Published on August 31st, 2012 | by Daniel Boyle

Aprender Con Deportes

I have been working on a new program, the current name I am thinking of using is Aprender Con Deportes (Learn With Sports). I am going to write down my ideas for a two page outline in this blog post.

About Aprender Con Deportes

Aprender Con Deportes is a program to promote the learning of English with sports, in turn helping promote smaller sports. It is run by Daniel Boyle, an Australian freestyle footbag player living in Chile.

The first program is called “Let’s Learn: Footbag”. The plan is to expand into other sports and other activities. Aside from improving language skills and learning about new sports, the program aims to involve the students in other areas of the sport, in order to improve communication, leadership and other skills.

The Let’s Learn: Footbag program is currently taking place at Liceo Los Almendros in La Florida, Santiago de Chile.

Mission

To use sports to promote learning, communication, leadership and teamwork while helping lesser known sports.

Vision

To successfully integrate learning through sports as a key part of the learning process, first in Latin America.

Aims

Improve English speaking skills in Latin America
Use sports to improve leadership and communication
Work together with sporting organisations
Receive government funding to support the program
Expand the program to other languages outside of English
Include indigenous languages
Make the program available to people of all ages and backgrounds
Promote the program through media appearances

Objectives

Complete Let’s Learn: Footbag program at Los Almendros
Add one more school to the program by end of 2012
Receive funding to support the program
Link with other sporting organisations
Be a part of the Elige Vivir Sano program
Appear in the media five times in 2012
Run ten programs by 2015
Expand outside of Chile
Combine with government programs to support language learning
Expand to other languages in 2013
Combine with other programs that promote sport
Use embassies and foreign institutions to promote the program

Let’s Learn: Footbag

The Let’s Learn program aims to use a number of sports to promote the learning of languages. The pilot program matches the sport of Footbag (often known as Hacky Sack) with learning English. The first school is Los Almendros in La Florida.

The association came after a meeting at an event at the British Embassy, celebrating 100 Days until the Olympic Games. Following the meeting, Daniel Boyle gave a footbag performance at the school’s “English Song Festival” as well as judging the performances. He will repeat this at a similar event for all schools within the La Florida municipality.

The program at Los Almendros is an ongoing program in order to test various ideas, however the aim of the Let’s Learn program is to create a ten week program, finishing with a final competition. The program is very flexible and can be changed for the needs of the students or institution.

The program currently stands as such:

1. Introduction to the sport and testing of levels
2. Sharing knowledge of the sport
3. Training in the sport (learning skills and training techniques)
4. Talking about the sport (commentary, marketing, media)
5. Assigning places for final presentation (players, coaches, judges, commentators, marketing, promotion, captains, etc)
6. Review of international competitions and the sport in Chile
7. Promoting the grand event
8. Training for final presentation
9. Final presentation (no audience)
10. Final presentation in front of an audience

About Footbag

Footbag is a sport using a small bag (pelotita), moving your legs and body around the bag to do tricks. There are two main disciplines to footbag: freestyle and net. The program aims to teach students about both disciplines and encourage a mixture of disciplines.

Footbag started in Portland, USA in the early 1970s. The strongest places for footbag currently are Poland, Finland, Czech Republic and parts of the USA and Canada.

About Daniel Boyle

Daniel Boyle is an Australian living in Chile. He has a Bachelor of Sports Management from the University of Canberra and a Master of Arts (Writing) from Swinburne University of Technology. Daniel has been competing in freestyle footbag since 2001 and has competed twice at the World Championships (2009, 2010). He was Australian champion in 2010 and was the judge of the first ever Malaysian Championships in 2011.

Daniel currently works as Content Manager and Sports Editor for English language news group I Love Chile. In order to promote footbag he has appeared in Las Ultimas Noticias and on the Megavision program Salta a la Vista. Daniel has played and performed footbag throughout the world.