Originally published at: OEG Voices 098: Ana Michelle Tellez Ferrer – OE Global Voices
Para este episodio viajamos a Barranquilla, Colombia, para conversar con Ana Michelle Tellez Ferrer, cofundadora de AlmaFuerte Lab. Ella describe cómo, a través del arte, la creatividad y el bienestar, este laboratorio de aprendizaje está creando oportunidades, especialmente para mujeres y personas con discapacidad, para que crezcan como aprendices y líderes. Reconocida en 2025 con el Premio Open Education a la Excelencia como Educadora, la dedicación y la sólida formación pedagógica de Ana Michelle están teniendo un impacto impresionante en toda Sudamérica, llegando también a comunidades latinoamericanas en Estados Unidos. Junto a su hermana Alexandra, produce el podcast Dos Voces,…
Yes, that is me “writing” en español about our newest OEGlobal Voices podcast a conversation with Ana Michelle Tellez Ferrer, who was recognized last year with an Open Education Award for Excellence as an Educator.
When I contacted our 2025 awardees I invited them to be a guest on the podcast, Ana Michelle responded almost immediately with interest, but noted that she did not speaK English. And I admit write here my reading and speaking skill level in Spanish as about that of a 4 year old (that is generous).
We have produced a number of OEGlobal Voices episodes in Spanish, but those were usually facilitated by my colleague @marcela to guide the conversations. In another episode with OEGlobal Board Member María Soledad Ramírez Montoya @Marisol she responded in Spanish to my questions recorded in English.
But I wanted to experiment with the translations tools available now, and our new episode now is 100% in Spanish, even my voice.
How was this done?
- I wrote my questions in advance and emailed them to Ana Michelle, translated into Spanish using Google Translate. This way, she would know the main questions and could prepare responses.
- We recorded our podcast in Zoom, set up with automatic language translation, so my voice she could see translated into Spanish. And while Ana Michelle spoke, I could see her responses translated into English. It is far from perfect, but enough so I had an idea of what she was saying, and in a few. cases, I could add a followup question.
- I edit podcasts using a tool called Descript which uses AI to generate a transcript from the audio, allowing for most of the editing to be done by the text (like deleting words). After years of waveform editing in Audacity, Descript has been a game changer for my podcast work for the last three years.
Descript detected Ana’s Spanish and provided a Spanish transcript. I edited my track separately, having Descript provide an English language transcript of my questions. - I used Google to translate my questions into Spanish, and then in the Descript editor, since I have trained it on my voice, it has a mode that can generate audio from any text I write. I did a quick test, and found that Descript could use bby AI voice to speak Spanish! Does this sounds good?
- Thus I was able to replace my voice speaking in English with AI Alan speaking Spanish. I also was able to have it generate the audio for the introduction and closing that I add after recording a session. I also wrote the podcast post in English, and edited each paragraph with Google.
- I also used Google Translate for an English language version transcript
Is it perfect? I doubt so, and being no fluent in Spanish, I cannot say for sure. This was mostly an experiment to see if it works. What do you think? Listen to our conversation, but less so for my warbling in Spanish, and more to hear what Ana Michelle has to say about her amazing open education work in Columbia (and beyond) with AlmaFuerte Lab, as well as her own podcast Dos Voces, Un Alma which looks like it is much more well known than mine.
No hablo español con fluidez, pero con la ayuda de la IA puedo hablar español en mi podcast.