【Dvolver Movie Maker】: Learning Language through Animated Characters

Home page of Dvolver Movie Maker Site

 WHAT IS DVOLVER MOVIE MAKER?

Dvolver Movie Maker, over 8 million movies have been created in it! This is a FREE website which includes a lot of chit chat and various interesting characters. To be precise, this site enables both teachers and students to either express their own views or practise their language usage by directing their own short movies using their own imagination and language.

What's interesting is Dvolver offers its users with wide range of choices throughout the movies making process. For example, there are more than 10 beautiful backgrounds and 30 animated characters to be chosen from. Additionally, the users are free to choose any plot and put in any lines which they would like their characters to say. After that, more scenes can also be added on to turn their dialogue into an awesome movie!

HOW TO USE IT?    

There are just 8 EASY PEASY STEPS to create your own movie by using Dvolver.

Look at the slideshow below!

SAMPLE MOVIES

The followings are the sample movies which I have created through Dvolver. 

Have a quick look and hope you'll enjoy it!!

Movie 1: The Elf''s Revenge 1 (To be continued..)

Movie 2: The Elf's Revenge 2 (The End)

WHY DO TEACHERS & STUDENTS LIKE DVOLVER?

Developing students’ writing and creative thinking skills is a vital part of learning languages. Using Dvolver Movie Maker as a tool to create digital comics in learning allows students to experiment and utilise these skills. As compared to face to face speaking, this way of communication enables students to express contents confidently through the movie characters so that constraints caused by psychological barriers to production on second language (L2) learners are eliminated and pressure related to productive skills is minimised.

Dvolver Movie Maker can be very helpful for both lower and higher-levelled students as for the previous, it maximised the use of simple language and it allow use of a variety of language registers for the latter. Its enjoyable format also helps enhance students’ motivation to learn languages by using an active learning tool and promoting active and creative approach of students. Indirectly, Dvolver can also increase students’ self-esteem because using the interesting characters and backgrounds to supports the students’ stories allows professional result which students can feel proud of.    

HOW CAN I APPLY DVOLVER IN AN ELT LESSON?

To implement language learning lessons utilising Dvolver Movie Maker, it is necessary to have a classroom equipped with computers and the Internet connection. The task can be equally completed as homework. Students can work either individually or in groups to come up with a solution.

There are plenty of possibilities on how to explore Dvolver in an ELT lesson:

•  Use movies to talk about holidays, school, work, etc.
•  Encourage students to use movie’s characters to  comment on local or national celebrations, cultural
   events and social trends.
•  Have students place value or reflect on a particular
   experience in a movie.
•  Illustrate a language problem.
•  Have a character to explain a grammar point or go  through a vocabulary students were taught in the  lesson.
•  Create a drama using the short movies created by students.
   Students may serialise their dramas by creating a new episode/scene each day as part of a continuing story.
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The results can be presented or emailed to the teacher and/or students. Another possibility is to select the best movie between all the students and place it on the school website if there is one.

SOME LIMITATIONS OF DVOLVER

• Users can only choose two characters and type in six characters' line in each scene. And, maximum three scenes can be made in each movie. This could lead to a monotonous atmosphere and a quick loss of interest for higher-levelled learners.
• The movie characters cannot speak aloud and they possess the same facial expressions at all time.
• Movies cannot be edited once they have been finished created. Users have to redo all over again if there are mistakes.
• There are no "Rewind", "Pause", "Fast forward" buttons when the movie is playing. It could be difficult for teachers if they want to stop and explain a particular dialogue to their students.
• Users are unable to make the movie into full screen mode.
• Mandarin language cannot be used as one of the medium for the dialogue.