transcript, I think. Since 12 years ago, when I was in high school, I think there's been a slight trend from grammar tables and long vocabulary lists, I think in general classes, and I think this focus on real-life content for students really why? Why we teach languages and and I think that answer lies in connecting um students to the people and the culture that's really around us and, and I so, I think, real life content, the more of that that you can include in your day-to-day class, um, the better.
Speaker 1:Um this, the sickier it is with students and the more impactful it will be on their lives, definitely, definitely so, with this being so important, we this is really what I know I'm pushing a lot to try and get more real world content in class, and how would you suggest, after working with Ruxum for so long, that teachers bring more music into the classroom?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, that's a. I think that's a great like tactical. Next question right and I think it's in a lot of the different ways that I talked about, right, it's using it as the starting point of your lesson or curriculum. Right it's how can we take a song or scene from a TV show or speech or an excerpt from a book and use that as the basis for what we're going to learn in terms of the vocabulary, the grammar, you know, the cultural context of language, all of those things, really, that being kind of the core of what the lesson or the curriculum will be. And then I think you know to find that are some of the additional challenges of how do we find the right content, how do we find the right songs in terms of it being appropriate for your students, both in terms of the level of difficulty but also in terms of, hey, this is a classroom and we want to gear it towards this age of students and make sure it abides my parental guidance and things like that. And so that's a critical thing that we really try to make easier on teachers through Roxam as well, and happy to showcase some of the filters and things that we have Beyond, you know. So you've found what you want to use as your content.
Speaker 2:But now what actual activities can we do, beyond just the presentation of the artist, the song, the book or the TV series? It's what actual activities can you do? And those are that are effective and that are engaging. And so us at Roxham, you know we have a whole host of activities that tie with every single song that we have in our library. That's worksheets, lessons, space for repetition to understand and learn the lyrics, it's the live classroom games that help with listening skills. And then, beyond that, you know, beyond the activities, you know, what can we assign for homework? How can we continue to drill in the learnings, even when they're at home, so that they can really learn and really be able to absorb the things that they learned in class? And similarly, roxen tries to really soup to nuts from like the lesson in the curriculum, to the right songs and the right content, to the right activities that are engaging and that are effective, to the homework that you assign. Roxam covers it all.
Speaker 1:Bam Full service. I love that, so I'm sure that's why you have like a large community of teachers in Roxham. So, after you've been working with this large teacher community, what are some important things to consider when using music in the classroom? I feel like you touched on some of them here making sure that when you're choosing a song, that it's the right level of difficulty, and what else should we be considering when we're picking a song?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. So I think it really comes down to the parental guidelines. Is this appropriate for my class? Obviously, a lot of music that's popular can often be explicit, have innuendos, things like that that aren't necessarily appropriate, or, you know, the lyrics could be appropriate, but the actual music video has something suggestive or something that's inappropriate for school.
Speaker 2:So I think that's a critical component that we also have the difficulty levels of, you know, making sure that it aligns with this level of class my Spanish one or Spanish two class this level of class my Spanish one or Spanish two class and I think, beyond that, it's just how does it align with my existing curriculum now of what are the vocabulary words that I'm trying to teach, what are the grammar topics or the tenses that we're currently learning at, you know, in this month or this week of class, and being able to incorporate that all because you know we do want popular, exciting songs that students love, like oh, I would love, you know, students listen to and hear Rosalia or Carol G or Bad Bunny or Stromae in French, or you know and so we want it to be exciting, something engaging, something that they already potentially even listen to, and being able to couple that with the effective components of. Does it reinforce what we're trying to teach along with? Is it appropriate for my classroom?
Speaker 1:Yeah, very much so. So, with that in mind, there's so many good options out there and it can be very hard to find through all of the millions of songs that are available to us. You've told us a lot about the importance of music in the classroom. We're dying to see what we can actually do with Roxum on our side, so can you show us what are some of these features that makes this easier for us? Like, what are the favorite features from your teacher community that they like to use?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I will start to share my screen now. Are you able to see it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, I can see it All right. And for the folks who are listening in the car, I'm already seeing here like Locura de Marzo is coming up with Roxam they got a cool partnership for that and there's all kinds of great music videos up here. That has like a section of recommendations for Spanish. Wow, there's a lot of cool stuff on here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're. We're on the main page of Roxam In terms of one of the teacher favorites. We can jump right into one, and that is our live classroom game called Whack-A-Word. Whack-a-word yeah, it's Kahoot style. All of your students can join on their digital devices separately and it's a closed activity and a listening activity where students are able to select between multiple choices. The missing word in the lyric themselves. There's a live leaderboard, high scores, gamified features and as well as power-ups that really make it exciting and for your students to be able to compete in class. So a lot of different exciting features. I'm happy to show it to you real quick. Exciting features. I'm happy to show it to you real quick, but Devin any songs that say you've used a lot during your own classes in the past.
