[Tool Sharing] Movenote

Hi all,

Remember my last last post about blended learning?  Today I will share another tool that helps teachers implement blended learning in the language classroom, Movenote! Movenote is very straightforward, user-friendly and easy to use! It does not require any professional training or knowledge, so even if you're not a digital native, you can easily try out flipped classroom without spending too much time creating the videos and you can effectively earn yourself more student practice and evaluation time in the class! I have always thought flipped classroom is too innovative and complicated for teachers to carry out, until I came across this tool in ICT class this week. 

Here's just a brief list of the functions and advantages of Movenote: 

• User-friendly and simple template with your slides (PPT, PDF, or JPG) and your video (or recording if you wish to not make appearance) put together in the video. 
• highlighting function to draw students' attention to keywords 
• Directly converts and saves your video 
• Provides link and directly shares your videos to any social media of your choice (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Blogger...etc)
• Provides HTML for users to embed to posts
• Reply by messaging or creating your own video

Other tutorial videos on Movenote

Functions during recording process

Movenote is very, very VERY easy to use. You don't even need to create an account! Just log in with your Google or Facebook account! Once you're in, you can go straight ahead to start on your video! 

The template of Movenote is very straightforward; your slides are uploaded and shown on the left, and your video on the right. You may also choose to upload a video you've recorded earlier or found online to combine with your material; however, this disables the recording function. That means you won't be able to talk, describe of give instructions if you choose to upload a video instead of recording on the spot. If you want to create a flipped class, I suggest you to just record on the spot. 

Movenote has a pointer function that allows you to draw students attention to particular parts of the material. Especially if you have a lot of text on the slide, students might dose off or get confused of which part the teacher is talking about, so the pointer can visually guide the students throughout the lesson or lecture. 

The free version does not allow you to edit the video, so if you're afraid to create the video in one go, you can always hit the pause button whenever you want, and go back to the video whenever you are ready! Although the functions and dimensions of your video may be limited, but it saves you the stress from figuring out how to edit the video! Movenote might disappoint tech-savy teachers, but it is a life saver for those who are unfamiliar with technology and media editing, like me! :P 

Once you're done recording, hit the "Done" button and it'll help you convert your video!

Simple template of material and video put together

After saving your video- Share it!

When your video is done converting, Movenote will provide you a link for you to share the video. It also provides other forms of social media for you to directly share the link. 

You may email your video to your students to watch or share it to a Facebook group with your students. Movenote provides many options to share your video, which makes life a bit easier! :P 

If your students use blogs to learn and practice English, you may choose to embed the video into your blogpost! 

If you want to use the video in circumstances where the Internet is unstable or unavailable, you may download the video to your computer as well.

You can edit your video after publishing it!

More than 200 options to share your video

After watching the video- Use the reply function

When you share your video with your students, you may ask questions or assign tasks at the end of the video. Students may respond or complete your task with the reply function. There are two ways for students to reply- record their own video or send a message. The teacher can request students to make a video to respond as their assignment to assess their speaking ability as well. 

Unfortunately, the reply function is sent privately to the creator, so Movenote cannot be used to create discussions or collaborative work. 

Although the reply function isn't publicised like a forum, it may be encouraging for shy or introverted students to use this function to interact with their peers as they may be anxious to publish their comments or questions in front of the whole class. 

Further use of Movenote for Language learning

The teacher may also use this tool as speaking practice for students to create outside of the classroom. Like having blogs, Movenote would have a more realistic purpose for students to use the target language outside of the classroom since there will be a real audience that will watch and listen to their speech. This may motivate them to practice more, and may also elicit richer syntactic language. 

With the videos saved and shared, the teacher may also use the video to keep note of students' pronunciation, fluency, or accuracy, and correct their interlanguage during class. This saves in class time from figuring out the problems and errors of the students' interlanguage, but may also be more time-costly for the teacher outside the teaching hours. 

Here's a tutorial video provided by Movenote for the visual learners out there! :)

That's what I have to say about Movenote! Share with me your thoughts about this tool, whether you have other ideas of how Movenote can be used in the language classroom, or other limitations you found out about this tool that I did not realise!

Until next time! :P