At recent seminars the eLearning Services have presented the services of Lapland University of Applied Sciences using the on-line presentation tool PowToon. PowToon is one among other popular web-based presentation tools (another is, for example, Prezi) and it has been available for free since the beginning of 2013.
The free version of PowToon requires users to register for an account and it allows subsequently the creation of stand-alone animated presentations with a maximum length of 5 minutes.
The creation process of a PowToon presentation is made up of several stages:
- First one must draw up the storybook, the scenario, the script, i.e. the text of your presentation.
- Then you record the voice over, i.e. you record yourself (or another speaker) presenting your story (max 5 minutes) and you save the audio file. If you have a suitable tool (like Audacity) you can subsequently “polish” the audio file to reduce background noise and the likes.
- Next you log in to PowToon and start creating a presentation in PowToon by uploading your audio file.
- After that you start on your first slide and lenghten or shorten the duration of the slide in accordance with your audio track. The maximum duration of a slide is 20 seconds.
- After setting the length of the slide you can commence adding text, pictures and animations to the slide. This is somewaht similar to creating traditional presentation slides, although it is easier to set the introduction and exit of different elements on the slide and PowToon offers an easily overviewable bank of partly animated clip art.
- Once the slide is done, it can be played back to check the animation and edited to make transitions smoother and more in line with the audio track.
- Do not forget to save after each slide!
- Once the presentation is complete it can be published. This presents the user with a link (see below) that can be shared in any on-line context. In addition, the PowToon presentation can be exported to YouTube, if the user has an account there.
If one disregards the intricacies of recording the audio track for the presentation, PowToon is a relatively easy tool to create an engaging, animated, on-line presentation. Easy to use does not necessarily mean is not time consuming, though. Creating a five minute stand-alone presentation in PowToon can easily cost more than a day to the inexperienced user. Hence, for any run of the mill presentation, one is better off choosing the traditional presentation tools. On the other hand, for trade fairs or for the purpose of electronic “business cards” this tool may be an attractive option.
Incidentally, it is also possible to use PowToon in a traditional way as background to a personal presentation, although it is not the most suitable tool for that.
The link below opens an example of a PowToon presentation created off the cuff by yours truly for a language teaching seminar:
http://www.powtoon.com/show/djda89ftHRd/elearning-services-and-language-teaching/