Two ways of livening up textbook dialogues
I’m going to write about how to use these in more detail later, but thought I’d give the links first in case this saves someone’s day:
www.xtranormal.com – students can make an animated “film” from the script just by typing in the dialogue and choosing characters, backgrounds, actions, sound effects etc. (hattip to Darren Elliot at Teacher Development Blog)
www.pimpampum.net/bubblr - students choose Flickr photos and add speech bubbles to them (hattip to the Macmillan English Campus blog Connect2MEC)
I’ll be giving some ideas of ways you can use Xtranormal for other things in my later post, but this example of a Bubblr picture story made me think that it might be a good first stage for writing with young learners and teenagers too.
Tips on how to do something similar if you can’t access the technology also coming, but any similar links or other ideas welcome here in advance too.


June 19th, 2009 at 12:09 am
That’s two t’s Alex ;P
Darren Elliott
June 19th, 2009 at 12:28 am
Whoops. Double checked and got it right last time I emailed you, but not this time it seems…
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:26 am
And here’s another, also thanks to Daren Eliott:
http://pixton.com/uk/create
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:54 pm
well, i’m glad someone’s having a good chuckle about all of this….
June 26th, 2009 at 12:42 am
This is also nice, and similar:
http://web.nmc.org/5cardstory/flickr.php
Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for this one
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:25 am
An update…
http://teacherdevelopment.tumblr.com/post/147278093/xtranormal-and-the-perils-of-technology-this-is
July 25th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Thanks Darren
This looks nice a nice tip for students:
http://www.popling.net/
Hat tip to Become a Better EFL Teacher for this one