zimmer twins

In the previous entry, I talked about the usage of DVolver in which helps learners especially in their writing skills. As compared to Dvolver there's not so much different can be found between these two tools but I will definitely explain how this ZIMMERTWINS can benefit ESL learners in their language classroom. The first thing to do is absolutely to create an account to have an access to the website. Once you're logged one, you can just simply click on the available buttons such as talk-bubble clips, action clips, close-up clips and star clips in order to create a simple cartoon strip of your choice!

First thing first, this tool allows you to be select a topic of the day in which gives you more options about what kind of movie you wanna create. For an example, various topics or titles are posted in the website everyday and all you can do is choose the one which you wanna deal with. Every topics or titles are usually halfway done by the designer of the tool therefore, your main job is to finish the cartoon strip by creating / predicting how the previous and the next strips should be like. Basically, this tool needs a higher creativity from language learners to intelligently become an amateur cartoon director. This tool is occupied with many interesting nuttons and various wonderful it can totally benefit the learner if a few identified drawbacks can be overcome. The downside of this tool will be discussed after this.

As stated above, Zimmertwins has a lot of functional buttons and selections which will help the learner to decide what should be there, particularly in their cartoon strip. You can always be creative in planning the sequence of your mini cartoon project as you are allowed to be exactly like a real cartoon director. In terms of pedagogical point of view, a few advantages have been identified so far.

The advantages:

1. This tool acts as a medium for student to exploit the new language that they are learning in a fun way. It is an undeniable fact to say that this website encourages the learner to be creative while dealing with the mini cartoon project.

2. By exposing learners to this kind of tool, they are actually becoming more autonomous learners in some senses. It is vital to say that more frequent exposure to the target language means better outcome for the learners.

3. This website also allow the learner to create authentic dialogue in the bubble provided, hence more practice of language among the learner will definitely turn them to better users of the language.

4. The teacher can also set up a homework task for learners just by using this tool. Since this activity might be a little bit time consuming so by giving a homework,  the learner can spend the necessary time.

5. Again, this is a free tool as long as you have a registered account to the website.

However, the drawbacks could be:

1. Limited platform to fully use the language since the bubble does not allow many words to be typed in thus might limit the learner creativity in playing with words.

2. This activity is definitely a time consuming and the teacher should know how to make sure that learners will never be carried away with these attractive cartoons.

3. This tool is only suitable for certain age group of  learners, as younger learners will be more attracted to the website rather than adult learners.

4.Some videos might also not able to published due to some technical reasons. If it is a homework which has been assigned to, the learner might have sent the cartoon movie through email but still the teacher might not be able to watch it!