dvolver

dvolver is one of the easiest tools you could introduce to your students in the classroom.  It's a simple movie-making website which you don't have to register with or log on to.  You choose from a range of settings, select two characters and a (very) simple plot, some music, a title and then start dialogue building in the speech balloons. Once done, you need to e-mail it to someone if you want to see it again, or embed it in a blog or website.  The choices are not infinite and the dialogues quite short so I thought it would be ideal at the end of a lesson where your students are practising functional or situational language (asking for/giving directions, inviting/accepting, etc).  Students could have quite a lot of fun after oral work, choosing (suitable or unsuitable)characters and settings and then having a whole class film show.  Errors can be corrected and language polished up while students are working on the dialogues before publishing them.  If your students feel fairly confident using this tool they could compose a dialogue at home and e-mail it to you for homework.

So, it's great if you have younger learners with five minutes' concentration spans.  If they are working in pairs, they will be motivated to negotiate as they compose their movies. In addition, the issue of choosing the right language becomes much more important if there is a 'polished' product and a performance at the end of it. 

However...
The backgrounds, scenes, plot lines are limited and it would be nice if they kept expanding them.  Don't be tempted to overuse this tool.  To continue to be motivating it must used where it works best.   Finally, if you have everyone doing this in the classroom, the noise will drive you crackers once they have selected the background music.  Suggest the mute button, until the final performance.   

http://www.dvolver.com/

Videos

Of course, videos have been around for a long while in language teaching and likewise ideas for using them.  What is new is the quantity and range we can now access on the internet.  That is the plus.  The minus is that you need a lifetime to sift through it all and find the gems that will create brilliant and motivating speaking and listening activities.  I have done a bit of my own sifting, but I tend to look for people who are good at doing this for me.  However, this is one of choices - a Mr Bean favourite from Youtube.   

I do the usual things with it: students work in pairs, one with their back to the screen while their partner describes what they can see.  The only frustrating thing for the listener is that their partner generally breaks down giggling.  It's usually a good idea to pause and swap roles.  Beforehand, they brainstorm what you would take on a trip to ...Groups then have to agree on what they would need to get rid of if they could only take hand luggage.  'Silent' movies like Mr Bean are ideal for generating speaking and listening activities.  Alternatively, you turn the volume down. 

There are a few free gems to be found in the National Archive of Public Information films and the British Film Institute Digital Archive.  This screen shot is from a public service film, ie a government ad to educate people in the 1950s about pedestrian crossings and it's a hoot. You would brainstorm lots of street furniture vocabulary before watching it.  It would be a good one to get students to improvise or describe and also to pause and invite them to predict what happens next.  It has a voice-over that you could turn off at least to begin with. 

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1945to1951/filmpage_pc.htm

If you are looking for different ways of introducing functional language to beginner students, the British Council have some more traditional ELT videos: the 'How to...' series are quite entertaining and a bit hammed up.  To help your students to catch some of the detail give them cards with little chunks of the dialogue to listen out for.     

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/

Once you start visiting elt blogs and websites many more (better) ideas emerge.  Visit elteachertrainer (see my blogroll) for some excellent ideas for using the National Geographic videos.
So, videos can bring a motivating multimodal dimension into the language classroom.  Listening is at its most naturalistic, including visual and situational clues, introducing varieties of English you may not meet in course books.  They can also be fun, though this depends on your video.  They don't have to be just for listening either, as you can see.

Finally, there are the videos your students make themselves. Below is an example of a project in which a group of women students decided they wanted their own voice in the campaign to get proper funding for ESOL in the UK. See what multimedia can empower your own students to do: you can imagine how much work, in English, (students and teachers) went into this clip.

However...

If you haven't planned something quite purposeful for your video lesson, it can be unfocused and de-motivating.  It takes some while to find the perfect clip for your purpose and it generally is needs to be very short.  Sometimes, your favourite videos somehow, don't have the same appeal to your students.