What is Dvolver?
Dvolver is a great tool to make free movies online. You can create your own movie by choosing the background and sky images, selecting the plot, character(s), adding speech bubbles to create your own dialogues for every character in every scene, and selecting the background music. It is an easy online tool to use for language learning and teaching.
You can find Dvolver in the following link:
How to use Dvolver?
You can watch this video to learn how to use Dvolver:
Why is Dvolver relevant to language learning?
- It is a motivating and interesting website for students because they can create their own animated movies and feel more engage with the lesson.
- It gives teachers a new way to present contents. Therefore, students would also feel more motivated.
- Teachers can create suitable dialogues according to students' proficiency in the language, the content they are learning, grammar and vocabulary aspects as well.
- Students are free to create any scene using the different elements available for them. In this way they are developing their creativity.
- It is suitable for all ages because it has a range of different characters.
- It encourages both individual and collaborative work.
- This tool also enhances the development of critical thinking through evaluating information, reasoning, thinking and assessing information in a more comprehensible way. For instance, when students have to create dialogues they have to decide the content, vocabulary, grammar, etc. in order to link the conversation, and connect the series of scenes together in a well organised way, in other words, follow the flow of it.
How might you use Dvolver in class/outside the class?
- Within the classroom
Teachers can present any new teaching point more interestingly to the students by using Dvolver. For example, teachers would like to present through the communicative approach the function of 'introducing themselves', therefore, teachers can create a dialogue including the specific function, vocabulary and grammar required to present it. This example would be embedded as a real dialogue to show you how you can use it and the content that you can add in the animated movie. Then, teachers can ask them to work in pairs and create a dialogue in which they would introduce themselves.
How might you use Dvolver in class/outside the class?
- Within the classroom
Teachers can present any new teaching point more interestingly to the students by using Dvolver. For example, teachers would like to present through the communicative approach the function of 'introducing themselves', therefore, teachers can create a dialogue including the specific function, vocabulary and grammar required to present it. This example would be embedded as a real dialogue to show you how you can use it and the content that you can add in the animated movie. Then, teachers can ask them to work in pairs and create a dialogue in which they would introduce themselves.
2. Outside the classroom
- By following the example from above, teachers can ask the students to send the movie they made during the class and they can assess them formatively to check the progress of their work and also to give them some feedback in the next class.
What limitations can you see with the use of Dvolver?
- There are limited number of words for the sentences you intend to incorporate, limited scenes, characters which are pre-determined and limited in number, too.
- Students and teachers are not able to listen to the conversation. Therefore, they can only read it. However, if a student is proficiently better in the listening and not in the reading skill, they would face some difficulties because the tool would favor one skill over the other.
The next movie would show you a simple example on how you can use Dvolver in the classroom:
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