Fun Animated Presentations for Students

I made a simple proof-of-concept video after signing up for a Powtoon education plan and inadvertently included a “special” feature. Though it was very clearly stated in the Terms & Conditions, and it’s my fault for not grasping that nuance, once I exported this silly little video, I was not able to request a refund even though it was only a day later. ** I was totally in the wrong. ** I read about the 14-day cancellation policy. I didn’t realize until it was too late that on page 21 of their 23-page T&C, that once I export a video with this “special” feature, I have waived all my rights to a refund. It was a 90 second silly proof-of-concept just to test the export. I didn’t realize I triggered the refund waiver. My bad. I asked then to please reconsider and Gisele said “Please know that this was agreed on our Terms and Conditions. You have exported your Powtoons usng (sic) paid features, we no longer refund this I am sorry.” It appears they need my $48 more than I do and given that there are about 40 million unemployed people I guess I should find other things to be worried about, but when a company treats people (customers or not) like this, I figure I should at least say something to the world.

I LOVE this tool. Mainly I love it because my students love it. I tell them that they are creating a "commercial" about themselves when they are making their resumes and they buy into it 100%. Even that student that refuses to do any work at all loves working on this. This is a great presentation tool for students in Jr/Sr High to use. The only thing I can think of that would make it better is to connect it directly to Google Classroom for grading purposes. And more FREE items to choose from :-)

I found that this application had a lot of versatility. For one, it gave the user options with multiple basic templates and free images for general usage. Having learned from past experiences, I was keeping an eye out for anything that said "pro" in the corner but was pleasantly surprised to find a variety of free-use images, scene templates, and shapes. They even had different themes that could be tailored to the kind of presentation you want to give based to your target audience may be (such as cartoon, infographic, modern, etc.). Each style came with its own selection of cartoon characters. These cartoons had several kinds of expressions and animations depending on different actions you can choose for them (ie. happy, angry, thinking, typing, idea). I found that this gave me options and that I could even tell a kind of visual story to relate the ideas of the presentation; they didn't feel static or limited in emotion, but just as versatile as the rest of the application. One of the few downsides, I found, however, was that Powtoon to be considerably slower than I would have liked. At first, I thought that it could be a problem on my side, but I was using my work computer (which runs very well on various kinds of software) and I had a strong connection and haven't had problems with similar apps and online resources (such as slideshow or WeVideo). At times during editing, the lag became annoying. While it was a minor (and intermittent) hurdle, it became noticeable that the cursor did not move in unison with my mouse and at the worst of it, I had to take care to put the images and text boxes in the right place on the slide without messing up the carefully arranged images. This was my biggest and probably my only gripe with Powtoon. If I were given some time to think, I could probably nitpick at it but overall, it's useful and fulfills its purpose. Powtoon's biggest strength was what drew me to it in the first place: the color. This APP looks really good, and that's a concern whenever you're doing a presentation. It could potentially be easy to go overboard with Powtoon, but you can't discount the power of panache. Boring isn't memorable; bold is.