Powtoon

Animation video creation made easy! Students LOVE cartoons and animated videos. Imagine if you could teach through animated videos that catch and hold students’ attention. Powtoon is an animated video creation tool that allows teachers to create informational videos that can grab students’ attention during a lesson. The program is very user friendly and fun to use. Powtoon has many options that are free to use in order to create the best animated video possible. Powtoon can only be used on a computer platform due to the amount of content that is required to edit and create animated videos.

Negatives: Some negatives of this technology tool is that the program was extremely slow. The program specifically seemed to slow down when trying to edit the text on the screen. Another negative that I found was that not all features were free. I understand that this is a business as well, so they have to make money through some platform. I do appreciate the amount of free items that you get so that does make this a very good product.

Lesson Ideas: Powtoon has an unlimited number of possibilities in the classroom. Teachers can use it to create fun lessons for students for in the classroom or at home. Students can even use this program to create videos for projects that are assigned by you. If you decide to use this for student creation, then make sure you give them a tutorial on how to edit the videos.

In this section, I have included screenshots of important features that you should aware of to simplify the navigation process of this program.

After you first sign up for you free Powtoon account, this is the screen that will appear. This is considered your Home screen or dashboard. On this screen, you will be able to quickly start a new Powtoon video and you are able to see your Powtoons that you have completed or started. On the right hand side of most screens in the Powtoon site, you will see an animate man that appears. This man and the speech bubble are tips and tricks to help you create a Powtoon video. If you have any other questions, however, there is a get help button with a question mark beside it on the right hand side of the screen where you can go for more help on the program.

This is the navigation bar that is located at the top of every screen on the Powtoon site. Here you can select any of the words and they direct you to different pages. The CREATE button takes you to the Home screen that allows you to start creating a Powtoon video. The MY POWTOONS button also takes you to the Home screen and you have to scroll down to see all of your completed or started Powtoons. The EXPLORE button allows you to explore Powtoons that have already been created for you or styles or themes that have been pre-selected for you when you want to create your own Powtoon. The FOR BUSINESS button takes you to a whole section of pages that show you how you can use Powtoons in your business. The PRICING button takes you to a page that describes Powtoon's upgraded accounts and how much they cost per year. The SUPPORT button allows you to get more help about specific problems you encounter in the program. Finally, the button with your username allows you to change you account settings.

This is the EXPLORE section of Powtoon and I think it is important because you can search for pre-made Powtoons here. These people have shared their work with the world to make you life a little easier. Most of these Powtoons are business related, but they can help in a variety of ways in the school system.

In this section, I have included screenshots of different options that you have during the creation of an animated video.