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 9.5 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.
Google slide sis very well suited for collaborative work, internal presentations, workshops, and any scenario where multiple people need to edit, comment, and share content quickly. Not so appropriate for highly polished or heavily animated or designed presentations, or other kinds of situations where advanced animations are required, and also not great on offline performance with large decks
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.
The popularity for Google Slides among the casual technology tool users is so great that we are not in a position to replace this tool with anything else. Every other tool either doesn't have the popularity, or doesn't match the ease of sharing level of Slides. The training needed to learn a different tool is too great. Google Slides is very easy to pick up and master.
Google Slides is very easy and intuitive for creating simple, straightforward presentations. Its limitations make for less decision making. Being part of the Google Suite makes for easy sharing and collaboration, auto-saving, and time-stamped versions/edit history. However, unlike a platform like Canva, there's no icon library, photos, graphics, or elements built-in, so if you're wanting more creative designs, you have to import or create yourself.
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.
Google Slides works both online and offline, they are free to use if you have a Google account. Easy to share and are supported by most web browsers. A great addition to your arsenal of interactive educational online platforms.
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.
