http://xtranormal.com
The basics
Xtranormal is a web application that allows users to create animated movies. The site states: “xtranormal’s mission is to bring movie-making to the people. Everyone watches movies and we believe everyone can make movies. Movie-making, short and long, online and on-screen, private and public, 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. On the web and on the desktop.”
The service is designed to allow people to create their movies by selecting from a wide series of commands, providing dialogue and action, that is then animated. While it costs money to get full creative control, there are plenty of options for people to use the service for free, expressing themselves creatively via visual presentations of stories and ideas. Movies are, of course, capable of being disrtibuted, publicy or to specific audiences; conversations can evolve as comments on the movies.
What is intriguing
One of the central developments in recent times, primarily a phenomenon of the move to digital computing rather than the internet per se, is the increased visual literacy of many people, especially those who have grown up in a world saturated with television, cameras and the Internet as a distribution platform for video and still picture content. Scholarly knowledge, except perhaps in disciplines which specifically focus upon the moving image (design, screen arts and so on), tends to remain principally expressed through the written word. While this expression remains vital, it is intriguing to consider how students’ ability to learn may be enhanced by asking them to demonstrate what they know via a mode other than traditional spoken or written words: to use dramatic action to re-express key concepts and ideas.
I am curious about the result: in some ways it typifies the problem / opportunity of Web 2.0 and similar social media forms. Do the negative aspects of xtranormal (perhaps a little hard to use, certainly ‘offputting’ for students wedded to traditional ideas, and requiring time on learning and doing the task, rather than learning the idea) outweigh the positives? All of the tools presented here have varieties of this challenge.
Pedagogic Challenge
Xtranormal does, at times, look cartoonish, and will not replace the use of other, more traditional forms. However, as we know, fun and challenge, rather than fear of failure, are better motivators for student learning. Similarly, most people learn best when they have to think about and then share their version of what is to be learned – active learning of this sort ensures students remember and understand content. Therefore, xtranormal could be used to create learning tasks in which the cognitive challenge of taking an idea normally expressed in one way, and re-inventing it for a different medium not only makes that idea learned more deeply, but also better understood.
Note that movies can be remixed as well: a teacher could create their own and then ask students to improve on it and change it. In this way, academics can get into the technology as much as students, both demonstrating enthusiasm and, by part-completing or modelling the task, help guide learners towards a more productive outcome. Of course, the massively distributed nature of the Internet ensures that the hard work put into the process is rewarded by more than just a few students’ reactions!
The challenge is clear: does the amount of time taken to learn to use the tool successfully mean that it distracts students rather than aids them?
Starting page for creating a movie
Why this tool is not ‘top 10′
All the intriguing tools are listed because, while they have some potential applications, their actual uses in teaching and learning require careful development and assessment.
Xtranormal does not make the 2 top 10 lists because of the challenges outlined above. Put simply the ‘startup’ cost would be too high – in most situations. However, there are specific applications, particularly in creative disciplines, that make xtranormal very attractive. Xtranormal is a creative cognitive engine that mimics many of the knowledge networking dynamics of the real business of screen arts, story telling and design: while it can be repurposed into other disciplines, perhaps xtranormal is a good example of the way some social media applications work best within the realistic context of social media.
Alternatives
There are few if any alternatives to xtranormal that don’t look childish or that have the same array of controls and features. Goanimate, http://goanimate.com, is one;but Storymaker, from the Carnegie Library might be an interesting possibility (http://www.carnegielibrary.org/kids/storymaker/) – while designed to create content for children, this feature may actually make it useful – students can be tasked with the need to take some fundamental ideas and re-express them in a form children can appreciate. Naturally, teacher training would find this approach helpful, but it could also be used in most disciplines which teach basic knowledge.
