flynn089

Yesterday on my Quick Shout blog, I wrote about a new tool called Xtranormal for creating text to speech animated movies. Since then I've had a little time to put together a tutorial video and think about how to use it in the classroom. First I thought I'd show you what extra normal produces. There is quite a range of characters and backgrounds so the possibilities for creating situational dialogues is terrific and you can also build these scenes into a series, so this would be great for longer projects too. Here's a quick look at how a movie is created. You can watch or download a higher quality version .mov here: Xtranormal tutorial Or download to i-tune / iPod: Xtranormal tutorial So how can we use this with our students? We can use it as a novel way to present language in context by creating small scenes for our students to watch. We can get our students to create dialogues for specific contexts. You could even give students specific tasks (Convince your partner that ...

Last Sunday, I was lucky enough to make my debut as an educational chat show host on The Consultants-E' s Edunation Island where I interviewed Gavin Dudeney . In an attempt to capture this moment in my personal history I decided to video record the event with the intention of editing it into a kind of 'highlights of' show. Since I posted the first clip from this on my Quick Shout blog , I've had a number of people asking me how I recorded it and what I used, so I've decided to share what I've learned so far from creating movies in Second Life and have a think about how this could be put to use with our students. Anyway, in this article I'll start with the technology bit and how the clip above was created. Hardware and Software My initial worry was that grabbing an hour of video and running my avatar and being the host of the show all from one computer was asking for trouble, so I decided to use two computers (both MACs) and run my avatar on one and record t...

For a long time now I've been fascinated with viral marketing campaigns and the way advertisers use these to promote their products. What's really interesting about them is the advertisers ability to come up with really novel and original ideas to capture our attention and make us want to share with others. My Fame Star is a great example of this and one that we can use to create lesson materials. What it does, is enable you to upload a photograph and then create a story around it. It then converts this story into a small video report. Here's an example I created called 'How my past caught up with me.' (You'll have to watch a short advertisement first) Example: Click here if the video doesn't play How to use it with students Create a video about yourself or a fictional character and ask your students to watch it and make notes about your life story. Get your students to create their own stories then put them in pairs to listen to each others' story ...

I have to admit that when I first saw Bubblr , I thought it was just a simple tool for adding speech and thought bubbles to images, but when I started to try it out I discovered that it can do far more than that. You can use Bubblr to search through Flickr images, then drag them onto an image line and create a long sequences of images with text /speech bubbles / thought bubbles etc. These can then be printed, saved online or embedded into a blog. This quick tutorial shows you how it's done. Right click to download an .mov version Bubblr tutorial So how can we use this with our EFL ESL Students? Possibly one of the easiest ways to use this tool is like a picture dictionary. If you have a data projector in your classroom you can use it live to cross-check vocabulary and ask your students which they think is the best image to depict a word. By the end of the class you could have a sequence of images that represent all the new words students have learned in that lesson and then simpl...

Here's something that's fun for the weekend and beyond. A site with a collection of image and gif generators that you can customise with your EFL ESL students and add their texts to. This is an example one I created with talking flowers giving a warning about the environment. The site also offers talking squirrels Talking cats And a few other things like tomatoes , owls and a wizard . There's also a generator that helps you add a text to a packet of cigarettes and also a newspaper which I really like. It's really easy to do, you just add your text to a field and click the generate button. You can then either download your image or get an embed code to add it to a blog or website. So how do we use this with EFL ESL students? We can use the animal and vegetable animations to get students to express opinions about different topics we discuss. It can often be hard to motive students to do this and using a tool like this reduces their 'exposure'. We could get stud...