With Nota, mash your ideas and media together with friends in a dynamic whiteboard wiki. Using photos, videos, and other web content you can instantly create brainstorms and presentations. Easy and quick. It’s not too complex, so don’t expect amazing layouts… but it is really effective!!!
Here are two examples of how we can work with short silent clips in the classroom: Vimeo has many high-quality video-clips which can be used in many different ways.
The first one we are showing here is a nice short clip of 2 minutes about the story of a seed. It is called “Seedling”:
Seedling from Lee Tao on Vimeo.
It would be nice to have our students describing what is happening, and predicting what will happen next… or, describing the characters appearing in the clip. I’m sure you can think of other possibilities!
The second one is “Paraphernalia”… a story of a girl and a boy… and a plane:
Paraphernalia from Sabrina Cotugno on Vimeo.
Why don’t you put text into pictures? The story is really easy to follow and there’s silent dialogue which can be easily completed… students can create a written dialogue or they can put voice to the clip! It is a very engaging activity which students will love.
Word on the Street is an extremely good website by The British Council and the BBC.
A series of chapters dealing with everyday situations with a set of definite sections which make students learn as they enjoy these nice clips.
The episodes are divided in sections: Those which help learners to focus first on comprehension, where we can watch everyday situations dealing with different topics.
These are followed by sections more focused on linguistic aspects which are exemplified with parts of the previous clip.
Some brief explanations are highlighted on the screen in order to clarify those linguistic aspects that must be learnt.
Finally, these clips are followed by some drills to help students evaluate what they have learnt in the episode.
This website will really fulfill the needs of those students who need some reinforcement on their listening skills as well as those who want to use some good-quality self-access material. Great production and crystal-clear explanations. for those who find it difficult, they can also see the transcript as they watch.
This is good fun… and learn!!
Bombay TV is a nice and catchy website where we can add text to short Bollywood clips… amazing to foster oral and written skills, as well as vocabulary and accuracy.
Choose a clip containing different scenes, with typical bollywood actors and stories… traditional, religious, modern…
Add text into the clip: You can either write it down, record your voice or use the text to speech tool. All three ways incorporate your message into the clip, in text or soundtrack.
Have your students watch the clips, choose the most suitable one and then ask them to add a short story which matches the pictures… easy and engaging!
You can embed the clip or send it to others… share your work!
If you or your students are not Bollywood fans… try B Movie TV… the same interface, but related to those old movies from the 50’s… good fun as well!
The British Council has produced a very good video which helps people understand the proper terms when referring to the UK, Great Britain, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The website offers some nice follow-up activities to make sure pupils understand the concepts of nation and state within the UK.
Time for the youngest! Domo animate is a very beautiful site where kids can create their own animated stories, a bit like ZimmerTwins.
A very intuitive interface lets you choose characters, background, messages, music and effects. just click and place the item in the scene.
Once the item/character is in the scene, it can acquire movement, expression, it can perform actions… just click and choose!
Keep adding scenes until the story is finished, and then publish it!
It’s really easy… make sure kids think of the story before they start editing, once they are familiar with the application. You can embed it in your website, your blog, or you can email it to people… parents?
Enjoy it!!
Do you want to catch your students’ interest as reporters? Have them shoot their own videos with their news and their experiences and upload them into this nice website, What’s Your News.
Some friendly ants will welcome you. You can register really easily, customize your ant-avatar and watch and upload videos, pictures, audios and texts, and also download freebies.
Your students can even upload videos where they tell how to do things, and post documents telling how to do that activity in class.
xtranormal… xtracatchy!!! Your students will be able to create movies in 10 minutes… their imagination is the limit… and the number of characters and backgrounds of the free version, of course! But it’s really enough to create interesting stories with your pupils.
Text-to-Movie is the 2D online version which lets you embed your creations in blogs or send the url to friends (or teachers 🙂 ). The downloadable version is called State. The free version of State lets you create 3D stories with the same limitations of the free online version Movie-to-Text. Movies created with State can be exported to mp4 or also uploaded into youtube.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/FXPyCgOQkI0" width="282" height="232" wmode="transparent" /]
If you think we must use our classrooms to spread the idea of a different approach towards our environment, have a look at this site
 The Story of Stuff is basically a 20-minute videoclip where Annie Leonard shows how we are deteriorating our planet. Clear animations and a very good narrative for a cross-curricular approach. The only drawback is the absence of transcript. It shows the process of overuse of our natural resources, their transformation into products and their latter change into pure rubbish which increasingly fills our planet. Specially adequate for advanced/Batxillerat students.