Brainshark: The Birth of e-Learning and Creativity.

If you are looking for a convenient way of developing and delivering your learning or teaching materials, I think you've just found one: The Brainshark. 

What is Brainshark?

It is a web-based application that enables users to transform their Power Point slides and other content materials (documents, videos, PDFs etc) into voiced-enriched presentations for educational, training, business and other purposes. In other words, Brainshark enables you to narrate your own contents with just 2 simple steps:

1. Upload: Get your materials uploaded in the Brainshark web and it will automatically convert your content.
2. Record: Use computer microphone to start narrating your presentations. Even simpler, you can use your    mobile if you're on the go. 

Don't worry if your slide shows have loads of animation actions, Brainshark will efficiently show them all during your narrating process. 

Getting To Know Brainshark:

It's always a good idea to get yourself familiar with the tool first before you start using and exploiting it for your learning or teaching purposes. In this section, we'll explore some of the key features that make Brainshark a cutting edge tool that is distinctive from others of its kind. 

Figure 1: The homepage

To start working with the Brainshark, you can click on Try It For Free button and you'll be directed to a sign-up page where you're required to create your own Brainshark account. This will only take you a minute and once you're all set up, you can directly log in. 

Akin to Lyrics Training, Brainshark is also equipped with a friendly option buttons where you can search and filter your contents according to your tags and categories. Notice the blue box with the Brainshark's uses on the right hand side of the page and the upload button above it. This is where the distinctive element comes in: other reviewed web tools apparently do not have such great uses as Brainshark does. Intervue only offers videoed interviews with limited (60s) responses, Bubblr only accounts for pictorial strips with no animation feature while Dvolver only favours limited movie animation.

Brainshark, on the other hand, allows for (at least) 5 main uses:

• Voiced-Power Point Presentation
• Voiced-Document Presentation
• Voiced-Video Demo
• Voiced-Photo Album
• Creating podcasts.

Note that these features are available for a FREE version of the tool. If you get yourself a PRO Brainshark account, there will be more interesting functions (Guessbook, Polls) await you. In other words, Brainshark is the upgraded version of all the reviewed web tools which offers more advanced functions and uses. 

Figure 2: The working board

To start working, get your Power Point slide show uploaded, or if you're a returning user you can just directly go to My Content to resume editing your work. There are plenty of edit features available in here such as Edit Presentation, Add Slides, Download the Podcast and Add Question. Edit Presentation itself allows users to manage your slides, manage audio (including recording and adding background audio), add attachment and questions as well as comes with other basic function of Print, View, Share and Delete. 

Figure 3: Edit Presentation

To narrate your presentation, click on the Record Audio and you will need to choose your recording method: via mobiles or computer microphone. 

What if I stumbled or forget my points? Will it affect my presentation? Well, obviously it's not. Brainshark won't even allow it to happen. There will be Retry, Discard and Save buttons displayed once you've finished narrating each slide show. You can always play your recording first before deciding to save and continue with the next slide or to delete and record a new one. Click End Recording Session once finished and you can start embedding your presentation in your blog or sharing it with your friends. Simple! 

Figure 4: Narrating your slide show

A lot to take in? I get you. Click here for Russell Stannard's easy peasy lemon squeezy Brainshark Tutorial. 

Example of Voiced-PowerPoint Presentation

TIPS: 

Once finished, don't forget to change the status of your presentation from INACTIVE to ACTIVE. This will allow your work to be accessible for public viewers. 

Brainshark & Relevance in Learning:

Blended Learning Era:

My personal view of technology in learning and teaching is that ICT is meant to supplement the whole process, not to take away the traditional role of the teacher and students' face-to-face classroom instruction. Brainshark as the medium for this hybrid learning fits the concept perfectly as it combines both teacher-students classroom interaction with computer-mediated activities and together it forms an integrated instructional approach. Adopting Brainshark in learning would mean that distant learning is no longer a barrier. Teachers could have virtual classes with their students and easily link them with extra online materials for homework or exam preparation. Or even better teachers could get their lessons recorded through voiced-PowerPoint presentation for absent students and indirectly make learning more accessible to them regardless of where they are. The whole idea of employing Brainshark for blended learning does not only offer flexibility and convenience on both teachers and students parts, but also is aimed for developing learners' independent learning skills in a long run. 

