Thanks to Senora Anna (aka Ibu Anne ), I recently discovered the lure of Snap Camera. I absolutely love it. Not only is this a platform that has enormous potential for creating quirky videos and images; it is also the perfect place to visit if you need a laugh. I challenge you to check out a few of the unusual ways you can alter your face and not crack a smile!

I whole heartedly believe in the potential benefits of flipped learning; where student learning continues out of the classroom. Flipped learning offers bonus input for language learners as it can be accessed whenever the learner chooses and in ways that best suits their own learning. For my students, I prefer to create videos and upload them to my YouTube channel for students to watch either with their class teacher or by themselves after school. I like that videos can be stopped, replayed or slowed down by the learners. Videos also give the opportunity for input to be delivered both aurally and visually.

Creating videos is fun but also confronting for me because while I love creating videos, I find it challenging speaking facing into a camera! I understand that for my students, my familiar face and voice lowers their affective filter, however up until discovering Snap Camera, my inner critical voice generally found a reason to avoid this. If you look through my videos, you’ll quickly see that my older videos have me firmly behind the camera!

However, Snap Camera is so quirky that being in front of the camera is no longer a major hurdle. How can something so quirky and appealing to learners, not be maximised? Just opening Snap Camera and exploring some of the options will consistently put a smile on your face as it does for me because it is a platform that has many options to ‘enhance’ or totally alter our appearance and/or background. These options range from the sublime to the ridiculous and it is the latter which are the most entertaining.

If I have tempted you to experiment with Snap Camera, the first thing to do is download and install it.

Once installed, either type something into the search bar that could be either easily recognised by your learners &/or is a cognate. I have discovered all sorts of quirky characters ranging from biscuits to Spiderman!

Or choose an option from one of the following categories:

This will certainly put a smile on your dial!

An added bonus is when you have snap camera and Zoom open at the same time, your Snap Camera image will carry through to your Zoom meeting! I’ve gathered from facebook posts that Zoom isn’t the only platform that supports Snap Camera, so experiment with which ever platforms you are using. Share the quirkiness and help distract others momentarily from the craziness of 2020.

Below are two videos I made recently for my junior primary students. Both target TPR recent structures including melompat (jump), cepat (fast) and pelan (slow). They were recorded directly into Snap Camera which is super easy to access (see red box below).

I really like that you can delete or save immediately after recording as can be seen above.