Speaker 1:Okay, so while you're on the Spanish section, let me see what are some of the Spanish sections I used to use. Oh yeah, Okay, so can you click to French? That's great, and I'm seeing that there's Chinese and German, which is so great. This is one of the reasons I love this platform is that there is a lot for French teachers as well. Actually, Ego was a huge song I used to use with Willie William that you have right here. That was like a go-to for French ones.
Speaker 2:Awesome, perfect. And then the last thing I'll add there with the languages is we're releasing English, I think actually today, so English as a second language, that is, we're going to have a bunch of English songs that are popular as well, and so that will be something that's new and exciting as well.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, my members are going to be so excited. I have a couple second language members and they're going to freak out. That's so cool, going to be so excited.
Speaker 2:I have a couple second language members and they're going to freak out. That's so cool, cool. I can show you Wacker Word real quick. We don't need to play the whole thing and there are a lot of additional features for the live game. But because we don't have a bunch of folks to join, I'll just play the solo option. But when I click here, we will start at the song and we'll go ahead and get started. I'm not sure if the audio will come through through the Zoom, but we'll find out what. Yeah, what we'll see here is can you hear it?
Speaker 1:No, not really really, but okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's okay, I can talk through it for us. But essentially what's happening is the music video plays, the artist is singing the song and then in each line there's a missing word. And so you'll be given between two or four options of choices and it's the student's responsibility to select the right one. And so this line if you get it right, you'll get points. It'll show up in red or, I'm sorry, in green. If you get it wrong, it'll show up in red and that you won't get points for it. And so in our live classroom version you'll have a whole leaderboard up on the right side so students can see okay, you know Matthew's in first place, or you know Rachel is coming up, and be able to kind of have that friendly competition. So a really fun, kind of exciting way for students to get exposed to a fun song, practice their listening skills. It only takes the length of the song, so a few minutes, and then add a little extra spice and competition to your classroom.
Speaker 1:Oh, so fun. And for those of you who are listening, so we're on a French song right now and the options that were given to us for putting in the words were things like je suis aller, which are both like high frequency verbs, things that you're going to be choosing all the time, and then the two choices that we have right now are délice, which is a cognate, and tout est rose, which is also like a, and rose, like that word, rose is pink and a is also another high frequency verb. So a lot of the choices are things that your students would be seeing. A lot which I think is a nice feature of Roxham, too, is that you're not focusing on some of the other more complicated words in this, in this song, like I used to use this with my French ones and you only want to focus on, like the, you know the low hanging fruit, the words that they can go for, and you only want to focus on, like the, you know the low hanging fruit, the words that they can go for.
Speaker 1:It's. It's really nice to see that. It makes it really easy for for a lot of your levels to have access to this song, which is really cool, and we'll have a link to the. If you want to see what the what the video version of this looks like and you're not watching it right now You'll be able to see a link of this on YouTube as well.
Speaker 2:So you can follow along, but this is really cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you know beyond, beyond this, I think, just additional things with the live. With the live, you have the option to be able to have a lot more customization. So, making it more difficult, we'll add four answer choices. You can actually choose the words that you want missing as well. So if you are, yeah, if you're working on verbs, or if you you know there's specific tags, so irregular verbs and certain tenses, adjectives, those are all things that you can just manually select or click on the tags. So really easy ways to customize it and make it your own and, in this case, not have to cut out individual missing words anymore and have it all. Have it all digitized.
Speaker 1:What are my scissors gonna do now? Oh, I love that too, that you have auxiliary verbs. That's awesome. This is really cool, cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm happy to show more about the various features. So, for every single one of our songs, like we talked about before, the purpose is really to hit each of those things right. It's the lesson, it's the activities, it's the homework, right. So we have Whack-A-Word and Lyric Puzzle. That's another game that you can play live in the classroom. So other activities In terms of other activities that you can incorporate, we have specific worksheets that are both close and translation worksheets as well. So if you want something that's printed or you want students to be practicing their writing, what you can do is click on our resources tab here. Similarly, you can customize in a close activity any kind of words that you want or want missing or don't want missing, various tags, be able to print it at an instant. So very, very easy. And then translation exercises as well, with various customized settings.
