Debbie's e-Portfolio

I chose to use Xtranormal to tell a story I could use with my introductory accounting class about the Father of Accounting, Friar Luca Pacioli. I wanted to use a tool that enable me to tell a story in narrative form as I had a significant amount of information to covey and simply drawing or creating a series of pictures would not have been effective.

The tool allowed me to select my characters and I could add different actions, such as shoulder shrugging and surprise to parts of the story to mimic what might happen during a face-to-face conversation. I also became the director as I selected different camera angles for each frame, whether or not I wanted the character who was speaking to face the camera and I could also select close-ups if the speaker was presenting critical information. I have a new appreciation for movie directors!

I plan to use this story with my grade 11 Accounting class this fall as a way to introduce the course. I can also envision using it in some of my other Business courses where accounting is discussed.

Student access to Xtranormal from my school’s computers could be a challenge as many sites are filtered. I will have to check the availability of this site when I return in the fall and submit a request to unblock the site if students cannot access it.

Since Xtranormal has many choices for characters, voices and backgrounds, I expect that my students will enjoy using it. I can envision providing it as an alternative method of completing an assignment (e.g. differentiated assessment) to appeal to different learning styles.