You might want to consider the balance between such online instruction and direct interaction with your students, however, depending on their learning level because obviously blended learning (particularly with Brainshark) will require them to have at least basic knowledge in ICT.  I would not recommend Brainshark for a supplement learning for students with pre-intermediate level and below because I think less advanced learners would benefit more in real classroom instruction rather than virtual. 

Why It Is Recommended?

• The skeleton of an integrated learning: Combines speaking, writing as well as listening inextricably.
• A source for assessment: Teacher could use students works on Brainshark to assess their learning formatively.
• A practice platform: Students could email their presentation to the teacher and have it assessed virtually before the actual day of the evaluation day.
• Reduce students' affective filter: Students can present their works through voiced-presentation without having to worry to talk in front of the whole class - lowers their anxiety and indirectly increases their confidence in speaking.
• Free! Everybody loves free stuff. :)
• Provide students with a reason for speaking.
• A room for creativity development: Brainshark allows students to get creative as they are able to add background musics, questions for presentation, audio clips and so forth.
• Gain wider audiences: Brainshark's links can be emailed and embedded in blogs.
• Accessibility: Brainshark presentations can be viewed public (unless you set it as inactive)

Some Shortcomings:

• Since this tool only allows for voiced-based presentation, assessing speaking skills (particularly fluency and accuracy) could be an issue as students may have the script written and they just read it aloud. 
• Time constraint: Making a voiced presentation is a time consuming process - not suitable for a classroom activity.
• Feedback issue (this will be discussed in Recommendation section below)
• Proper microphones are needed if students want to narrate their presentations using computers or laptops. 

Classroom Activities with Brainshark:

Brainshark & Feedback Issue: Recommendations

Since voiced-based tasks are often highly personalized, finding the right way to channel feedback to students' works has been a major concern on the teacher's part. The question is how should teachers  deal with it? Here are some of my humble recommendations:

1. Peer evaluation: Presentations do not always have to be individually assessed solely by the teacher - it could be exploited for peer-feedback activity. Get the students to assess one another by pairing them and this could be done as a follow-up activity after creating their own Brainshark presentation. Feedback from peers are believed to have more impacts on students' learning as it increases their awareness of their own mistakes by correcting their friends' work. 
2. Group / Whole Class evaluation: Besides serving as an evaluative basis for groupwork activity, assessing Brainshark presentations in groups also allows for a discussion platform where students get to communicate and rationalise their judgements in checking errors in their tasks. Teacher, however, need to clearly explain the criteria for evaluation (eg: accuracy, fluency, pronunciation, cohesion factors) before letting them to assess their friends' presentations. 
3. Individual evaluation by teacher: Once in awhile it is always good for teachers to be able to assess students' work individually as it will provide them with more precise and accurate feedback on areas for improvement. 

P/S: Brainshark is sure worth a try especially for a novice user like me. I was impressed by its functionality when first exploring it. Try yours and let me know how you feel about it!

Thanks for reading! :)

My Rating on Brainshark's Usefulness:

5/5

Music is the new learning! Yays!

"If you have never tried using musics in these ways...please do!" - Chris Brewer

Lyrics Training? 

A super innovative web tool with embedded YouTube music videos of popular songs which aims at providing language learners with a fun way of practising language skills. Available in 6 languages of English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Dutch and the videos are  basically categorized into three mastery levels:

Easy (10% gapfill)

Intermediate (25%gapfill)

Expert (Full lyrics)

Tell Me More! 

To start using Lyrics Training is definitely very simple. All you need to do is go to the homepage and select your songs preference. 

Picture 1: Homepage

Lyrics Training automatically sets English as its default language so if you need to change your language selection you can just click on the all language button. Instead of using the search engine to find your preferred songs, alternatively you can click on the more option button and this tool will automatically filter your search according to your genres. 

Picture 2: All Language and More Options buttons. 

