Role Play...Action!

Everybody has a story to tell and we all love to read or listen to stories. Stories are expensive, magical, creative, touchy, and sometimes powerful. Storytelling has an important role in education. With the growing technology today, storytelling has a new face: Digital Storytelling. Digital storytelling refers to using new digital tools to help ordinary people to tell their own real-life stories. The idea of storytelling has been employed by Dvolver Moviemaker.

Link: http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/

General Description

Dvolver Moviemaker is a web tool that enables users to create their own animated cartoons by selecting from a range of characters, backgrounds and scenarios, and adding own dialogue text bubble. The movies can then be sent by email or embedded into blogs or website for others to enjoy. In order to use this tool, users need to the website and then click on the moviemaker image. Then, users need to choose background and foreground images for their film. Next, users have to choose scenarios that they want to use and select the characters. Once the characters are selected, they need to add the dialogue for each character. The text is limited to 100 characters per line. After the dialogue is finished, background music can be added by simply selecting that the music that they like. To finish the movie, users need to give a title, director, and choose a background design. The following story is the film that I created using the Dvolver Moviemaker.

Level and Age

Dvolver Moviemaker is suitable to be used by intermediate and advanced learners. This tool may not be suitable to be used by the beginners because it can be difficult for them to start creating a story without any prepared ideas. Nevertheless, it can be applied for those beginners if teacher play a role by scaffolding them with enough information to be able to create a story. This can be applied for students in both primary and secondary schools ranging from the age of 10-17. Interestingly, the adult learners can also use the moviemaker to create a film, because the content is not only fixed to the young learners, instead it depends on the learners to establish the meaning.

How To Use Dvolver Moviemaker For Teaching English?

Dvolver Moviemaker is mainly developed to improve writing skills. Nik Peachy (2009) suggested five ways of using this tool with students:

1.       Create Conversation

Teachers can set a fixed task by giving students images of some of the characters and a context background for where they meet. Then, ask students to brainstorm a conversation between the two characters. They could then use the site to produce a final version of the conversation to share with other students.

2.      Demonstrate Concept

Teachers can ask students to create movies based around ideas such as fear, happiness, and boredom. Then, get other students to guess the concept. Note that each student will get different theme/idea.

3.      Social Expression

Teachers can create movies which demonstrate social English phrases and expressions being used in context. For example, teachers can demonstrate expressions such as when speaking to strangers, or expressions on special days. This can be served as a presentation of new language to students.

4.      Vocabulary

Teachers can ask students to create animations which incorporate specific language points or vocabulary.

5.      Demonstrate Time Relationship

Teachers can create animations that demonstrate time relationship for teaching tenses.

This web tool is also suitable to be used as a homework task and for the purpose of independent learning.

Evaluation

Advantages:

1.    The material used by Dvolver Moviemaker is interesting and motivating. Tomlinson (1998) claims that effective materials should achieve impact, and one way to achieve that is by attractive presentation. Due to the attractive features (characters, backgrounds, music, etc.) available on the moviemaker, it seems it meets this aim for many students. Interesting learning will motivate students to continue learning and achieve better results.

2.       Appeals to the different learning styles of the students. This is great because students learn better and more quickly if the teaching methods used match their preferred learning styles. Therefore, students will become interested and motivated to learn.

3.       It helps students to develop planning skills, creativity, and innovation skills. This is a good practice for students to understand the processes that involve in the writing processes (planning → drafting → re-drafting → writing → improving).

4.      Dvolver Moviemaker also develops communication and multimedia skills. This tool provides a context for class interaction. The moviemaker can be a medium for brainstorming and talk about the film that students are going to make (occurs in the planning stage). Communicative activities are important in a way that learning becomes meaningful.

Disadvantages:

1.     The text is limited to only 100 charactrs per line. This can be an obstacle for students to express more ideas.

2.   Students might use inappropriate language in the dialogues. Teachers may need to observe the language used by the students.

3.    The activity consumes a lot of time. Therefore, it may not be appropriate to be used in short time lessons. However, if the time becomes a constraint, it can be given to students as homework tasks.
 

References:
 

Peachy, N., (2009). Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers. [e-book]. Available through: Nik’s Learning
    Technology Blog < http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/ >

Tomlinson, B. (1998). Materials development in language teaching. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
    University Press.