http://www.xtranormal.com/
"If you can type, you can make movies." That is the slogan for xtranormal.com, a "Text-to-Movie" Web 2.0 tool. My Full Sail classmate, Van, actually told me about the site. Then I went on to discover that the English teacher across the hall from me was actually using the tool in one of her classes that week. (Interestingly enough, she is a first year teacher, age 22, a true digital native!)
I signed up for a FREE account, one of the advantages to the tool, and created my own little movie about Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Cask of Amontillado." I reviewed conflict and point of view through the use of my "characters" in my short snippet. It really is simple and fun, just like the home page advertises. There are drop and drag animations, international voices, and pre-designed sets and actors. It was truly very user-friendly and it did not require too much time on my part, a must for me!
Another feature of xtranormal.com is that you can post your movies to Youtube or to Facebook. On the home page, the creators write, "Movie-making...will be the most important communications process of the 21st century. Our revolutionary approach to movie making builds on an almost universally held skill-typing. You type something, we turn it into a movie." From the experience I had with my own movie, I would agree!
Easy, fun, and free -- three great reasons for anyone to try out this Web 2.0 tool! I asked my colleague across the hall how the lesson went with her class, a heterogeneous group of eleventh graders. She said it went really well, that the kids loved playing with the animated characters and experimenting with sound effects and camera angles. She made 5 groups and set them up before she took her students to the library. She also made them write most of their script before putting them on the computers in the lab. I am looking forward to creating a lesson to use with my freshmen.
Reference
Xtranormal. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.xtranormal.com
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