Clipbank Spanish is a collection of Channel 4 resources taken from four KS 3+4 Spanish language television programmes: Extra; Top; Aventuras Vascas and La Tienda de Luis. The programmes are broken down into small clips which can be grouped into themes and saved for easy access. The total of 250 clips available for Spanish, cover: Introducing and Describing Yourself and Others • Health and Fitness • Relationships • Opinions and Feelings • Food and Drink • Clothes • Leisure • Making Arrangements • Holidays, Travel and Places of Interest • Time, Weather, Months, Days and Numbers • Shopping, Services, Money and Directions • House, Home and School • The World of Work • Future Plans • Use of 'Ser' and 'Estar' • Present Tense • Future Tense • Past Tenses • Mix of Tenses • Commands • Prepositions • Asking Questions • Pronouns • Possessives • Adjectives
Clips have been carefully chosen so that they fit in as much as possible with a theme without bringing in any extraneous material. The DVD has many positive aspects which are:

• The format is ideal for inclusion in a lesson and very practical in that the teacher does not need to have a video wound to the correct place or DVD held on pause.
• No need to store racks of videos or Different DVDs
• The length of each clip is usually no more than 2 minutes at maximum, most being much shorter than that. Attention span
• Each clip is linked to related clips.
• Each clip has a vocabulary list.
• The language in each clip is very clear and relevant to the theme in question.
• The search facility can find clips on a particular theme e.g. football throws up 10 resources, clothes gives 14.
• Clips can be used as starters, plenaries, reinforcement of vocabulary/grammar or simply a break in the middle of a lesson.
• Clips might get pupils interested in watching one of the series they are taken from, either as a class activity, an after school/lunchbreak activity or independently.

Clipbank is not meant as a facility for viewing the whole series of each programme. This should be done from the DVD or recorded programme.

The library/ index is not ready yet, however online libraries have been prepared for Science, History or Geography, and if the language libraries are as clearly set out, they will save teachers time in searching for what they need.

As the clips cover all levels of KS 3+4, not all are suitable for every class, Top and La Tienda de Luis being more suitable for younger children and Aventuras Vascas and Extra are better suited for KS4.

The downside is the subscription. The initial cost £250 is not cheap but could be good value if used well like anything else. There is meant to be an annual subscription of £250 + VAT, which I quite frankly cannot see the value of or fully understand. If your school decides not to pay this subscription are you then supposed not to use the DVD? This seems a little bizarre, and I have not had any satisfactory explanation from Channel 4 as to what it entails exactly.