Zimmer Twins

Hi there,

another new website for today, Zimmer Twins ! This website can be used to create own movies, just like the one that I have reviewed before, Dvolvers.

 There are 3 characters to be chosen; Edgar, Eva and 13 (the black cat). Students can choose the locations, actions, objects and other components which are essential to create students' own movies.

       
           Tutorial video on how to make Zimmer Twins movie


As I am going to be an English teacher in the future, I will recommend teachers to use this website in the English language classroom. Students may be motivated and interested to learn English as it is fun and interesting. Students may become more relaxed and this may lower their affective filter in which can make learning process more effective.


How this is beneficial in English classroom?

• Just like Dvolvers, teachers can ask students to create their own dialogues. Teachers may ask students to create dialogues based on their context or perhaps teachers can provide specific context for students to start creating their dialogues. This actually promotes learner autonomous learning as students will discover and explore the new language by themselves. They will select and organize the language used in the dialogues by themselves.  In addition, the learning process may be better if students learn from their experiences and mistakes during the process.
• Besides, this will create the sense of ownership to students as they have the rights and authority to create their own dialogues. They will decide the language used, the characters and the situations of their dialogues.
• At the same time, students may enhance their creative and thinking skills in making the appropriate dialogues that suitable with the context given.Students may be motivated to learn if they can perform the task based on their creativity. Teacher perhaps can create an incomplete movie and later ask students to use their own creativity to continue and finish the story.
• Next, this may help introvert students to express their language and opinion too. Some students may prefer to express their opinions through words rather than speak out their opinions to the class.

What are the disadvantages?

• Students may end up creating dialogues and situations which are not suitable in the language classroom. Thus, to solve this teachers should provide to students with specific context before they start creating their dialogues.
• Students may use this websites for fun only. Hence, teachers should evaluate students' work after they have finished their task. Teachers can ask students to send their movies to teachers' emails so that teachers can evaluate their works later (Note that students should create Zimmer Twins accounts first before they can send or share their created movies to others through emails).
• In addition, teachers can ask students to share their movies with their classmates. Later, they can give comments or share their opinions on the movies in which they can improve their language skills afterwards. This eventually promotes peer feed backs among students.
• The only problem that I have found out that the movie created cannot be embedded in the blog. It can only be shared through emails. Thus, students cannot include movies made by them in their blogs if they are using the blogs as e-portfolios. Perhaps in the future, Zimmer Twins will allow movies sharing in the social networks and embedding of the movie sin the blogs.

Create your own Zimmer Twins movie today!

Bye!