Speaker 1:Oh wow. That's a game changer. So you can create printouts with this, but you can also customize the printouts. That's insane. Yeah that is so cool. All right, yeah, so I'm seeing all here. Here are the. You've got all the word bank of hidden words here and I can just select which ones I want or don't want in there. That's exactly. Yep, wow, that's really cool, and so is that. Is that offered with most songs that are on the platform?
Speaker 2:and artists. Translation lyric worksheets fill in the blank worksheets, live classroom games, whack a word, lyric puzzle and then lessons for homework and things. All of that is for available for every single song that we have on our platform.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, oh my gosh. So what's on the lesson slides? Then I've got to see what that is. That is, that is what used to take me the most time, yeah yep.
Speaker 2:so we built um the lesson slide for um teachers to have a ready-made presentation that's available for um, based off of the song and the artist that you're teaching. So if you're doing a miércoles um music of miércoles, or like you want to dedicate a whole class to a specific song or artist, uh, we have all of those slides ready. Um. So this is the advanced version of the slides. Um, we have a beginner and an intermediate level, so, like a Spanish one versus a Spanish three, this is more of a Spanish five um lesson slides, but uh, um, what you'll see is just everything that you would need for ready-made slides to present. So the pictures. We have an about the artist section with everything included from who the artist is, musical genre, cultural impact, accomplishments and themes, impact, accomplishments and themes.
Speaker 2:In this advanced version we have a bunch of discussion questions before you listen to the lyrics and the music videos themselves. You have an opportunity to actually watch the video and then a bunch of post questions, post listening, questions about your personal reflection and analysis of the lyrics, and then a deeper cultural exploration, and so this slide is obviously a lot more advanced, kind of for AP, you know, spanish or French 5 level students and beyond really meant to engage and, you know, practice their speaking and the discussions. And we have slides geared toward beginners and intermediates as well, and then Q&A slide and then kind of like a word map for students to be able to practice different adjectives, different sentence starters, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that. Yeah, that's huge too, because then you can do all kinds of post-listening activities. If you just have that on the board and be like write a reflection on what you think about the song, or would you, would you make any kind of oh my gosh, like, would you write a review, like would you interview the artists? Oh, there's so many things that you could do with that already done and ready to go. That's really exciting. Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Um. And then I think the last component, um, with the homework and the classwork right, is, um, your ability to actually be able to assign, um, what we call here, the actual lessons related to the songs themselves. So, being able to listen to lyrics, learning a new lyric, learning the vocabulary, and so a lot of kind of spaced repetition, repetition flashcards. And you know the distinction here. Distinction here is again a focus on real life content.
Speaker 2:So, uh, rather than let's just say, you know, when you're practicing duolingo, it's um, the man threw the ball at the dog, right, it's let's actually listen to a real sentence that's in a real song saying, sung by a real artist, that's real and popular and that, like your students will hear on the radio or if they go to France or a French speaking country, you know they'll be able to understand, like those components that are actually said and done. And so this is a whole lesson where, yeah, you can practice vocabulary, grammar, so on and so forth, and you have the ability as a teacher to be able to actually assign these lyric lessons, games, be able to track it in your classroom profile, auto grading, see how much time spent, accuracy, all of those things. So that's all part of the teacher experience as well all of those things.
Speaker 1:So that's all part of the teacher experience as well. Wow, y'all thought of everything. This is the lesson, from start to finish, for almost like at least three days worth of content that you could do with the song even up to a week, depending on how long you're hanging with students, maybe even more. This is so cool, cause I'm thinking I used to do like one song per week and we would do multiple activities with it that I would all I would always have to create myself, and this would all be. I mean, it's done at the press of a button all those things that I used to spend like three or four preps doing. That's really powerful, wow, very cool. I'm sure students absolutely love using it too, that that they have an engaging way to interact with the song in different ways besides me just playing it all the time. They have lots of options, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's exciting, you know we get a lot of positive feedback from students just like and we have a lot of students actually who graduated or don't take class anymore, but they're still on our platform and using it to learn new songs and we're constantly updating our song library and so when the next new popular hit that's in French, german, english or Spanish or Chinese hits the radios and someone wants to learn the lyrics, learn the vocabulary, play some games, those get uploaded pretty quickly on our platform as well. So, yeah, students, students end up loving it, enjoying the homework that they're doing and listening and learning these, learning these songs.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that's awesome. Okay, so tell us a little bit more about how we can get in on this with Roxam and all of this. Contact information will be in the notes as well. So how can teachers sign up for this? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and actually could I share one more quick thing, devin, if you don't mind? So I think one of the big challenges that we talked about in the very beginning was how do I choose the very right song, like how do I know it's appropriate? How do I know the level of difficulty, along with does it actually align with what I'm actually teaching in class? And so our search function here allows teachers to be able to address those issues pretty seamlessly. So, from the very beginning, every single one of our songs has a maturity rating that has been reviewed by a third-party teacher. That includes both the lyrics as well as the music videos themselves. So you have the ability to be able to filter for the maturity. And then we have a level of difficulty where you know beginners really focus on level first and second years, intermediate is third and fourth years, years and advanced is kind of your fifth year and beyond. So each of our, all of the LERICs are ran through AI, assessed on a level of difficulty, and we have detailed reviews by teachers to ensure that those difficulty ratings are accurate as well, and so you know if we're just looking for, say, a beginner level class or you know an elementary school. You're an elementary school student, teacher, and you know looking for something for younger students, we can do G ratings, have it as beginner, be able to filter for those things, I think. On the third component, right, we talked about maturity, we talked about level of difficulty and then the third component was in alignment with what I'm actually teaching.
