Making Camera Presentations Exciting With These 5 EdTech Tools
A successful video presentation has a variety of qualities. The voice over or audio should be crisp and clear. The animations for presentation should not be incredibly distracting. The list could go on and on. However, there are many incredible EdTech tools out there to help create these engaging camera presentations that will help you keep your audience's attention.
- PowerPoint Online.
We have all had those incredibly boring PowerPoint presentations. You know, the ones with black text on a simple white background and no photos whatsoever. These presentations often have “blocky” slides - slides with too much text. The presenter is pretty much reading from the presentation! PowerPoint Online allows you to work with others on your team to put together a wonderful PowerPoint. If there’s one person who does really well with making the information clear and concise, they can work on the text while another person works on putting in animations or pictures. A good rule of thumb when working with others for a PowerPoint is to make sure that there is an element of everyone in the presentation. - PowToon.
Not unlike many sites online, there are two types of membership for this site: Free (or basic) and paid (or premium). The basic membership is free to sign up for and use. There is only one fee that you must pay to access the full site, but a good portion of the site is available via the free account. PowToon does not allow you to work on the same presentation from multiple accounts; however, you can share presentations. Be wary of using this for long presentations - the longest PowToon you can create is five minutes long, whether or not you pay for the account. It's incredibly easy to use, and there are animations free and ready to use when you sign up for free. You get access to about half of the music library and you can upload MP3s if you don't see one that you like. You can also do a voice over, but you must do it in one take. - Prezi.
If you’ve seen a Prezi presentation, it is worth using. If you have not, there is not enough space to do it justice in this article. You can sign up completely free and get access to hundreds of different templates. These templates allow you to create one of a kind presentations that you can use like a PowerPoint in a video presentation - but more engaging, with less work on your part. You can more easily embed videos than in PowerPoint, and this allows you to be more interactive. There’s no download required to use Prezi. You can easily log in on any computer that has internet access, and then work on your presentation from wherever you are. It'll automatically update on your account, and then you can access the new version from another computer. - ZooBurst.
This is for the whimsical company. ZooBurst allows you to create pop up books online. You can upload pictures for free to use in your presentations, and you can move them around, change the angles, the shadows, etc. There is a free version, but premium and school licenses for $9.99 monthly or $29.99 yearly, respectively, are available. The premium and school options offer the same benefits. You can have up to ten pages for free and ten books for free. - AuthorSTREAM.
This tool allows you to upload PowerPoint slides and share them. You can password protect individual presentations, create custom channels, upload videos to YouTube or Vimeo, and share to social media. You can use it on the web or download a desktop app. You can see an analytics report of your presentations, and much more.
