BE CREATIVE WITH ZIMMER TWINS!!!

Zimmertwins.com is an innovated online tool for creating movies using the characters from the show "Zimmer Twins". Edgar and Eva - the 12 years old twins with psychic power and their cat - I3 are the characters that children can used to create an animated movie with this tool. One can either choose to create an ending to one of the story starters or create their own stories from scratch. Additionally, one could also watch a movie from those that have been shared in zimmertwins.com. Children could choose the characters, emotions, actions, themes as well as add in dialogues in creating the animations. The undo and redo actions are available while creating the movie, which could ease children in editing the movies to their satisfaction. A brief explanation on "How to Make a Movie" with zimmertwins.com can be seen from here http://www.zimmertwins.com/movie/howto.

                                                                                (adapted from iLearn Technology)

How to Integrate Zimmertwins.com in an ELT Classroom??

Example 1 (Post-Writing Activity):

1. Teacher gives the students a context or provide them with a few sentences of the starting point of a story.
2. Then, a discussion can be held in the class to activate the students' schemata about  themes that could be related to the story. Teacher should also ensure that the students are aware of  the group of audience for their writings. 
3. Students should be informed that the stories created will be made into a movie. This is to motivate them in creating a more interesting story as well as triggering their creativity skills.   
4. After that, students will be taught to use this tool and each of them will have to create a movie based on the content of their writings. 
5. Finally, students can share their movies with their friends by showing them in class. Then, a writing activity could be more acceptable especially in an ESL classroom. 

P/S: This would be a scaffolding activity for the students as they are being taught and guided in steps. 

Example 2 (Presentation stage in P-P-P):

1. Teacher will introduce the topic of "Language Functions" to the students. Before informing the students on what will be taught today, teacher could first show a movie created with Zimmertwins.com to the students.
2. Teacher could ask the students to guess the topic that will be taught from the content of the movie. 
3. After that, teacher could present the knowledge of language functions to the students. They will be divided into groups to complete a few exercises on "Language Functions".
4. Then, answers will be discussed and feedback will be provided.
5. Lastly, students will be assigned a task - create a movie using zimmertwins.com and send it to the teacher. Teacher could randomly choose the movies created by the students and use them on the following lesson to activate students schemata on the "Language Functions" that have been learnt.

Advantages:

• It could trigger students' creativity skills.
• Its background sound effect and animation would attract students' attention.
• Visual learning could take place. It could focus on students' multiple intelligence. 
• It prepares students to the outside world as they could visualize how the authentic conversation takes place.
• It's a FREE tool.
• Students could relate it to their lives because the animation are made up of their daily activities.

Limitations:

• Actions are quite limited to be chose from. 
• Internet connection is necessary.
• There are only 3 characters for the movie - boring.
• The movie cannot be embedded into a blog page. 

Now, let's have a go!!!

http://www.zimmertwins.com/movie/create