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PowToon Review

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If a picture speaks a thousand words, an animation conveys an idea.

(Powtoon, 2014)

Powtoon

PowToon limited

5

Powtoon is an online presentation and video software that allows anyone the ability to effectively communicate their ideas by using cartoon based animations to wow their audience. I am sure that you have heard of Microsoft PowerPoint, Prezi or other slide-based presentation software. Well, Powtoon has taken this technology to another level by allowing almost endless customization on the the type of cartoon-based presentations that can be created with their software. Your imagination seems to be the only limiting factor.

A Powtoon, as defined by the creators, is a fusion of cartoons with traditional presentation formats of using slides and transitions to convey a message.
The cartons have added an extra dimension that allows for increased engagement and excitement while reducing boredom and fatigue.
Presentations that were only limited to major corporations with big budgets to hire Flash or HTML5 animation experts. Powtoon allows creators the ability
to create slide presentations or animated videos. The videos and slides can be created from scratch, uploaded from PowerPoint or from editing Powtoon templates. However, the overall effect of your slides will be determined by you. Your only limitation appears to be your imagination.

Pros

Novices Welcome

1-You do not have to be an expert to create captivating videos and slides. All you need is a little imagination to differentiate yourself from the pack. If you are using this for a business, you may want to invest in a pro-plan to a least differentiate your images from your competitors.

2- Great For Students

This is a great software for students to master. This is mainly because an effective cartoon animation will require students to develop their own script-writing. They have to plan and organize.
These are skills that they will need to master in the future, why not start mastering those skills during today's education. Use flash expert to create appealing and entertaining visuals.

3- Fun to Watch

No matter how silly or corny the videos are, if they hit the below 3 minute sweet-spot, people will watch it all the way through. Therefore, this is an effective way to get your message across.

4- Great for Introductory or Explanatory Videos

How about a video that explains who you are to your students and their families that you play during meet and greet sessions? How about a fun lesson that you made, supplemented by an animated video? Students love seeing and hearing their teachers on screen.

5- Update Videos

You can easily go back and update the videos, even after you have published videos, because the source files will always be available to you.

6- Increased Engagement

Present interactive infographics by utilizing the power of video and sound to really get your point across. This may be more effective than just using info-graphics.

7- Well Supported

Powtoon is well documented. There is a support section where you can send in your feedback. Additionally, they have live chat support and a very useful set of getting started with Powtoon videos located here.

Cons

1- Time Consuming

If you are a perfectionist, your final product will take time to crank out. If you have your entire class doing this, make sure that you have your students develop their script and record themselves before they even touch the software, especially during class-time.

2- Miss the Idea

Be very careful with animated videos. If it is a concept that you really want your students to get, try not to make it too funny or students may be too distracted and lose the main purpose of the lesson, especially for younger children.

3- Internet Connection Needed

Powtoon is an online-browser based software. Therefore, you are limited to areas or times in which you have internet connection.

Overall
This may not be a PowerPoint killer as it professes to be. However, the wow factor is indisputable.

From the Publisher: PowToon limited

PowToon's Mission:
To address all the frustrations that people have with Power Point and Keynote and add animation and killer design We defined our mission as: PowToon will create the world’s most minimalist, user friendly and intuitive presentation
software that allows someone with no technical or design skills to create engaging professional “look and feel” animated presentations. Our aim is to establish a new presentation category called “powtoon” – a combination of presentation and animated cartoon – as the industry standard for evolved (animated) presentations.

Our greater vision is to effect the way people communicate in a profound way: “If a picture speaks a thousand words,
an animation conveys an idea.” In the next series of post we will outline how the hard work of turning an idea into reality began...
PowToon hearts Business

Every business needs to convey their message and benefits in an attention grabbing and engaging way.
The added level of abstraction created by using cartoons allows a viewer to experience benefits of
using a product before they ever laid hand on it. The process of creating an animated presentation of
your product or service has - until now - been a cost and time intensive process (starting at $2,000 and going up
to $25,000 for a 90 second animated presentation). PowToon is disrupting this space by providing marketers and
businesses with the tool and marketplace to create their own awesome Powtoon.
PowToon hearts Education

PowToon wants to also make a difference in the education sector and our tool is designed to allow education
professionals (and students) to create content that is visually engaging, captivating and fun to make.