Once you have selected your music video, you can start the gap-filling game by choosing the level difficulty of Easy, Intermediate and Expert. Notice that if you press the Play Now button together with the Karaoke icon at the bottom-right without choosing the mastery level, the music video will play with the complete lyrics. Both Play Now and Karaoke buttons are designed to allow learners to preview the song before taking part in the game. When ready, you can easily press the Restart button (bottom-right) and select the game mode. 

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Picture 3: Previewing song with Karaoke mode on.

Picture 4: Game in progress - Intermediate.

Can't keep up with the song? Fret not. Lyrics Training is specifically tailored for your listening ability in a way that it will automatically stop until all the missing words are filled in. Akin to other animation games, this web tool also have several shortcuts which allow users to withdraw, restart or repeat the song respectively. Shortcuts function are as follows:

• Withdraw: To stop the game and play the karaoke version, giving users further review before trying again.
• Restart: To start all over from the beginning.
• Repeat: To listen again the last line.

Users also can skip the missing words by pressing the Tab key or replay the last line by pressing the backspace key. See below:

Picture 5: Shortcuts.

Game score will be tallied once the song is completed based on the time you took to complete the song and the numbers of missing words were filled in. The more missing words you filled in, the higher your score will be. Similarly, the higher level will result in higher scores since there is a more gap-fills required. If you wish to keep track on your progress with the Lyrics Training, you may sign up for a free account which enables you to access statistics page with scoring history and music videos information.

Having trouble digesting all the instructions? Help is at hand!: Russell Stannard's LyricsTraining Tutorial 

What It Has To Do With Learning?

Music and Autonomy:

The concept of using lyrics and musics for teaching and learning is as old as education itself. The difference with the Lyrics Training, however, is that it highlights the element of independent learning among learners with the help of technology (no more cassettes and radio!) and scaffolds for a life long acquisition by shifting the change in focus from the teacher to the student. This learning tool suits all language learners, be it beginners, intermediates or advanced adults, as it specifically categorizes the difficulty of mastery into three main levels making it convenient for learning at learners' own pace. What is more appealing is that Lyrics Training is well equipped with lots of helpful keys and guided instructions which makes it easier for novice learners to use the tool and indirectly encourages them for an independent learning in a long run. 

Behaviourist-favoured:
Skinner and friends remind us how important repetition is in learning: The more repetition you give to your students, the more likely it is that they will grasp the message. Interestingly, Lyrics Training discards the traditional drills and choral responses which are often defined the theory (they are dead boring, yes). Instead, the use of repetitive vocabulary is meshed in songs particularly through repeated chorus or lines. This kind of repetition would definitely considered unusual for normal conversation and redundant in speeches but it does not seem to be redundant in songs. Learners will incautiously repeat the hidden drills as they listen and sing along, making the repeated vocabulary to be better retained in their memory. 

Music and Motivation:

Because songs deal with the whole realm of human emotions which allow learners to relate with their own feelings and interests by making connections with them, songs could be a motivator that drives learners to learn forward and perform better in their learning. The more connections students can make with their learning, the more accessible the process will be. Unlike conversations, pauses in songs make songs more understandable to learners and allow them to find moments for their personal 'owning'. 

Other ticks for Lyrics Training:

• Encourages independent learning outside the classroom environment.
• Songs offer shorter, affective and simpler texts in the target language with a lot of vocabulary recycled.
• Definitely suits the purpose for testing and practising learners' listening skills.
• Authentic learning material: Lyrics Training is not tailored to fit specific learners' needs - it suits all level of language learners.
• Offers exposure to everyday-used English inclusive slang. 
• Free: Learning English with Adam Levine and Katy Perry for free? Now who wouldn't? :)
• Enriches learners with a wide range of vocabulary.
• Contextualized learning: Songs usually come in contexts, situations or stories.
• Avoids making up your own lyrics: I'm a type of person who could listen to a song thousand times and still have no idea what the lyrics are - seeing them written out as the video plays is indeed a major help.

Some minus points:

• Unfiltered slang and profanity: This could be a sizeable challenge for teachers if they want to use Lyrics Training for classroom purposes. 

Picture 6: Example of profanity element in songs.

