Guest Blog by Sean Sweeney, CCC-SLP

Author of the blog SpeechTechie: Looking at Technology Through a Language Lens, which won the 2010 Best New Edublog Award

I was very happy during the hustle and bustle of ASHA Convention to have had a few minutes to chat with Michelle about some exciting and fun (not to mention free) web-based tools that have great potential to complement and extend social thinking instruction. That chat led to this guest post!

As we teach key concepts in the social thinking curriculum, technology can provide us with yet another means to help kids apply vocabulary in the course of a very motivating (especially for our population) activity.  Technology tools such as comic and video creators provide the additional benefit of taking something that is rather fleeting and providing a visual and replicable example that in many cases is easily sharable with parents. Implementing these short technology projects with kids while we are introducing skills also has the added advantage of working at a bit of distance from the kids’ own unexpected behaviors. A project we might create with kids thus provides a frame of reference for more direct cues as we progress. Many tech tools with potential for social thinking instruction are quite playful and easy to use, and are a good activity for parents and their children to explore together!

One of my favorite web tools is xtranormal, which allows you to create animated videos simply by choosing characters, typing dialogue, adding a few animation elements, and allowing the site to do the rest for you.  xtranormal has many applications for social thinking instruction, but I have found it particularly suited as an extension activity within the Superflex curriculum.  I have found the curriculum’s suggested books for “Find the Unthinkable” activities (e.g. The Remarkable Farkle McBride as an example of GlassMan Moments) to be fabulous introductions to Unthinkables my groups need to know about.  After kids can identify an “Unthinkable Moment” specific to the character, a helpful next step is to utilize a web tool to create our own “story” that features those behaviors, and perhaps also shows a character using strategies to defeat the Unthinkable.

At this point, it would probably be a good idea to show you exactly what I mean.  Check out my video below that I created with some students that were working to overcome “Unwonderer Moments,” i.e. those awkward silences that ensue after a student shares something and all the others say nothing.

Click here to see the video.

That video was really easy to make! It helps to provide students with an example video (feel free to use mine) and explain that the plan will be to make a SHORT video that shows what it is like when a certain Unthinkable is “on the scene” (and possibly strategies used to make the Unthinkable go away). It is a very good idea to do some brief storyboarding with students before going to the site, to add structure and limits to the activity (tools such as Story Grammar Marker are helpful for this).  Then, create away!  Kids LOVE to see their finished cinematic masterpieces, and the end product can be easily shared with parents by emailing them the link. xtranormal would be a good resource when exploring other Unthinkables associated with verbal behaviors: WasFunnyOnce, One Sided Sid, Topic Twistermieister, among others.

One caveat: just as you would be unlikely to let kids explore YouTube freely, it would be unwise to click the Watch Movies tab in xtranormal and allow exploration - there’s some colorful language there! Stick to the Make Movies and My Movies tabs and you’ll be all clear.  Also, please note in my video- since it is published on the web, I referred viewers back to the Social Thinking website in the Description of the movie because I used language specifically from their publications. This is a good practice when publishing on the web.

Another note I must share is that xtranormal recently changed its terms so that a new account allows you to create only ONE free movie (or preview an unlimited amount of “draft” movies, which are not sharable but could still be used as an exercise with kids).  The new pricing structure allows you to make additional movies for about $5 each, which is a pretty good deal considering their usefulness.* Additionally, xtranormal is implementing additional free features for teachers, which you can learn about here.  In any case, I’d like to invite you to email me the link ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) to any social thinking-related movies you create and would like to share.  I will place them on my online list located here - check back to the list, as I hope to see it grow.

To help you get started, here’s a handout showing all the steps to creating an xtranormal video. Have fun!

About Sean

Sean J. Sweeney, M.S., M.Ed., CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist and instructional technology specialist working in the public schools and in private practice at The Ely Center in Newton, Massachusetts. He has presented on the topic of technology integration in speech and language at the ASHA convention and is the author of the blog SpeechTechie: Looking at Technology Through a Language Lens, which won the 2010 Best New Edublog Award. He can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

©2012 Social Thinking Publishing - Michelle Garcia Winner  www.socialthinking.com
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*Neither Sean Sweeney nor Michelle Garcia Winner will financially benefit from use of paid features of xtranormal.com, but simply want to share this information to foster creative approaches.

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