This time around, I am going to show another fantastic website for those who have passion in directing a movie. It is called the Zimmer Twins! This fun and free website allows you to create your own movie, well cartoon of course and share it with your friends. Not only can it be used for entertainment purposes, it also suitable for educational purpose. This website encourage students, especially young learners to develop the skill in creative language which can be demonstrate in a form of a short movie. It is fun and very attractive because it offers a lot of situations so that they can almost create their own storyline. It is not complicated because this website, in my opinion, is designed for young people because it requires you to register with the parent's email address. After you have registered, you can straightaway make a movie and save it in your profile.
Fun interface!
Apart from creating a movie, you can also watch other people's movie, usually the site editors. This is located under the label Spotlight and you can find a lot of interesting movies uploaded by them, and get an idea for a movie of your own.
The process of making a movie is not difficult. All you need to do is just choose different scenarios listed and arrange them in the timeline provided. You can also insert text to make your movie more realistic. After you have finish, you can save it in your profile so that you will be able to retrieve it anytime you like.
Advantages of this website:
1. It allows language development in a creative way.
2. It is free and fun as well as suitable for young learners
3. You can save you movie in the profile and retrieve them anytime you want.
4. Encourage children to learn language.
5. Not complicated for parents to monitor their children.
6. It does not contain any inappropriate content.
7. You can comment on the video that you have made.
Disadvantages of this website:
1. It rather annoying to have parents' email address for registration. Also you need to go to the email and verify the username before you can actually use it
2. It does not allow you to watch different users' movie. You just get to watch your own movie and the site editors movie.
3. It also does not allow you to embed your video onto your blog! I made one but I could share it here as it does not allow to.
This time around, I'm going to show you one cool website which enables you to make your own personal journal. Its called theBookr! Bookr is a free website that allows people to make their own book and they can put everything including text and pictures into their own mini online book. This tool does not requires you to upload any photos as you can just type in any labels you want in order to find the pictures of your choice. It will then grab pictures available online so that you will have a wide range of pictures to choose from. If you first open the website, it straightaway gives you the front page so that you edit
it by yourself.
As in the context of teaching and learning, especially language learning, this website is seems to be one of the interesting tool in enhancing student's language especially their creative writing. Teachers can manipulate this website for students at lower levels as well as children and ask them to make a mini book using this tool. By doing so, they will be able to produce meaningful language by relating it to their own context as well as encourage them to think creatively.
How to do it? Simple!
If you go to the website, you will need to enter the items that you want to put in your book and it will grab all the photos that are available from Flickr. There are numerous pictures related to your search that you can choose from and once you have decided, you just need to drag the pictures into your own book. You can also select the number of pages that you would like to have. The more pictures you select, the more pages you have, and the more interesting your book will be. On your own book, you will be able to add text such as title and description of the pictures so that it will be more meaningful.This website is free and you will also get to share it with your friends as well as embed it into your own blog like what I did. these are some snapshots of how is it looks like.
You can edit the title of your book.
You can also add description to the pictures.
This is one that I have made.
There are some advantages of this website such as:
1. It does not require you to sign up in order to use this tool.
2. It is free and very easy to use.
3. Promote creative language because students have to describe their picture so that it will be interesting
4. Personalisation where students create a book based on their interest.
Disadvantages of this website:
1. It is too simple that it does not cater students of higher level; advanced students may find this activity less interesting and less challenging.
This is my first entry for this blog and I am going to share a website which I find it interesting. It is called Dvolver. Dvolver is a website where the users can make a simple, cartooned movie. This website is very interesting because it allows you to narrate a simple movie of you own based on the scenes and characters provided by the website. There are several backgrounds and characters to choose from and users can edit the dialogue according to their own script. The organization of this website is simple and is not complicated which makes it user friendly. Apart from that, it only requires the user to sign up (which is free) in order to make a movie and then share the movie with their friends by embedding it into their own blog or just email it.
Dvolver and language learning.
In my opinion, this website is useful for language learning because it allows creative writing. Traditional writing exercise may sometimes be boring for the students as they have been exposed to the same way of writing (using pen and paper). This seems rather unfortunate for the students as they do not have the opportunity to manipulate technology in language learning which sometimes will enhance their interest towards learning the language. Therefore, by using this tool, students will be able to incorporate technology into language learning and make the lesson more interesting. They can write about whatever they like for their own movie in order to make it more interesting. This is because they can share the movie with their friends which certainly motivate them to make it interesting so that people will enjoy it. Apart from that, it also promotes personalisation because students can make a movie based on their own experience. This will lead to authenticity because the movie that that they created has relation to their own life. In my opinion, Dvolver is suitable for primary school students, aged between ten to twelve years old who have an intermediate level of English. Although it may be interesting enough for advanced students to use this tool, I think, in terms of language learning, it is less challenging as it only involve writing and does not really promotes other multiple skills. The frequency of using this tool amongst students may depends on various factors such as syllabus coverage, facilities, students sociocultural background as well as resources. For example, teachers might want to consider covering the syllabus first before attempting to use this website as it is rather time consuming. Apart from that, the facilities play an important role because if the students are not equipped with computers, then this activity cannot be done.
How to do it?
As I mentioned, you have just to sign up in order to use this tool. And then just follow these steps:
Step 1: Select background that you prefer and click 'Next'
Step 2: choose your preferable scene.
Step 3: Select Character in your movie
Step 4: Add dialogue to your movie. This is limited
to 100 text per character line.
Step 5: Select background music that suit the theme of
your music.
Step 6: When finish, you can add title and your name
as director. you can also add title design to your movie.
Step 7: Share it with your friends!
I have also made one of my own.
The advantages of this tool are:
1. It allows students to express themselves without having a face to face interaction with the teachers. This may be a factor to increase their confidence to improve their language.
2. Students can also express their creativity in writing as they can write whatever they want about their story. Creative writing is likely to be more interesting and motivating with visual aid.
3. Encourage fun and autonomous learning. Students can use the website without the presence of their teacher
4. It is not complicated and easy to use which is suitable for students of beginner and intermediate level.
The disadvantages of this tool are:
1. Some of the characters might not be suitable for children as it portrays negative influence. For example there are character that smokes and as well as sexy which may influence the children.
2. Might resulting in inappropriate use of language. This is because students can write everything they want therefore they might write something which is offensive. For example they may write something bad about their friends which may resulting in dissatisfaction.
3. It is time consuming. If the teacher want to do this activity in class, it may take a longer time and the students might be carried away and does not follow the instruction given by the teacher.