Speaker 2:And the last way that you can search is you can search by grammatical tenses, you can search by vocabulary topics, and so you know if you're practicing present tense. For example, we can search present tense here with this tag you have the number of tagged lyrics that are tied to present tense in that specific song. So that has 23 tag lyrics in all of their lines with present tense meaning. Hey, this might be a good lesson to practice some of the present tense vocabulary, the conjugations that we're practicing For vocabulary. Similarly, you're going through your textbook and we're talking about it can be any of these things, right, but like travel, I think is always a good one. But you know we can, we can pull up travel and um, there's clear tags in terms of you know what, um, in terms of the lyric of like what, how the song actually addresses or is tied to travel, um, and so those are easy ways for you to be able to incorporate all three of those elements and find the exact right song that's appropriate for you in your class.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, that is amazing. I'm glad that you paused me to make sure that we all saw that that is a huge feature. And a huge headache for teachers is I need clean songs. How do I find them?
Speaker 2:That's great dot com, and what we really pride ourselves at Roxham is we understand the challenges of being a language teacher, being a teacher, and so we really try to create resources enough free resources where teachers can use our platform, and the vast majority of our teachers on our platform actually just use the free features. And everything that's included in for free are the music videos, the live classroom games, the lessons, some of the worksheets, and so there's a lot for you to be able to engage. Even if some of our pro subscription that includes more of the slides, the classroom, the auto grading, even if those things aren't for you we'd't for you we'd love for you to come take a look at Roxam, engage in a lot of our free content and be able to more easily incorporate real life content music into your classroom.
Speaker 1:What an exciting way to get started.
Speaker 1:Jump in for free and enjoy a much easier way to work with music in your class and check out all of the ways that you can make it even easier to with all the cool pro features. This has been amazing. I'm so excited to direct all my teachers to this great resource that you have co-founded with rock some. This is a secret, but it is going to be really, really cool. In february, with my membership, the practical proficiency network, we're doing a music challenge and rock some going to be really really cool.
Speaker 1:In February, with my membership, the Practical Proficiency Network, we're doing a music challenge and Roxum downloading a Roxum account is part of it. That's like day one of the challenges. I want them to explore it, so we're excited to have everybody check this out and get into all the things that you offer. So thank you so much for this and for showing us an easier way to connect with music in class. It's something that we all want to do and you've removed a lot of headaches for us. So I would love to know what is the one, or what is the main takeaway that you have for teachers after hearing our conversation? What do you hope that teachers know about using music in the classroom?
Speaker 2:moving forward, yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 2:For me it's that, from my personal experiences that you know, music and real life content has been life changing for me. It's opened my eyes to so many different people, so many different experiences and cultures and you know, kind of bridging that gap of understanding of you know between people, and I think that is at the core of why we teach languages, right Beyond the grammar and the vocab. It's how can we get to truly understand another human being that has a vastly different upbringing, language that you speak, you know geography, and I think it's addressed through that right. It's addressed by being able to get the snowball rolling with real life content, get them to engage and being able to understand little components of other cultures, their music, their TV shows, their books and so on and so forth. And so if there's one thing to take away, I think it's try to use more real-life content into your classrooms. It's engaging, so fun, it's impactful and it's changed my life and I'm sure it can be life changing for many of your students as well.
Speaker 1:Oh well said, yeah, we got it. We got to go with that. That's the best way that you could end this here, sean. Thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing this tool with us. I'm so excited for teachers to start with Roxam, and thank you again for all this music wisdom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much for having me and, yeah, appreciate everybody's time.
Speaker 1:Bye.