No Time to Sleep

Usually I try to write about tools that would work in the classroom, and I thought I was going to get to do that again with this new-to-me tool, “xtranormal.” It is a great little flash-based movie maker that allows you to select your background, sound effects, and characters then type in a script and create a movie (thanks Farah for hearing about it and sharing the information). I was getting really excited about the potential and then I found “American female voice 2″ and in the demo of the voice, well, I was disappointed in the vocabulary they selected for her to say. I think it is enough that I would use this with adults but not students. Bummer, this looked like fun. So this Friday Five is more directed toward adults, I think. I also think I will drop the xtranormal folks a note about my disappointment. Also, this is in serious beta, who knows how much will be available at no cost once they come out of beta. But it is a fun tool. Click here to see my little demo (please don’t take it as a political statement, I thought the guy had an elephant button when I was making it, I could see hers was a donkey and I thought they could have a disagreement – apparently another bummer is that the program has a political bias, there are no conservatives to offset the liberals – difficult for a Social Studies teacher!) and, of course, happy Friday!