FYC: Text to Movie Program
TEXT TO MOVIE WEB-BASED PROGRAM
Are you looking for a fun way to have your students practice their writing skills? Check out the free web-based text to movie program called Xtra Normal. Let’s say students just finished reading about the Revolutionary War and you want them to summarize what they learned. You can have them type up a script for one or two characters. Once they have written the script they can use Xtra Normal to create a short video of their summary. The free version provides students with 6 options of worlds to be the setting and up to 2 characters for each world.
After the student enters the script into the program they can add other types of actions as well such as different camera angles, facial expressions, looks and other movements by the characters, and sounds like applause or laughter. Soundtracks can also be added to the video. Students can even choose what type of voice their characters will have.
Once a movie is completed students can share the results by sending the movie URL via email, posting it to their social networking site (Facebook, MySpace) or bookmarking tool (Delicious, Digg), or embedding it into a webpage. Unfortunately downloading the movie file is not available with the free version.
There are some things to keep in mind when using this program with students. First, when using the free version they must make their video public in order for others, such as you the teacher, to view it. There is a Keep Private check box for each video created but when checked only the person that created it can view the video. With this in mind, it would be important to limit the type of videos you have your students create to content they have learned in class. A video of what they did over the summer or anything else containing personal information may not be a good idea to have available to anyone connected to the Internet. In addition, when they register for an account they should not be providing any personal information that would be visible on the Xtra Normal website. For example when they choose their username they shouldn’t use their first or last name. Rather something like Aardvark or Student1 would be better.
Second, students may end up spending way more time than necessary adding the different types of actions. It would be important to have them enter the entire script first before adding any of the extras and then limiting them to only a certain amount of time to create the entire video. This will help ensure that the main intent of your assignment is completed before all the extraneous items. This will also provide students with a reward for completing the main work.
Check the commercial of the MAET program that we created using Xtra Normal by visiting our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc3LbAT-QyQ
Tags: text to movie, web 2.0, xtra normal