Make lessons fun with Dvolver

My lecturer, Russel introduced us to a website that can be very helpful for teaching and learning; Dvolver Digital Movie. Check it out!!!

http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/index.html

This will be my fundamental teaching tool one day. It allows me to create an interesting environment for English lesson. Perhaps it is suitable for all level of secondary school students because this tool is flexible and compromising, depends on how we use it in our classroom.

No worries. Everything is on us! We choose the tool and we decide on what we want to do with it....=)

Let me illustrate briefly about this tool;

Firsly, we need to choose the setting for our movie:

Then, we need to select the characters, there are two characters they need to decide; Character 1 and Character 2:

After that, we need to decide the plot for the movie:

This is the most crucial part in this type of activity where we need to type in the characters' lines. This is where the language is being tested:

After we done with the conversation between the two characters, we can select the background music for the movie, this is quite enjoyable:

The final step, of course we need to decide on the title and the title design for the movie we made:

Then we can click on the 'preview and send button' to finish up the process and email it to our friends or teacher:

This activity would be great if we can do it as a pair work so that they can discuss and gather some interesting ideas together.

The good things about this website are:

1) It creates a context for a language to be used.

2) Most importantly, this tool will make your lesson FUN!

3) It is very engaging for students.

4) It allows them to use their creativity! You will be surprised on how creative your students are.

5) In fact, this types of activity is very authentic in both language and productivity.

6) Dvolver maybe can help you make variety for your lesson. As a teacher, we always want our lesson to be motivating for students and not dull...

However, there are some limitations that we need to consider:

1) It may be inappropriate for young learners for example for primary school students. It may be way too hard for them to handle on their own.

2) May not be really helpful for more capable students who have higher proficiency in the language because the sentence they can create is limited.

3) ICT facilities? Is your school has assess to computer and internet? Rural area schools in Malaysia may likely face this kind of problem.

4) The use of inappropriate words or language by students. Be aware of that!

That's all for my first post for this blog. I'll write more next time.

Happy teaching!