Xtranormal

Xtranormal allows users to produce short movies.  In order to make your characters speak, you type the text you want your characters to say, and then the program converts the text to speech.  There are different scenarios to choose from; the characters can be animated; and, you can choose the camera angle for each scene.  A movie created by one of my students is here.

Bombay TV

Larry Ferlazzo has some good lesson ideas on his Burbank High School blog.

One of the gems I found on Larry’s website was Bombay TV.

There are brief movie clips from India on this website, and users can write subtitles for the dialogue in the scenes.  My secondary English students had a lot of fun with this activity.  They embedded their creations on their English blogs.  One of my students even commented on his blog that he had fun in class.  This was nice to read.

Admittedly, some of the students pushed the envelope with the themes and language of their attempts at humour.  I had to tell one student to delete his unsuitable creation.  But, I suppose, every writer must wrestle with censorship and every writer must experiment with the sometimes nebulous boundaries of permissibility. 

As a teacher, too, I must try to balance what I believe to be acceptable within a school environment against my disinclination to stifle the creativity of the students.

Here is a movie I made: