Post XVI. PowToon

Nowadays, there are a lot of tools that aim to make content presentations not only informative, but also engaging.

PowToon is a web-based software of that kind. It is a constructor that allows you to create animated videos and presentations by using a set of predesigned templates. The process of the creation of a video is very simple. When you are in the construction mode of the PowToon software, you generate a group of slides just like you usually do while working on a presentation. Then, PowToon combines this collection of slides into a video so that each slide represents one video scene. PowToon has a drag-and-drop interface, which enables the creation process to be very fast. The software is integrated with GoogleDrive.

PowToon offers free and paid usage plans. The produced video presentation can be shared on YouTube and Facebook freely, but to download the video to your computer, you should pay for subscription. Unsurprisingly, paid versions of the software have more animated and still templates to choose from.

Watch a short video about the history of presentation software created using PowToon.

Do you like the idea of such entertaining presentations? As students, would you like your professors to invest their time, money, and effort in this software? As teaching personnel, would you try it on your lessons?

Post II. Explain Everything

Last Fall semester, I needed to develop instruction in the form of a video lecture. There was also a restriction: No “talking heads” used. So, that project made me search for some creative ways of instruction development. As a result, I found a brilliant application called Explain Everything. It represents a whiteboard where you can put anything you would like (e.g., pictures, videos, drawings, text boxes, etc.) and screencast that “putting” process. I used the app on my iPad, but it also runs on Android and Windows. Its current price in the App Store is  $2.99 (not sure it is the same for Google Play).

If you ever need a lecture-capturing tool, Explain Everything is the answer due to being cheap and comfortable in use. You don’t need a stylus to work with this app; everything can be done with your fingers. Among the features that I like most is that the app allows me to access my Dropbox account for importing of any types of files located there and exporting of the videos I completed.

Check out the app’s promo video below to see how it functions.