Have you ever met Eva and Edgar, the Zimmer Twins? Have you ever met 13, the mischievous black cat? If you haven't, it is time to get to know them because they are funky, fun and entertaining! So, where you can meet them?
The Zimmer Twins website provides many children a marvelous experience and opportunity to create their own videos by using these 3 characters. It gets children to use their imagination, brush-up their story-telling skills and become movie directors of their own! By using their own vocabulary items and their schemata or background knowledge about things that happen around them, they are ready to produce an excellent 50 takes of mini-movie. The animation itself is very beautiful and it is based on the cartoon series from Canada.
Below are the snapshots from the website:
Picture 1: This is the interface of The Zimmer Twins webpage.
Picture 2: This is where you begin to create movie. There are many option to choose from.
Picture 3: Start dragging the pictures into the timeline. So can choose from animation, dialogue and many more.
Picture 4: Once you are done, you can save it. But remember, make sure you create your account first before started making the video!
And here is the final product that I have managed to come up with:
http://www.zimmertwins.com/node/1224556
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How to use it in the classroom:
Although this tool looks childish and suitable for younger children, but as a teacher, you can make use of this tool with students with beginner or intermediate level of English since it is user-friendly.
Teachers can organise a competition between groups in the classroom, given a time limit and language form ( maybe using a mixture of past tense and present tense). Students must work in a small group of 3 to create their very own mini-video. The winner will be chosen by students in the classroom based on the interesting storyline as well as using the right form. There should be a feedback session where students share their opinions with teachers and teacher should make notes of the suggestion so that it can be improved next time.
Indirectly involve students with communicative task, suitable with the development of teaching and learning using task-based.
What I like about the Zimmer Twins!
- Personalisation.
- Encourage communication to complete tasks.
- It can be useful to develop creativity.
- Learning form in a fun way.
- Very engaging and interactive.
However:
- Once you have published it, you could not change it.
- It only can be shared via email, but the recipient must have their own Zimmer Twins account.
- It cannot be embedded to the Blogger webpage.
- It has word limits.
- Might not be interesting if students do not know how to use technology.
To sum up, I think the website is a good website but it will only be an excellent tool if only teachers conduct the lesson in a creative way. Or else, it will be just any ordinary lesson, making video alone.
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