Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Xtranormal Text to Movie - Publishing tool



I came across this method of presenting while viewing 21st Century Classroom. (an excellent presentation by a teacher who has dramatically changed her teaching style).
This movie had been made with Xtranormal.
You will need to sign up to an account to get started.
Choose your characters, your set, background music and voice. (Unfortunately there was no 'Kiwi voice' so I had to choose Australian female)
Then type (or copy/paste) your text into the 'Write the script' space.
Add more blocks to your movie and add more script. You can then drag camera angles, sounds into the script. You can change expressions and body poses.
Some uses for this application
  • students can publish their writing
  • present their research
  • use as a practice for their speech writing
  • teachers can use it post instructions for next topic
  • teachers can use it to comment on student's work
The only down side was that there were a few dodgy characters wearing only fig leaves or underwear amongst the 80 characters to choose from. And there were a couple of actions/body poses that I would not be happy if children chose them. But that is when we should, as a class talk about what is appropriate in a classroom situation.
For the free account you have only 5 takes, so get it right early on! I discovered it is wise to create many blocks or your script voice would run into other sentences.
Otherwise this is a great way to share and present yours/or your student's work.

R rating - R13

5 comments:

Heymilly said...

This is an excellent site and such a shame that it is 13 years or older. I wonder if we contact them, if they would make an educational based one like glogster ed did. We used it last year for creating book reviews and it had my boys hooked into reading and writing. I was hoping to use it again this year... Such a shame!

Jacqui Sharp said...

I agree with you. The thought crossed my mind as well about writing to them, I will do that!

Passy said...

Jacqui, Your blog is superb! I am a teacher in Australia trying to get up with Web 2.0, and look to be about a year or more behind where you are. So this blog will really help me catch up :)
Thanks,
Big Passy Wasabi

Jacqui Sharp said...

Hi Passy
glad you like the blog. It is also great fun to write :-)

Unknown said...

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Cheers,
Sundar