• Over emphasis on reduced forms of syntax (wanna, gonna, hittin and so forth) might be confusing to some beginners and lower level learners.
• Comes with limited languages. 
• Only works with internet connection. 
• Proper headsets or earphones are necessary for classroom learning. 

Lyrics Training For Classroom Purposes:

1. Listening Competition: Teacher to select 5 pop songs and group students according to the pop song they like most. It does not matter if one group has more members than the others because the main objective for this activity is to get them practising their listening skill using their favourite songs. For a fair competition, the teacher will set the game level for all students (eg: intermediate) before they start battling with their group members. Once finished, students will compare their scores and the member with highest score for each pop song will be crowned the winners. If time permits, teacher can have another round of battle using different pop songs. 
2. Songs Discussion: Have the students to choose one song they enjoy most and have a round of lyrics training with the whole class (this is for classrooms with limited resources) as a warmer activity. Group the students with 4 members per team and ask them to butcher the song in relation to meaning and what they like or dislike about the lyrics. This activity could also be employed as a follow-up or a continuation task for the Listening Competition detailed above. 
3. Spelling Game: Have the Lyrics Training site ready on the projector. Using intermediate level songs (the beginner might be too easy and the expert might be too hard), teacher could exploit the gap-filling for a spelling game. 

Could It Be Improved? How?

Lyrics Training is indeed a great learning platform and it is ashamed that such fantastic tool only limits itself for mostly just listening and vocabulary skills through gap-filling exercises. What could be exploited further is that Lyrics Training should enable a forum or a chat room in the website for learners to discuss the meaning of their favourite songs with the other users. 

My Rating on Lyrics Training's Usefulness:

4  1/2 / 5

Bubblr For Learning.

What is Bubblr?

Bubblr is a useful web-based tool which enables users to create comic strips, complete with bubbles for thoughts and dialogues, from photos and other images stored in Flickr. The strips can be shared by email, saved to online archives, and shared with other users. As the site suggests, Bubblr is:

…a tool to create comic strips using photos from flickr.com. Begin searching images and add bubbles to them. So easy! Just type a tag and and press go!

How to Use Bubblr?

1. Simply search tag words for photos (for example: autumn) and click the go button. 

2. Photos related to your tag will be displayed and you can start choosing your pictures by dragging any selected photo into the white working box.

3. When a picture is selected it automatically becomes the background for the entire frame so you cannot have two pictures in a box. Simply click before current or after current to add more frames or pictures.

4. To add speech bubbles or text boxes, simply drag the bubble icons onto your frames or pictures. Drag back the icons out of your frames if you decide to delete them.

5. Once it is done, click publish. 

6. To review your work, go to the archive.

7. You can blog your comic strips or presentation by embedding the html code or post the link into your facebook, twitter and other social networking mediums.

For a visual tutorial you can visit this link: Bubblr Screencast

Why Bubblr?

Supports Affective Theory of Learning: 

If you believe that learning outcomes improve when students are highly motivated and actively engaged with the task then this tool can be a perfect answer. Bubblr facilitates a great deal of creativity as students are able to create their own comic strips with preferred pictures, which can be greatly engaging and may ultimately increase their motivation for learning. Bubblr also recognizes the emotional influence in learning by enabling students to work around their preferences and personal interests which can highly contribute to their success in language learning. 

Personalized learning:

Learning styles vary - Bubblr revolves around the main principle of personalized learning which caters for students' own learning styles and supports them to learn in their own unique ways. It is highly visual appealing and allow students to work at their own pace and therefore is best utilized for individual tasks. This tool also enables your learners to make connections and relate with their own life and personal experiences which makes learning is more accessible to them.

The new realia:

The high quality and wide variety of pictures available means that you can reinvigorate any topic by making a visually appealing presentation. Because not all teaching topics can be presented by realia (you cannot expect to bring a polar bear into your classroom when teaching Antartica!), presenting a short Bubblr presentation to your class could be a useful warmer activity as it helps to captivate their interest into the topic and indirectly hold their attentiveness for the next activity. Most importantly while the use of realia is heavily subjected to practicality, Bubblr, on the other hand, breathes life into students' creativity and saves preparation time on teacher's part. 

