I had mixed feelings about using Powtoon. I was daunted as felt it was out of my comfort zone and that it would be a huge task to complete. I do feel I need to work more on my IT skills as this is an avenue as librarians we will have to engage with more and more.
I used Powtoon rather than Screen-O-Matic as my library has used Powtton in information tutorials and demonstrations. I was expecting it to be a complex beast especially as those who use it in my library are very technical. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the ease of Powtoon.
It was easy to set up with password and username. I didn't really follow the instructions set out in our notes as I prefer a more hands approach to learning. I played a demo video available on Powtoon and worked with templates available.
I next tried to think of how Powtoon would best serve my interests and projects. I have recently being given information literacy session to first year students and felt that something like Powtoon could demonstrate in a fun and practical way plagiarism and copyright. There is so much for first year students to take in regarding plagiarism and often by the end of a session I can see that they are panicking and anxious. Any questions they have after (in general) is regarding Plagiarism and how can they avoid being accused of it.
The video I have posted probably needs more refinement as I would need more time and practice to familiarise myself with all the different formats you can add to enhance features. It was difficult as well to try and narrow down all the information as I felt the more concise the message the better. It is a very visual and can see the benefit of incorporating more graphics.
I did feel it was limited in the color scheme offered for the text, and felt some of the images offered by Flickr and Storyblocks were quite limited at times. Even some of the objects/graphics offered by Powtoon could be expanded on.
Overall I was quite satisfied with my first time efforts with Powtoon and can see how it could be easily incorporated into training & educational videos. I felt it was manageable and could be fun to work with. There is quite a lot of possibilities that could be investigated using Powtoon maybe as introduction to databases and e-books.
This is where you can find my efforts with Powtoon
"https://www.powtoon.com/embed/e3wNIb0hqEs/"
Thanks for your post! Great job with the Powtoon, looks really nice, I think your students will like it! The only thing I would say is that a couple of the slides with a lot of content zipped away a bit too quickly, so if you can get them to stick around a little longer so the viewer can absorb them, then even better!
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to your next post!