Say Hi to The Zimmer Twins!

Zimmer Twins is a website that encourages students to create and share their animated videos.

Students an create their own movies, choose characters, action, and expressions. It is a fun moviemaker designed for educational purpose such as language learning. Students can use to create impressive cartoon animation.

How it can be used in class?

I would suggest that the Zimmer Twins can be used in the Production stage after they are given sufficient practice on language function in the Presentation and Practice stages. Students are required to create a dialogue of seeking and giving advice using their own language. They are given freedom to create their own storyline and dialogue. The rationale of this activity is to get the students apply the language learnt on their own. In short is to practise language for purpose.

Another activity could be creating ending for a story. Teacher provides an introduction of a story for students to continue and create their own ending. Students can use their own creativity to complete the story and plan the resolution of the story.

Pluses

• It's free for both craetinga nd watching prepared animated movies.
• Enhances students creativity- Three characters to choose, a range of settings, actions and expression. 
• Practice for writing dialogue or story telling - Bubbles for students to write on their dialogues on their own.
• Storyline can be more than 10 slides.
• Sound effects are available. 
• Automactically teaches students about different kind of expressions, settings and verbs.

Minuses

• Too complicated for beginner- too many things to choose.
• No voices for dialogues

 

Hello Bubblr!

Again! A simple and easy way of learning English language.

Bubblr is a tool to create presentation by adapting Flickr.com photos! Just search any related images that you want to put on your slides and add bubbles to them. Then, just type on anything to describe the pictures and press go! As simple as that. This tool also will save your work into the archive, only after you are done with the slides and save them. If you happen to leave the page, you can just pay archive a visit and re-search your own slides. Like Dvolver, Bubblr can directly be emailed to yourself and anyone and be embedded into blog. So, your work will not end on Bubblr only, it can be spread to and shared with all people around the world!

How to use it in class?

Teacher could ask students to do the task individually. Give freedom to students to choose their own topic according to their own interests and preferences as this could motivate students to be more anticipated with what they are doing. Then, teacher could ask students to present it to the rest of the class which means this can be some sort of oral test or preparation for public speaking to the students. Perhaps, teacher could ask students to post it on blog and vote for the best video.

It can also be used in pre writing stage where the students can brainstorm or make mind map in the version of slides. This is to encourage students to write better on the following draft as they have already outlined some ideas before writing.

Advantages

1. An easy and quick way to do a simple slides presentation. It is undoubtedly FREE!

2. There are plenty of beautiful and fascinating pictures to be put on the slides. There are three different bubbles that can be embedded on the slides to describe the pictures or add dialogue into them.

3.  It can be shared with others through email or on blogs.

Disadvantages

1. The slides cannot be rearranged. Once they are set up accordingly, they cannot be moved alternately.

2. The shapes of the bubbles are limited.

3. The bubbles can be enlarged by in a limited size that the description of the pictures cannot be too long.

4. The saved slides emailed sometimes does not turn out as the same as the original one.

5. No animation or slide transition and sound effects.

I personally think that Bubblr is just useful to get students to start writing. It is suitable as warming up stage or brainstorming ideas. This is because there is nothing much that the students can do to show their state of language, which means there is not much performance of students that teacher can use as evidences to assess the students work especially in terms of writing skills. However, it can be employed for speaking tasks that the students can utilise Bubblr to make a quick presentation to be presented to the class.

Oh, myBrainshark!

Turning your existing presentations and marketing materials into powerful, voice-enriched, trackable video in seconds?

myBrainshark has the solution for you!

It is a free online video presentation. It enables you and you, the users to upload your Powerpoint presentation and add voice into it. myBrainshark makes podcasting easy. Add audio to your blog and build a following using myBrainshark and a telephone or computer mic. Your video links can be shared with contacts & social networks via email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more. Your website or blog could be now enhanced with an embedded video using myBrainshark. It is as easy as cutting and pasting! Also, post myBrainshark videos to YouTube with just one click of your fingertip. 

Advantages

1. It is free- it can be used by all users.

2. It is good to practise before presenting.

3. It is good for students to keep their presentation and see how they can develop their presentation. teachers can give feedback too. From the feedback, students can improve and make amendments on their presentation to make a better presentation. 

Disadvantages

1. It is one-to-one communication. Knowing that the teacher will not be able to look at the students face-to-face, the students may not be spontaneous. They may prepare their own texts and just read directly from the texts.

2. Virtual audience reduces the students' nervousness of public speaking, It does not really prepare students for a real presentation.

2. Body language, gestures and facial expression are not available. This hinders the connection between the audience and presenter.