Many studies have been conducted on video and visual aids and language learning (eg. Gromik, 2012; Huang, 2015; Lee & Mayer, 2015). As many other studies have found, Gromik (2012) who conducted a case study conducted at a Japanese national university in which the participants were asked to produce one 30-second video on a teacher-selected topic, reported that that the participants believed that using the cellphone video recording feature was a useful activity even if they did not believe that such a task was transferable to other courses. Lee & Mayer (2015) claim the superiority of the combination the audio+video than just the audio stimulus in her experimental study. Huang (2015) investigated language learning and motivational effects of a video project, including students’ perceptions of the processes, and the impact of peer evaluations, found that students increased their learning motivation and making videos boosted their confidence and improved their technological capability. His findings also suggest that the adoption of video projects with lower proficiency students in order to stimulate language production.
As a visual learner, I love learning with graphs, pictures and videos. And as a language teacher and a language teacher trainer, I always believe in using videos benefits my students. I believe that teachers should master the skill of creating videos. The following clips are the sample of my stop motion videos.
I like stopmotion videos because they are visually captivating and artistic. Stopmotion is an animation technique that physically manipulates an object so that it appears to move on its own; the object can be clay dolls, pictures, toys, basically any object. The animation is produced by combining capture frames. There are many programs that can help us to do this; the most popular free stopmotion program is Mongkey Jam.
You can download it here
And here is a Youtube tutorial of how to use Monkey Jam