Other plus points for using Bubblr:

• User-friendly: This tool is easy to navigate - suitable for all levels.
• Helps to develop writing skills: Bubblr makes it compulsory for students to comment on pictures, which means that they will always have the opportunity to develop their writing skills.
• Ownership element: Allows for a sense of personalization of ideas.
• It's free.
• Encourages creative writing: Creating poems or dialogues.
• Integrated skills: Presenting works will integrate speaking, writing and listening skills.
• Alternative for PowerPoint: Handy for visual presentations.
• Interesting: A fun way of classroom learning. Students can just have fun with the tool, creating funny, fictional stories. What child doesn't like comics? :)

Like any other web tools, however, Bubblr also have its own limitations. I will definitely not recommend Bubblr for a single period teaching (40 minutes) because it is definitely not a time-friendly tool. There are just too many pictures to choose from and the availability of thousands of pictures means that creating a picture strip is potentially to be quite time consuming. Most of the time the tags used to describe pictures are not precise and unreliable, and I really find this upsetting. My first experience with Bubblr last week was that it took me almost half an hour to just get the real autumn sceneries for my presentation. Similarly, the next time I searched for winter in the tag engine, the first 20 pictures that appeared were just frosted rooftops and white puppies. This really explains why Bubblr could be a potentially time consuming tool for learning (what more for a classroom task) because the tags do not always define the items that you are searching for. 

The other drawback I identified with Bubblr is that picture strips are automatically made public once you hit the publish button. This means that it will be made accessible to all viewers anonymously all around the globe. For an introvert like me, I don't quite fancy the idea of getting my works accessible to everyone because I really find it intimidating. Furthermore, there is no delete or hide button in the archive and this tool also allows for rating and automatically displays the view number. Because it would be really demotivating for students with lower confidence to get their works rated by someone they barely know, I'd recommend teachers who wish to use Bubblr for classroom purposes to clearly explain the implications or problems it might have on students' work before using it for language tasks. 

Other disadvantages:

• Inappropriate photos: Bubblr's tags work akin to Google's search engine - it does not filter images, some might be inappropriate for young learners.
• Limited source: The only source for photos is Flickr, students cannot embed pictures from other sources.
• Personal photos: Bubblr does not allow learners to upload their personal collections of photos.
• Lack of edit functions: Text boxes, bubbles, picture size and fonts cannot be adjusted or resized.
• Only works online: Bubblr cannot be used without internet connection.

Suggested Classroom Activities

1. Using a Bubblr slideshow for a writing prompt. This covers general topics such as travel, food, nature and hobbies.
2. Using Bubblr comic strips for creative writing: Students can choose their own cartoons or artists and make dialogues based on the given topics.
3. Using Bubblr for poetry: Students can create poems or limericks based on their preferred pictures and present their work in groups.
4. A perfect tool for icebreaking-based activity: Students to make a short slideshow about themselves and present it to their partners or the whole class.
5. Students to make a quick presentation on science comics such as the lifecycle of a butterfly or frog or the transformations of matter. 
6. Teacher to use Bubblr tool for teaching sequential or process like essays such as How to Make An Omelette or How to Brush Your Teeth. As a task, ask students to create one sequential slideshow each and present their work to the respective partners.

Example:

How Bubblr could be improved? 

• Upgrading the tool with edit functions. This includes Bubblr to have a font button  for more size and colour selection and the caption box to be resized. 
• Adding Tumblr and Google as the main sources instead of just Flickr for wider choices. 
• Embedding the animation element: Allow Bubblr to be more than just visually appealing, songs or animations can enhance students' interests and learning. 
• Enabling the extras functions: If Bubblr could incorporate graphs, charts or statistics, it would have an added-function to learning, particularly for presentation purposes. 

My Rating on Bubblr's Usefulness:

2 1/2 /5

Creativity tool: Dvolver

Getting to know Dvolver:

Dvolver Movie Maker is a creativity tool that can be used for teaching in the classroom. It is a free site where users are able to input text, and choose backgrounds, characters, and music to accompany their creation which can be shared by e-mail or by embedding html code. 