 

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Emaze Review

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emaze

Visual Software Systems Ltd.

3

emaze is a multiplatform interactive presentation tool that makes it very easy to impress your audience with eye-popping, captivating presentations. Emaze is very easy to use: login, select a template, customize the template and publish.

Pros:

Eye-Popping Presentations that will keep your audience engaged.

Wide Variety of Media Options

Emaze allows for a wide variety of sources through which media can be added to slide presentations. You can upload media from your computers directly, or you can embed files directly from video sources such as YouTube and Vimeo.

Easy to Share

You can easily share your created work via social media sites, or you can embed your final work directly into your website by utilizing the embed code provided for your presentations.

No Plugins Needed

Emaze uses HTML5 technology. Therefore, the software will run on any device, no matter the size of the screen, without the need to download browser plugins such as Flash.

Create Multi-dimensional Presentations

Emaze allows you, the presenter, the ability to create presentations in 2-D or 3-D. Therefore, you can really delve into the depths of your creativity and really bring your points across in ways that you may not have thought possible with clicks and drags.

Good for Screen Readers

Emaze will allow users who are visually impaired to access the presentations, because screen readers will be able to access the text within your presentations. This is unlike Flash-based online presentations which screen readers are not able to access in some instances.

Import Power Point

You can import already created Microsoft PowerPoint slides directly into Emaze.

Cons:

The free account level has limitations such as the inability to create private presentations. Therefore, even your unpolished work is publicly available.

Limited Variations

Creators are limited to the templates created by emaze. Therefore, if you are the creative type, you may have to go elsewhere. Custom templates are only available for business clients that work directly with emaze.
http://www.emaze.com/business/

A Few Bugs

I have discovered a few bugs in the software that I am sure that the developers will address. For example, the software frequently logged me out in the middle of creating presentations.

 

From The Publisher: Visual Software Systems Ltd.

emaze is the next generation of online presentation software. Simply select any of our professionally designed free presentation templates to easily create an amazing visual experience for your audience. emaze features a proprietary state of the art HTML5 presentation maker that will create the slideshows, video presentations and even 3D presentations that you always dreamed of.

Overall

I believe that emaze has great potential. Currently, they have over 34 themes that you can start out with for free. With the continued movement towards a plugin-free browser experience, and the utilization of HTML5 as a differentiating factor makes emaze viable. However, emaze is up against stiff competition in the form of the venerable PowerPoint and the current king of interactive online presentations, Prezi. However, if you are looking for a quick and easy way to add online presentations, emaze is good way to get the word out quickly. On the other hand, if you are looking to wow and dazzle your audience by pulling out your creative juices with time to spare, Prezi is the way to go.

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What are Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests

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Flesch-Kincaid tests are readability tests designed to determine the level of difficulty that readers will have when they try to comprehend English based texts. Flesch-Kincaid tests are simple, but powerful, formulas that are used by countless publishers around the world. These formulas are utilized in programs such as Microsoft Word to deliver useful statistics about a document, which includes the Flesch-Kincaid test scores. The Flesch-Kincaid tests are broken down into two areas: Flesch Reading Ease and the Flesch -Kincaid-readability score.

Flesch Reading Ease

reading-level

The Flesch Reading Ease determines how difficult it is to read a particular text. Flesch Reading Ease rates a text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. On the other hand, the lower the score, the harder it is to understand the document. Experts suggest that most written documents should fall between 60 and 70.

The formula above is evaluating the average sentence length (the number of words divided by the number of sentences) and the average number of syllables per word (the number of syllables divided by the number of words). Therefore, based on the formula, you can manipulate the difficulty of a text my changing the number of words, syllables, and the number of sentences in a document to make it more or less challenging.

 

 Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level Score

grade-level-score
The grade-level equivalence is what the average person thinks of when they think about the difficulty level of texts. Teachers can utilize this test to determine the readability of any document found on the web or created by a teacher. With the demands of the Common Core and the focus on content based texts such as science and social studies, quickly determining whether or not a text is appropriate for a particular grade level is made easy by utilizing these tests. Even though, officially, most standardized tests utilize the Lexile Levels, you can still utilize Flesch –Kincaid levels to quickly determine the grade-level of texts.

