Digital Story
This short film tells the story of the Friar Luca Pacioli, known as the Father of Accounting. I usually start my grade 11 Introduction to Accounting Principles class by having students research who he was and what he contributed to accounting. This activity lets my students know that accounting practices have been around for centuries and it provides them with some context for the necessity for accounting in the business world today.
I believe Xtranormal was the right tool for me to use to complete this activity. I wanted a tool that would allow for a narrative as there was a fair amount of information and detail that I wanted to convey to my students. Using a comic format would not have allowed me to incorporate the amount of detail that I wanted. I had also heard great things about Xtranormal but had not had an opportunity to use it yet. I wanted to see how it worked and how user-friendly it was to assess if it was something that I could use with my high school students.
Strengths
Strengths of the storytelling approach included the ability to put as much detail as I wanted into the narrative. It was also an interesting way to convey information to my students, e.g. they didn’t have to listen to me explain it. Students also have the ability to pause the story and/or replay parts of it that they didn’t understand the first time they heard it. Unless they are recording my classes, they don’t have the same opportunity to do that when I’m explaining a concept.
The tool also 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!
Limitations
The process was more time consuming than it would have been if I had imparted the information to the students myself. I had to write a script, decide on characters and camera angles, as well as gestures that I wanted my characters to use, and then publish the story. I also found the diction to be a bit of a problem on some words. For example, I had to play with the phonetic spelling of the word “arithmetic” so that the female character in my story pronounced it properly.
Summary
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. One challenge I may face is that student access to Xtranormal from my school’s computers could be blocked as many sites are filtered. I will have to check the availability of this site for my students 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 assignments (e.g. differentiated assessment) to appeal to different learning styles.
Overall, I found the process very enjoyable and am pleased to have another tool at my disposal that I can use with my students.