What I found with Dvolver is that the more time you spend experimenting with this tool the more you realize you can do with it. There are several disadvantages, though, and they will be discussed below. The end product of this tool is comprised of avatars who communicate through texts inside of speech bubbles. The skills needed to create a Dvolver movie are rather minimal: you choose the scene, you choose the characters, you choose the text. For that reason, I highly recommend Dvolver for students ranging between elementary to upper intermediate level, or Year 6 to secondary secondary level in a Malaysian context. 

Create your Dvolver movie:

1. You will first need to select a background and a sky.

2. Next, choose a plot. This step will allow you to choose how the characters will interact. The available choices are: 

• Rendez-vous: characters enter from opposite sides of the screen, converse, and go back the way they came.
• Pick-up: Exactly what it sounds like. They enter from opposite sides, converse, and leave together.
• Chase: Characters “chase” each other back and forth across the screen, converse, and “chase” away together.
• Soliloquy (eg: monologue): The character enters, speaks, and leaves.

3. Select your avatars / characters (maximum 2), depending on your plot selection.

4. Next, you can enter up to 3 speech bubbles per character, per scene. There is a limit of 100 characters per character’s line. You can have maximum of 3 scenes for each movie.

5. Choose background music for your movie. Once you are done, you can choose to add a new scene or click finish and preview your creation. You can always review your work before sending it to your recipients or embedding it in your blog by clicking the back button to edit.

Step 1-4 are the basic guidelines on how to make a Dvolver movie. For a full online tutorial, you may visit this link: Russell's Dvolver Tutorial.

Sample Movie:

Dvolver and Language Learning

Supports Cognitivistic View of Learning: 

Cognitive theories take the perspective that students actively process information and learning takes place through the efforts of the student as they organise, store and find relationships between information, linking new to old knowledge, schema and scripts. 

Integrating Dvolver in language teaching perfectly fits the cognitive aspect of learning  as it involves an active cognitive experimentation on students' part in order to create a well connected and sequenced conversation between the avatars. More than just using correct connectors to channel meaning and information, Dvolver explicitly requires learners to use contextually appropriate greetings according to themes and settings, and precise vocabulary for each utterance as it only allows for 100 characters per line and maximum of 3 scenes for movie. For that reason, students' cognitive and language ability are highly challenged in a sense that they have to carefully organise and construct a response adhered to the word limit. 

Summarizing novels or short stories using Dvolver favours the cognitive aspect of learning as it inculcates the events of learning and instruction as a series of phases, using the cognitive steps of linking, retrieving and transferring information.

Student-centredness:

Dvolver acknowledges the belief that students’ perceptions of the world were important, that they were relevant and appropriate for a successful learning. Employing the use of Dvolver for classroom tasks accounts for integrating the increased sense of autonomy and allows for active participation on the students' part as it enables learners to have 'choices' in their own learning process. Instead of doing what they are told, students are given a room to be creative by becoming a film director directing their own mini films and explore the language freely at their own pace. It is all about what the students do to achieve this, rather than what the teacher does. 

Dvolver and Classroom Activities:

Reading Comprehension (secondary level): 

Students could use Rendez-vous or Chase plot to summarize their argumentative essays and present their ideas to respective groups 

Pre-reading in Literature (all levels): 

Teachers can use the tool to introduce a new chapter or a new story of a novel/drama/plays by making a short Dvolver movie to generate students' interests and activate their schemata. The wide range of plot selection will able to give the students' a 'taste' of what to be expected in the new literary chapter.

Post-reading in Literature (all levels): 

Assigning students to transform the novel into a summary play. The students could create an alternative to something that happened in the story as well, for example: new ending. This will have to depend on the type of story, of course, as there is a limit to 2 characters per scene.

Grammar with Dvolver (Year 6 - lower secondary level): 

Teacher to model and explain the use of grammar points to class using Dvolver animation. In pairs, students will create their own version of Dvolver movie using the new language item learned as practice before they present their work to other pairs or in the plenary session. Grammar points which worth to be ventured via this tool include:

1. Modals (would, will, must, can, could etc) 
2. Tenses (simple past / present, present / past progressive etc)
3. Reported speech (T to give directed speech text, Ss to convert into reported sentences)  
4. Connectors (furthermore, in addition, moreover and so forth).

