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What is Powtoon ?

Powtoon is a tool that allows you to create engaging presentations that will capture the attention of an audience. Powtoon is similar to a power point presentation, but you are able to incorporate music and animation making it more engaging. With Powtoon teachers as well as students can present information or create animated stories.

What are the benefits of Powtoon?

Powtoon engages the audience, instead of just reading bullet points, people can choose from a variety of characters or objects to include in their presentations. The ability to include movement in the presentation makes it interesting to an audience because they are not aware of what might come next. Students will feel proud of the presentations they can create with Powtoon, because they are transforming their work into an animation experience.

Here is an Example of a Powtoon we created.

[] Powtoon Activity We chose Powtoon as our Cool Tool because we believe that animation has the power to engage kids of all ages. One of the advantages that animation has over video is that because "cartoon" type characters are abstract rather than realistic, it is easier for students to "see themselves" in the characters. We signed up for a Student/Teacher membership so that we could access a diverse set of child characters that would represent many cultures.

The process of creating a Powtoon is fairly simple and the tool is fun to use. Our concept was to have children from four cultures (from Puerto Rico, Egypt, Asia, and Africa tell their classmates what they enjoy most about their former home as a way of encouraging global awareness. Increasingly, children from many cultures learn together in today's classrooms, but often American children may not be aware what life is like for other children around the world.

We felt that we could get our message across most effectively by uploading and incorporating actual photographs of landscapes and traditions from various countries, then overlay animated characters on these images. Simple text in a childlike font narrates each slide. The Powtoon tool contains various character sets, which come with a variety of fonts and "props" such as the ball, sun, homes, globes and other graphic elements that you see in our Powtoon. Each slide was timed, and we chose how and in what sequence elements would appear on the screen. Powtoon offers the ability to add sound by uploading an .mp3 file for music, or to record a "voiceover." These features allow the animated presentations to be personalized, and we feel this makes it more engaging.

This tool is designed so that students could successfully create animations.

How can I use Powtoon in my classroom? **Student Examples** **Since Powtoon is similar to a Power Point presentation, students can research a topic and present it through Powtoon.** **Powtoon could be used to create a story by students.**

 **Teacher Examples**

Teachers can use Powtoon to present information to their students, the animations make it more engaging for the students.
 * Powtoon could be used to create a story for students to read. **