Much research has proved the importance of combining both audio and video, namely multimedia, in the learning process so that learners can develop multi-skills in a world of technological advances. The term multimodality has signified the importance of audio-visual materials for learners who grew up used to harness the power of computers to get all the information they want, or Digital Natives. Let's have a look at how different videos for kids, adults, and ones that keep up to date with the international affairs.
What is this and why to use it?
DOTSUB is a great tool that has dowloadable embeddable videos on various areas of science, interests, and latest up-to-date affairs accompanied with the related transcripts. These come on the form of downloadable Podcasts and Vodcasts.
What sets this tool apart from other video tools are these factors:
• It has transcripts from more than 30 international languages.
• Moreover, it displays the videos with translations to all the previous languages.
• Not to mention, it acknowledges the original author’s of the name with video durations.
• It also classifies videos into different Genres like, comedy, news, dramas, documentary.
• It takes great care of the CLIL aspects and other domains of education.
• This tool also gives the year and type of English used whether American or British.
• It’s censored in that learners can report videos that are offensive or inappropriate.
• A large part of these videos are focused on humanity issues and areas of global interest like desertification, global warming not to mention economics and finance.
• There are special groups of videos that correspond with different ages and needs like children and adult learners in addition to the ones most watched.
• It is a great repository for authentic videos that are not intended for language learning and develops autonomy because learners can Upload their own videos and produce their own transcripts of the videos.
Watch this live video that gives a live feedback of the latest unrests that have been happening in Egypt and notice the subtitles in English in addition to the huge number of languages that it could be translated to. Learners can watch the video with subtitles and translation at the same time:
How to use it?
Teachers can play the videos after brainstorming ideas about a certain issue and learners can check their predictions on a topic and develop their skills to listen for gist regardless of the new words they don’t know. They can also be used as a part of the lesson to reinforce an idea and create variety of teaching materials in the classroom.
As a later stage, learners can view these videos at home and write down all the new words they didn’t understand and look at the transcriptions or the translation of new words. Not to mention that this tool promotes intrinsic motivation because it caters to different ages and levels which will subsequently lead to great enjoyment.
Limitations:
I might be an avid supporter of this tool, but it is free, easy to use, up to date, has more than 30 languages in it and you can upload your own video and transcribe it, too.
The only point that teachers should be aware of is to keep a pedagogical purpose in mind while viewing these videos and give constant support and guidance while using them to keep learning focused with a purposeful meaning.
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