Creative Writing Competition (all levels): 
Students working in pairs or groups to create a short movie on selected topics (weather, shopping, travel, food etc), in given time. Movies are assessed by the success criteria agreed on both students and teachers, for example, 1) covers the topic accurately, 2) precise title, 3) correct tenses (and the list goes on), and the winning movie will be picked through peer voting and peer feedback in plenary session. The winning Dvolver movie could be published in the class or school blog as a reward. 

Disadvantages:

• Profanity and colloquial language: Some students may view that cursing or swearing spices up the emotion of a conversation, and that the excessive use of colloquial English may make the conversation becoming more real (eg: ain't nothing, yknow, wassup)

• Limited themes, characters and responses: Using Dvolver for the first week in classroom could be fun; students, however, will eventually find it humdrum due to the limited selection of word limits and scenes it has to offer if used repetitively. 

• Accessibility: Dvolver and other ICT tools cannot operate without ICT facilities. Schools with no internet connection and proper computers or laptops may be at disadvantage.

• Time consuming: Dvolver could be a blessing and a curse; students with lower language proficiency and ICT skills may find it burdensome to compete the task in a given time while the advanced ones may find it too easy. 

• Cultural appropriacy: Some characters (eg: Hottie) are overly dressed and are regarded as overtly inappropriate in certain cultures. 

• Emotion and voice-lacking: No expression and voiceless animations. 

I'd say yes to Dvolver:

• Meaningful learning: Dvolver offers contextualized learning through various themes and characters which crucial for enhancing language acquisition. 

• User-friendly: Clear instructions and easy step-by-step-animation software. Learning is just a click away!

• Suitability and content-friendly: Dvolver accommodates almost all levels for students in all contexts. If summarizing an argumentative essay is too easy for upper intermediate learners, teacher can always adapt and improvise the lesson using other contents (eg: hunger / poverty documentary, petition or legislation).

• Cooperative learning: Dvolver as a medium for pairs and groupwork activities. 

• Multiple intelligences: Dvolver appeals to students with visual, inter and intra intelligences. 

• Free: No sign up, no membership fees - accessible to everyone! 

• Assessment: Dvolver could be used as a form of formative assessment where teacher could monitor the language progress of the students over time.

• Wider audience: Online digital storytelling empovers students to share their ideas in social networking mediums (eg: blog, facebook, tumblr) and gain wider readers.

• Autonomy learning: Since Dvolver's accessible to everyone everywhere at anytime, students could use this tool for independent language practice outside their classroom setting.

• Student-centered: Students will have a say in choosing their own themes and characters of their preferences - making learning more motivating and exciting.

• Creativity: Unleashing students' creativity and imagination and indirectly enhanced learning.

• Opportunity to learning: Bashful and quiet students who usually do not like the idea of speaking in front of the whole class are able to express themselves creatively via the movie animation.

Tips for Teachers:

1. Preview the entire process with the students first before assigning them to make their own Dvolvers. Teacher could point out any inappropriate characters which students are not encouraged to use as they are previewing. 
2. Encourage students to work in pairs or groups; it helps to lower their anxiety and fear of working alone and result to more communicative and effective learning.
3. Place sanctions to avoid the use of profanity and excessive colloquial language in Dvolver movies in students' works. Eg: One swearing = MYR 5.

My Rating on Dvolver's Usefulness:

4/5

Hello.

11/10/12 (10.28am)

Currently in Russell's class. An hour and a half passed, now I need more courage for another half.

This is my new blog, yes; but only for school purposes. Nothing more than that. So please do not expect too much from this stuff cause keeping and giving commitment into something new is never my forte. But I'll try my best. I hope you'll enjoy reading it and in some way will find it useful. Even you are not a teacher-to-be and teaching is the last thing you'd do, do try all the reviewed web tools cause it's fun! 

It's REALLY fun! :)

Have a good day!

p/s: working with Pain! :D