ICT Teaching can be a comfort zone

It is simple, a teacher need not be a superwoman to be very good in teaching. But given the right solutions and technologies, she is able to deliver better.

Storyline, Voki and Online Voice Recorder make my preparation of instructional materials not just comfortable but worthwhile.

So a piece of advice, if you are a teacher, every time you encounter a very good application, be it web-based or mobile or even stand-alone and you enjoy using it, make it as an extension of your teaching. As Marshall McLuhan would say, the medium is the message. How you are able to skillfully utilize an ICT application to exhibit seamless teaching becomes the message of the whole learning experience.

Testing Powtoon

Powtoon is a slides and movie creator. It is an alternate to Powerpoint and allows two types of outputs, a presentation and a movie. For important or abstract concepts, this can be used by teachers. And the teachers would have the option to replay it (even the students). It would allow students to formulate their questions or reconcile the movie with related topics.

Powtoon is not free. It provides free trial for month. The slides or movie produced can be directly uploaded to Youtube (you need to have your Youtube channel in place) or have Powtoon generate a url link to be able to watch and view your movie. The result also has a Powtoon stamp.

Here is an example: (with audio) Additions to Tech4Teach

 

It is recommended to use the ready-made templates of Powtoon. They are convenient to use and the management of animations and timelines are easy to understand, it is in a model + or – 1 second.

For the trial version, a voice over can be inserted in every slide. A voice over can have a maximum of 18seconds to make it work with the existing template. Powtoon has its own voice recorder facility but the result when I tested has some hisss sounds.

There are several online sites to record voice or audio available but the 123 Apps Voice Recorder is the recommendable choice. It is available at this link– http://online-voice-recorder.com/