Google Slides is a presentation tool that enables users to create, edit, collaborate, and present. It is free for personal use, and available to businesses via a Google Workspaces subscription.
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Powtoon
Score 7.3 out of 10
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Powtoon is an online video creation platform for making engaging short videos and presentations, from the company of the same name in London.
Synchronous or asynchronous educational activities in the context of higher education. Great way to support your live lectures by providing Google Slides to students so that they could follow at their own pace if need be. I also used Google slides as a student for my Graduate Certificate in Higher Education studies and it worked perfectly for our 3-hour long zoom lectures.
Powtoon is a very capable suite of tools that help a developer create training videos that look way better than they should. I've used it to create fun, attention-getting commercials for new topics, I've used it to enhance what would otherwise be boring step-by-step tutorials, and I've used it to create all manner of "Explainer videos" for all kinds of topics - this is where it EXCELS! In my opinion, its biggest limitations are limits on imported video (max of 90 seconds), which mean that you have to do a lot of extra work to break up and import anything of substantive length. And because it presents your personal library of imported images and audio ONLY sequentially, it's VERY LIMITED in the re-usability of those assets - it's way faster to just import a new instance of an image and audio than to try to find it in your library.
Comparing it to Vyond, it is more time consuming to make videos. The timeline could be easier to understand.
They recently started upcharging to use some scenes. This has made updating some of my videos challenging as the scenes that were included as part of my plan are now an upgrade to use.
They don't have a voice over option. I have actually taken some of the videos out of the platform over to Vyond to add voiceover.
Some items they have introduced, like turning a powerpoint into a video really don't work.
I have never needed the support feature. As I mentioned, everything was intuitive to me however I have taught myself Adobe, Final Cut and iMovie so most of these programs became intuitive.
On a standalone basis, where no collaboration is needed, Microsoft Powerpoint is a superior tool because the functionalities are easier to use and much more robust. But if collaboration is needed, Google Slides is optimal for business, sales and strategy collaboration. It is less suited for engineering, design or product brainstorming or collaboration sessions as it is limited by space.
Powtoon has the advantage over traditional video editing software in terms of the library of characters and elements that can be easily dragged and dropped onto the canvas. Powtoon is easier to use and has a more intuitive user interface than Vyond.
We don't have to spend money on traveling to a location to do an actual live shoot.
I'm spending less time on hand animating videos.
We used these to create teaser videos for our professional development offerings. I believe because of the captivating graphics, we had a lot more people driven to our site.
