I just read Denises' blog about her lack of success using the Xtranormal software. I also had difficulty. At best it is a young site with several glitches. The early attempts were disasterous. After writing the text boxes and animating the avartars I had the site close while it was "under going construction". When the site did come back online lost was the previous hours worth of creativity and excitement. When this happened I had already attempted to compose on three different occassions and had next to nothing to show for my time. .. by the way, what is with all the error messages? This was the beginning of the teeth nashing and hair pulling!
In class Dennis stated that this style of presentation should be no longer than three minutes to keep student attention. Keeping this in mind, the pressure was on to make my three minutes of fame count. Before even sitting down to design my media spot, I invested about five hours of reading and writing to get the key facts and points refined and concise so that my lesson would be educational as well as enjoyable. This was not an easy path considering the Ottoman Empire was the longest running and at times the strongest empire in history.
Denise, take heart. Once you pull all your hair from your head and your eyes are blurry from reading the tiny text, you can hit the produce button and sit back to beam with pride as your avatar guides across the screen extolling the strengths and weaknesses of the theme you have chosen.
This program is not for the fain of heart. It requires perserverance and determination. Originally I thought it would be an excellent way for students to create short bites of information and add to over all classroom presentations. It is too frustrating and time consuming to assign as a classroom media application, but it is worth introducing students to the site and letting them take it for there.
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