I once told a class that the tool is not the presentation; you are. The problem with presentations (PowerPoints) and the reason you hate them is not because of the program itself but because of the poor presentation skills of the users. A bad Prezi is a PowerPoint that gives me a headache. Keep these things in mind before exploring any tool that is simply a retooling of PowerPoint.
As the majority of these tools are PowerPoint alternatives, I will discuss them in relation to PowerPoint.
As the majority of these tools are PowerPoint alternatives, I will discuss them in relation to PowerPoint.
authorSTREAM
website: http://www.authorstream.com PRICING: Limited free account is available. TUTORIAL FINAL COMMENTS:: PowerPointishness: authorSTREAM allows for an upload of a PowerPoint. It allows for some neat functions once it's uploaded. It can be embedded. It can be marked private and shared with only those you select. It can be converted to video, etc. FAKEBOOK
website: http://www.classtools.net/fb/home/page PRICING: Free. (I'm thinking all of those ads take care of the cost.) TUTORIAL FINAL COMMENTS: An ad heavy static version of a Facebook-like template. Too much clutter and too many ads for my taste. Of course, I think Facebook sucks out the soul. There must be a better option for this. GLOGSTER
website: http://edu.glogster.com/ PRICING: Free TUTORIAL FINAL COMMENTS: Glogster is basically an online poster. It allows for the integration of various media. With any presentation tool, the possibility of too much text exists. I wouldn't call it a presentation tool as much as I would call it a user interactive publication. Wow, that makes no sense. It would better to have others navigate through the page rather than have the creator use it for a presentation. MUSEUMBOX
website: http://museumbox.e2bn.org/ PRICING: This is a UK site, and it's not free. It's roughly a hefty £59. TUTORIAL FINAL COMMENTS:: PowerPointishness: It's PowerPoint on a box, or Prezi on a cube. PHOTOPEACH
website: http://photopeach.com/ PRICING: Free TUTORIAL FINAL COMMENTS: PowerPointishness: It's picture slides with Ken Burns effect. You can add music. Ehh. PREZI
website: http://prezi.com/ PRICING: Free TUTORIAL FINAL COMMENTS: PowerPointishness: Imagine PowerPoint after riding the tea cups at Disney. POWTOON
website: http://powtoon.com PRICING: Free account available. TUTORIALS FINAL COMMENTS: PowerPointishness: PowToon rests at some point in the middle of PowerPoint, a cartoon generator, and a video creator. It's a true alternative to PowerPoint. Awesomeness. SeeSAW
website: web.seesaw.me Tutorial Overview: Seesaw is a digital portfolio. Tutorials and the site itself makes it look like an elementary program, but I don't see any reason this couldn't be used for high school. Simply upload a file (pic, video, etc). You can draw on it, voice record over it, and more. It can be shared with parents. Students are in a class run by the teacher. It's a safe way to store items for teachers to review at the very least. |
SLIDESHARE
website:http://www.slideshare.net/ PRICING: Free TUTORIAL FINAL COMMENTS: PowerPointishness: Upload your PowerPoint slides. Share them with the world. Search topics. TAGUL
website: http://tagul.com PRICING: Free TUTORIAL FINAL COMMENTS: More fun with Word Clouds. This one is more fun than WORDLE. It can create your cloud into a shape. VCASMO
website: http://vcasmo.com PRICING: Free TUTORIAL FINAL COMMENTS PowerPointishness Vcasmo and zentation were separated at birth. See zentation description. VOICETHREAD
website: voicethread.com PRICING: Free TUTORIAL FINAL COMMENTS: I've never been a big fan of VoiceThread, but it pops up on lists of Web 2.0 tool favorites and on certain technology listservs so it must appeal to a lot of people. It seems more trouble than it's worth. It allows interaction with a picture and can be an option as a presentation or as a teaching tool. I would just lean in a different direction. I might even fall in a different direction or, perhaps, just leap away from it, or call Uber. WORDLE
website:http://www.wordle.net/ PRICING: Free TUTORIAL_ FINAL COMMENTS: Wordle is fun. Take a bunch of text, paste it in, and get a cloud of words. You see them everywhere now. ZEEGA
website: http://zeega.com PRICING: Free TUTORIAL FINAL COMMENTS: This one is new, but I think I might like it. It uses images, text, gifs, and music to create a "slide show." I absolutely love the soundtrack element. Simply choose your song and let it play. Zeega includes a direct search of flickr, giffy, tumblr, and soundcloud. It also focused on images rather than text. Let's see if we can avoid killing another presentation tool. ZENTATION
website: http://zentation.com PRICING: Free TUTORIAL_(Best I could find. Most of the tutorials are in Spanish.) FINAL COMMENTS: PowerPointishness: Take your existing PowerPoint and upload it. Record a video to accompany the video. Upload the video. Put them together and, whammo!, you have a ZENTATION. Zentation is high on the PowerPoint scale, but it's not very Zen. |