Example Use

Here are two speeches recently delivered by President Obama, just to place this in context. The first speech is the recently delivered immigration address to the nation on November 20, 2014. This speech, according to Flesch–Kincaid scores, was delivered at almost a 9th grade level, with a Flesch Reading Ease in the seventies, which is pretty much an average score. On the other hand, his speech delivered at Newtown High School in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was written at almost under a 5th grade level. Therefore, an individual with an elementary level education would be more likely to understand what he was trying to say when he was speaking about the shooting at Sandy Hook. However,  a poorly educated individual, or a lower elementary student,  would have left his speech on immigration slightly more dazed and confused, because it was harder according to Flesch-Kincaid readability scores.

Image Credit: Infobunny/Flickr

Make Reading and Writing Fun, Booktrack Classroom

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Booktrack Classroom

Booktrack Classroom

4

Improve your student's literacy skills with an awesome free application for teachers. This application is called BookTrack. BookTrack is a multi-platform application that allows teachers to create classrooms that will allow students to keep track of their reading progress. Overall, Booktrack is a good application for teachers to create additional opportunities for students who may be looking for more interesting ways to interact with text.

Booktrack Class is a free application that allows teachers to create  classrooms built around books. It is very simple to get started with Booktrack. Teachers signup, create a classroom and just add students.

Pros

Free: Currently, the application is free to use.

Encourage  Reading and Writing:  This application may  encourage students to take their writing more seriously, and even stimulate them to strive harder to become better at their craft as their work may be published publicly for the entire world to enjoy.

Multi-platform: Booktrack is available on the web and on mobile applications (Android and Apple). Additionally, Booktrack has a app in the Google Chrome-store. Therefore, this makes Booktrack very accessible.

Easy to Navigate: If you are familiar with online reading communities such as Google Books, GoodReads, and so forth, you will feel right at home.

Appeals to a Wide Audience: Booktrack has reading content that will appeal to students from Kindergarten through college.

Backed by Research: Booktrack has conducted and published their findings from various research as carried out in New Zealand.

Funded and Supported: Booktrack recently received funding to grow the platform. As a result of this, you can feel rest assured that it will not disappear overnight.

Increased Student Involvement: The application allows students to create their own soundtracks to go along with the readings available. Additionally, students can add their own essays and combine their essays with soundtracks.

Useful Tutorials: Booktrack has some very useful tutorials for users who are just starting out with the software.

Easily Add Students: You can easily upload a CSV file with the names of your students and Booktrack will do the rest.

Cons

No Text to Speech: The application does not read the books to students. This, I think, would be really appreciated, especially in the lower grades or with struggling readers.
Very Limited Selection: Currently there is a limited selection of books that are available in the store for students to read. With the recent infusion of cash from investors, no doubt they will be adding more titles soon.

 

Limited Research: There is research out there that dampens the claims made by the publisher, with some research even showing that background music with lyrics can reduce reading comprehension. Here is one research paper from the University of  Indiana that throws even more mud in the water as far as background music and reading comprehension are concerned.  You can find a wide range of research on this topic by doing a simple search. However, some researchers believe that adding music to a story that enhances a story will help in comprehension due to the fact that the reader will be forced to engage in repetitive reading to find ideal soundtracks to enhance the reading experience.
From the Publisher

Booktrack is delivering an innovative and engaging experience for today's generation of digital-savvy students, providing new ways for students to study and enjoy reading and writing. Booktrack Classroom is an exciting new technology that synchronizes audio with text to create an immersive reading experience. Stories and essays published with Booktrack include a customized, movie-style soundtrack that complements the story. Students can create Booktracks for their own writing and create a soundtrack from over 20,000 professional-quality audio files and share it with their classmates to read.

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Anki Flashcards Review

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Anki

Anki

5

Anki is a great flashcard adaptive software that makes it super easy to learn anything. Anki, a simple but powerful software, identifies items that you already know and items that you are struggling with. Therefore, the unfamiliar or missed items are shown more frequently when compared to the items that users are more familiar with or have mastered; spaced repetition.

