Online Animated Presentation Software

Continuing the theme of experimentation, I re-worked my ‘This is my city: London’ presentation using Powtoon, an online animation and slides tool, to compare results with previous attempts. It is important to point out here that I used their SlidesPro plan, and not the Studio plan, which includes animation.

With Powtoon, although it is equipped to record your voice directly, it’s easier to overlay music than to add your own audio clips. And I found the whole process rather slow, in terms of editing, due to the need to sync the arrival and disappearance of images on the screen. However, the result is impressive, and amusing, which is rather important when you teach young learners. As with most tools, this has a one-click export to YouTube. So if you are looking for an alternative to Power Point, I think this is a good way to go.

In terms of pricing, there is a free, but limited, option, such that you cannot download your creations to your desktop (but you can upload them directly to YouTube), and you are forced to carry the Powtoon logo on all of your work. Also, the maximum length of your presentations is set at 5 minutes. For $19 per month, the Business package increases your presentation time to 15 minutes, removes the company watermark and allows HD quality downloading and uploading.

However, Powtoon does offer an Education plan where teachers and students are offered generous discounts on their packages. Students can access SlidesPro, with a 15 minute time limit, and HD quality downloading and uploading for $1 a month. A Teacher pays double that, $2 a month, for the same privilege, plus access to a few extra tunes in their online music library.