Do you have a presentation coming up? Do you want to WOW your audience? Then try one of the alternatives to Power Point Listed below. Most of the presentation tools are free, and only require you to create an account.
Ispiring free is a Power Point to Flash converter. It allows you to upload large files, keeps the embedded audio and video files and lets you embed as flash or to YouTube.
Sliderocket- flash effects (looks cool) but limits you to 15 mb file size. The interface is pretty easy to use and has some advanced features.
Prezi -collaborative, zooming flash effects, interactive
Glogster -poster presentation tool- has education version
Museum Box- This is an interesting tool that allows you to create a "museum box" with audio, video etc. (cool!) The site was inspired by Thomas Clarkson and anti-slavery campaigner who created a box that described why slavery was wrong. He carried around a box of items to illustrate his arguments during his campaign.(takes a little while to load.)
Animoto creates slick, professional, videos. There is an education version available. Allows you to create full length videos and has large library of available music. You can also use voice thread/-with recorded narration- See the example: Great Depression using the Library of Congress collection.
Ahead.com- Create zooming presentations with Ahead. The free version allows you to have 300 mb of file size. Here are some examples of portfolios using Ahead.co
Go Animate- creates animated presentations. Free version for education.
Xtranormal- text to speech; animationed videos. This is where the "So you want to be a _______ videos. (Fill in the blank with lawyer, earn a PhD in political science major, etc.)
Common craft is another animation creation tool. Many "How To" videos are created using Common Craft. Often used to explain complex subjects.
You can also just choose to share your presentations using GoogleDocs, Slideboom or Slideshare. With Google Docs, you can also create and collaborate with others as a group project. If you presentation is really large, you might chose Slideshare whose file size limit is 100mb.
Timeline tools:
X Timeline-Easily create timelines using images & multimedia; Embeddable
Timetoast- Create timelines in minutes. Finished product has a slidable scale and highlights the important events.
Comic Strip Creators:
Chogger Use Chogger to draw your own comics, caption photos, take webcam pictures and add speech balloons.
Using Images:
Creative Commons - is a place to Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally!
Google Advanced Search: check box for images labeled with usable rights on images
Wikimedia Commons - is a database of 10,062,008 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.
