BP8_Xtranormal Review

Xtranormal is an animation Web2.0 tool that is fun and easy to use!

This tool creates short animated videos from text.  Simply choose your setting and characters and you are ready to get started.  By clicking on the character you are able to add text that the character will say in the video.  You can add facial expressions and body movements.  You can change the camera angle to allow the characters to seem more real.  There is even a place to add your own voice to characters if you wish to not use the computer generated voices for your characters.

I can see students really enjoying the ability to create animated stories to share with their peers.  You could even connect it to a theme that you are studying, so that they could infuse some of the knowledge of a particular subject that the class is studying into their video.  I can see this tool as a very enticing program to get students writing who otherwise are not motivated to do so.  I am currently working in a secondary special ed class and I can see several assignments where this may be an activity to showcase the knowledge that they have gained at the end of the theme.  Many of these students have to be enticed to do any writing at all.  However, most of them are very involved with digital technology and video games.  The likeness of the characters in this tool to that will create a lot of excitement for the assignment.

Once you have created a video there are many ways to share it.  You can upload it to Facebook, Youtube, Myspace and a variety of other social networks.  You can also email it to yourself and share an url of the video to view right on the Xtranormal site.

The downside to this tool is that it isn't a very sophisticated animation tool.  The motion of the characters and the speech are  a little jolty and unreal.  However, it is a wonderful program to get started with!