Anki is a superb multi-platform free flashcard software that makes it very easy for anyone to effectively remember anything by utilizing spaced repetition. Research clearly shows that the best way to learn anything is through repeated practice and exposure. Anki allows users the ability to easily create flashcards and even share decks. Therefore, this makes is a great learning tool for anyone looking to learn or teach anything. The desktop version of Anki allows a lot of flexibility beyond the simple options that are available on the Ankiweb online version. Therefore, it is suggested that users download the desktop version. The desktop version will allow you the flexibility that you desire in a modern flashcard system.

Pros

Free: Anki is totally free. Wh0 said that nothing free is good? The developer would appreciate any support offered by the users of this software here.

Synchronization: Users are able to utilize their decks across multiple devices. Therefore, if  you are practicing on any  device, your information can be synchronized making it very easy to utilize your flashcards on the device of your choice.

Media Options: Anki is flexible enough to allow you more media entry options when you use the desktop version.

Collaboration: Users can create and share decks. Therefore, this makes it a great tools to collaboratively learn anything.

Secure: The web version utilizes SSL security. Therefore, your information is secure.

Cons

Learning Curve: There is a small learning curve associated with Anki, as you would expect from a new software.

Mobile Limitations: Additionally, it would be great if more options were available on the mobile version. Therefore, users would be able to add more enhanced flashcards in the go.

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What is Blended Learning

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Screens and the Classroom

There is a disruptive, seismic shift taking place in the classroom. Literally, the walls around classrooms are being obliterated by modern technology. Due to the nature of this shift, the name given to this form of learning has been wide and varied; disruptive learning, blended learning, assistive learning technology, adaptive learning technology, flipped classroom, blended learning, classroom 2.0, interactive learning, adaptive learning, and the list goes on and on. But the underlying disruptor remains the same, screens. Screens are knocking on the doors of brick and mortar schools, and the level of disruptions are being felt far and wide.

This change is not recent, but the fairly recent widespread use of the internet has really accelerated the rate of adoption, with the mobile web being at the front of this metamorphosis. Many experts are debating whether or not it is healthy to have students sit in front of a screen and essentially learn through a series of algorithms programmed to automatically identify gaps within a student’s learning and adapt to the needs of the learner.

Traditional learning involves a teacher in front of a group of students, while e-learning involves students learning through electronic media. On the other hand blended learning is a combination of traditional face to face instruction and some form of electronic, usually web based, learning through technology that are designed to supplement or enhance what is taking place within the walls of the classroom.

What Forms of Technology Are Involved?

The lay person may be thinking about students fixed on a particular learning technology that has some learning component. However, technology has now advanced to include complex algorithms that are able to predict what a child or learner may need to successfully advance their learning. This form of technology is usually referred to as assistive or adaptive technology. In recent years, technologies such as Dreambox Learning and i-Ready have blossomed on the scene to enhance instruction and fill a need in the market for schools and families who are willing and able to invest in the learning of children. However, the good news is that the cost of the technology is decreasing. With more states adopting the Common Core, more technology companies are now faced with a potentially larger market as the curriculum becomes uniform across the country.

 

What Do These Technologies Have in Common?

 These powerful learning technologies available in classrooms make it easier for teachers to rapidly determine the deficiencies and strengths that students have. With this wealth of information, teachers are able to improve their classroom instruction, assessment and curriculum by effectively utilizing the data provided by such learning software. For example, teachers can effectively diagnose a student’s learning to determine their current level of academic development. After their levels have been determined, teachers and administrators can then obtain data that can increase the effectiveness of the level of differentiated instruction students may need to be successful. Since the passing of the No Child Left Behind Legislation, many schools have been scrambling to develop measures that will allow them to effectively and efficiently identify students that may be at risk of not passing rigorous state-level assessments. Therefore, these technologies will allow schools to better serve the needs of all students by adapting to their level of development. Therefore, students who are high performers may be able to partake in activities that will both challenge and advance them at the same time. Struggling students may benefit from the technology by accurately identifying learning deficiencies that may be impeding their performances.