Xtranormal – Text-to-movie

Click here to watch the animation

 

Xtranormal is a fantastic web 2.0 tool where you can make 3D movies for free.

Everyone watches and enjoys movies and everyone can make movies. Movie-making, short and long, online and on-screen, private and public, will be the most important communications process of the 21st century.

Xtranormal presents us a revolutionary approach to movie-making. You type something; they turn it into a movie. On the web and on the desktop.

 

You just have to pick a scene, the characters, type a script, add actions and sounds, publish and share.

Your learners can also make their own movies and share them with the rest of the class.

 

Video Jug – Life Explained, On Film

VideoJug

VideoJug is a comprehensible library of free instructional videos online.

The high definition videos are professionally produced and cover every imaginable topic – definitely an online video encyclopaedia of life.

The videos are divided in two different formats: The informative “How To” and the “Ask The Expert” that guides the viewer step by step through everything and anything in life.

The “How To” videos deliver easy-to-follow, bite-size tutorials on a variety of topics, such as recipes, beauty and hairstyle tips, jobs and careers, technology, DIY, sports and fitness and education videos including languages, punctuation, math and special needs.

Recipes videos example

Click to play

The “Ask The Expert” videos are professors, coaches, teachers or consultants providing answers to common questions and concerns.

For example the Yoga videos

Click to play

VideoJug is a source for credible answers and wisdom for every possible aspect of human life. VideoJug informs, helps and inspires. I think we could make good use of it in our classes and for personal reasons as well!

 

Videos For Everyone

You Tube

You probably think that You Tube is not very useful and that it is just for Entertainment!

Actually, it is one of the best sources of content on the web.

You can find loads of resources for all areas of teaching, such as languages, History, Science, Health, Make up, Business, Pottery, English for Academic purposes, as for example IELTS or Cambridge Certificates.

Try to search for information about teaching methodology, Interviews with famous people, Language lessons, Pottery or Make up tutorials, Live Lectures, television programmes and help with exams.

If you want to use some of the videos in your class and you would like to embed the videos into your presentations, especially if you are working offline, you can grab them from You Tube.

 

 

You Tube Downloader

You just need to Google youtube downloader, click on the first link of the sites returned, download the small piece of software, press Run and it is installed.

 

 

Press Run

 

 

 

The downloader allows you to download videos from You Tube and then convert them into other types of format.

Enter the URL of any You Tube video and convert by clicking on Convert video. You can save the video as a mov, avi, wmv, mp3 or mp4 to your computer .

Please let me know if you need a hand with it.

Making a movie in Dvolver

Movie

This is another great web site that allows you and your students to make your own videos.

Dvolver  is extremely user friendly. All you have to do is to select a background, a sky, a plot, characters, type in characters’ lines, choose a backgroung music, select and write a movie title and then it’s ready for you to send via email or you can also copy the embedding code and paste it to Moodle or your website, for eg. facebook.

In the class, this video can be used as a reading comprehension activity or the students can make their own videos and that would be a writing exercise.

Let us know if you use this movie maker with your group and how you used it.

Animoto

Do you want to have a fancy presentation, looking really professional?

Go to http://animoto.com, and get started: Upload the images you want to use, these can be from your own files or taken from your facebook etc…, you can also add music. Animoto will customize your images and it will create a fancy presentation.

When your animoto video is ready, you can email it, post it to youtube or your site or even download it to your computer.

It is a great tool and it will make a difference in your presentations. There are a few examples on the website, check them out.

Here is one of my 30 seconds presentation I have used with my students to introduce vocabulary.