I was helping a colleague of mine create a story of the Declaration of Independence; George Washington and Thomas Jefferson discuss some issues about why the Americas succeeded from Britain. He wanted me to show him how to create stories for his class using alternative methods and this is what we came up with:
He is going to have his students created their own story to share with the class and a variety of topics. A way to deliver information that is different from the stand and deliver method as well as making the topics student-drected. Students are frustrated with the status quo learning environment and this was seen at Harvard where dissatisfied students created their own computer system (Lamb, 2007). Using a web tool such as, Xtranormal allows the teacher to deviate from the status quo of “stand-and-deliver” to allow students to take control of their own learning whilst still achieving the learning outcome requirements. I found that Xtranormal is very good for doing a monologue or a dialogue where text based information is delivered through a movie; “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.” (Xtranormal, 2011). The limitations of Xtranormal is it’s not very useful other than a brief storytelling; there is only one scene, the actions of the characters are limited and the story has to remain short (under 3 minutes) or users have to pay for the additional features.
References
Lamb, B. (2007). Dr. Mashup; or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix. EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 42, no. 4 (July/August 2007): 12–25. Accessed online Nov 21 2011
http://www.educause.edu/ER/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume42/DrMashuporWhyEducatorsShouldLe/161747
Xtranormal (2011). Home page. Accessed Online Nov 21st, 2011, fromhttp://www.xtranormal.com
