Zimmer Twins

Zimmer Twins is another tool for movie making. Similar to Dvolver, Zimmer Twins allows us to create digital video and share it across the interwebs. It is a tool perfectly made for English language teaching, making it more interactive and interesting.

Things to know about Zimmer Twins:

1. It offers 3 characters (Edgar, Eva and 13), talk bubble clips, action clips, expressions and settings
2. It provides several story starters that we can include our own endings to complete the story. 
3. The animated movie can be saved. 
4. We can also insert a title and a brief description to the movie.
5. We can always review and edit, if we are not satisfied with the movie.
6. We may also share our video to friends as an email. 

The three characters: Edgar, Eva and 13



The talk bubble clips, action clips, expressions, star clips and the settings.

How to use it in the class?

1. To practise new language point

• Zimmer Twins is a mean for practicing new grammar point. Teacher needs to first set a topic. The topic sets a context and also acts as a stimulation for students to apply the new language point. Without which, language will be used in a discrete way and loss its authenticity. 

• For example, instead of asking students to make conversation with party-related vocabulary, teacher may set a topic, called "A birthday Party". From there, students build up dialogues and story in relation to the topic and they unconsciously apply a range of topic-related vocabulary. Therefore, with a context, students can practise the new grammar in a real and meaningful way. At the same time, language acquisition take place naturally and unconsciously.

2. To stimulate students' creativity and imaginative skills

• Teacher may ask students to watch a starter video and create their own ending for the story. The starter video can either be elicited from the Zimmer Twins site or created by teacher himself/herself. This activity encourages students to explore on their imaginative minds and creativity to come up with any possible events that might take place after the early part of the story. It also stimulates students' thinking skills in making sensible predictions. 

3. To enhance students' storytelling skills

• Students can use Zimmer Twins to create any story they like and share it with the whole class via email. Besides, students can also have access to their peers' Zimmer Twins profiles in order to have a view of their friends' works. Teacher can set up this task as an out-of-class activity. To ensure that the plan is successful, students need to put in their commitment by updating their movie-maker consistently.

Why is it so special?

1. It promotes visual learning

• Students learn about language as they look at the photos while creating movies. They learn about different expressions of the characters, various vocabulary that explain the actions, and simple sentence constructions.

2. It gets students to be engrossed into the classroom activity

• Cartoons and animations offer a lot of fun in English language learning. Using them as part of classroom activities may generate greater interest of students in learning. Likewise, students' affective filter for learning is reduced; therefore, they can be seen more effective and focused in English language learning. 

3. It promotes autonomous learning.

• When teacher instructs students to create story individually, independent learning takes place. Students can be seen making their own decisions on how to generate a great story. 

4. It develops the sense of ownership

• As students take charge of their own creation of the story, they instill whatever they like and personalise the story. This in turns makes students to be proud of their own video, developing the sense of ownership

5. It is of the advantage of younger learners with limited linguistics knowledge

• Zimmer Twins is simple and easy to use. It has little barriers to entry. Also, the "action clips" and "expressions" provided are of students' competency level. Younger learners are able to explore on the vocabulary and maximise the usage through story-making.
  
  

The Limitations 

1. The characters in the Zimmer Twins cannot speak aloud.

2. We need to create an account for Zimmer Twins if we want to save the movies we create.

3. The tool does not provide an embedded code for us to embed the movie into our blog posts.
  

Have a look at the Zimmer Twins I have created http://www.zimmertwins.com/node/1330139?designated=new

You may log in to the website and have fun creating your story, too! 

My Brainshark

Bring your presentation to a new level using myBrainShark 

An outlook of mybrainshark site

MyBrainShark is now a leading tool to create, share and track online video presentations. It transforms static content into voice-enriched video presentations that can be accessed anytime and anywhere. 

To create myBrainShark online video presentation is quick and easy. You just need to upload a content, be it a powerpoint, document, video clip or photo, and then enrich it with voice narrations, transforming the-otherwise-boring presentation of information into an engaging, interactive one. The video presentation can then be shared via e-mails, posted to social network sites (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or Linkedln) or embedded in blogs or websites. Furthermore, you can track the viewing details, following up with who view, what they view, when they view or even where they view your presentation effectively. 

To get a better grip on how to use myBrainShark? Here is a free online tutorial with Russell Stannard. 

How can we use mybrainshark in the language classroom?

1. virtual learning

• MyBrainShark is a useful tool for long-distance learning. Teacher can easily create a video presentation using myBrainShark and share it to students in a website, class blog or via e-mail. Students can then watch the online lesson at their convenience. This method is very useful when teacher wants to provide students with more knowledge about the syllabus or when teacher is not able to finish the syllabus within the classroom hours. 

2. oral exercise

• Apart from assigning students with writing and reading exercises, teacher can design speaking tasks using myBrainShark for students to do at home. For instance, teacher may assign students a speaking homework after teaching the topic 'Global Warming'. Teacher may ask students to create a powerpoint presentation and enrich it with voice narrations on the concept of global warming, its impacts and the solutions for this environmental problem. The task can be done individually or as a group work, depending on the level of difficulty of the task itself. In this way, students are encouraged to use English both in the class and out of the class. Thus, the tool maximises the opportunity for students to speak in a second language.

3. give feedback to students' work

• Teacher can use myBrainShark as a mean to provide oral feedback to students' works. For example, teacher can upload students' works into the video presentation, give comments and email to the students. 

What is good about myBrainShark?

1. The video presentations can be kept as e-portfolio. 

• As an example, video presentations can be embedded in teacher's blog or class blog in order for students to keep track of what they have learnt.  

2. It promotes an autonomous learning. 

• With myBrainShark, students can independently access to a range of e-learning contents available so as to gain extra knowledge about the topic learnt in the class. Also, students can self-direct their own learning by accessing to the online-lessons created by their teacher using this tool. 

3. It exhibits an interactive way of learning. 

• Even though the speaker and the listeners of the presentation are both separated in space, the presentation can still be made interactive as myBrainShark allows presenter to add polls, surveys or questions to the video presentation. 

4. It motivates speaking. 

• Students' effective filter for speaking is low because they can discard or retry their voice recording before saving it to their video presentation. In other words, students' anxiety to speak is lower than that of doing a presentation in front of the class.

5. It develops the sense of ownership. 

• Students can personalise their own video presentation and share it to the public in myBrainshark site.  

6. It is very quick and easy to use. 

• MyBrainShark comes as an Application for mobile devices. Therefore, it allows users to access to web-based information anytime and anywhere at their convenience.   

What is its limitation?

1. The facial expression or the gesture of the presenter cannot be seen.

2. Both the presenter and the listeners are not interacting in real time. Response or feedback given is not immediate.   

3. The tool needs internet to access.