A fun cartoon making site-- Zimmer Twins

Website of the day: Zimmer Twins

What is this?

It is an interesting website devoted to children for making animated stories. Students can make their own animation, adding the dialogues and on-screen text.

Why is it good for language learning?

• The movie-making interface is easy to use. Users only have to choose actions, charaacters, props and backgrounds and create dialogues/monologues. In the following what the user can see when making the movie.   

• The animation is attractive and motivating for students.  
• Students could practice wrtiting and speaking abilities when making up dialogues and on-screen text.
• Through group work, students can be involved in cooperative and scaffolding learning enviorment.    
• The website is good for visual learners. Students can assocaite vocabulary wtih the image.
• Students can do creative writing while making a movie.
• Students can sign up as one of the members and keep a record of their own animations and make comments on other animated movies by others. 

Classroom use

• Teacher selects a starter and have students work in gorups to finish making the movie. Later, teachers have students watch the movies of other gorups, vote for their favorite one, and do peer evaluation.    
• After teaching some new words, teachers have students choose some of the new words to make an animated movie.

Limitations

• The characters in the animations cannot talk or speak the lines. There are only background music and some special effect sounds.
• The libraries of animation are pre-set and restricted. Students cannot add their own pictures from the Internet or their own computer.
• There is no automatic error correction system. Therefore, students might be unaware of their spelling mistakes when writing dialogues.  
• It might take some time to explain to students how to make an animation. 
• The animation can not be embedded.