Weekly Report & Reflection Post #10

This week in class we were given the opportunity to investigate different slideshow tools. The slideshow tool that I found particularly useful was Animoto. One part of the tool that I really liked about was its interface. Often times I find that many online tools’ interface to be challenging to use and often a deterrent from me using the tool again. This was not the case for Animoto. Animoto was simple to use. You can add photos, change slide timings, and best of all; it had a nice array of slideshow designs. The designs looked great and had different animations built in the design which is not something you can ordinarily find on Microsoft PowerPoint. Adding music was really easy and overall I found that creating a slideshow presentation was easy. In terms of using this tool for educational purposes, I am a bit hesitant to do so. I find that in most of my projects having text accompanied with an image is a good way to present a slide and with Animoto you are both restricted in text amount and I was not able to add an image to my text on the same slide. Due to this I would not use this tool for educational purposes. However, for personal use, such as making a nice video for photos I took during vacation, this is a great tool. In terms of slideshow tools, I believe that they are essential for educational purposes. For many of my courses, we are required to create slideshows for our presentations and having greater knowledge of more sophisticated slideshow tools such as Prezi will help my creativity. Most slideshow presentations are done through Microsoft Powerpoint, so by using other slideshow tools, it would help me both differentiate my slideshow from others, but also provide a more sophisticated slideshow. 

In terms of adding slideshow tools such as Animoto or Prezi to my PLE, they would defiantly go under my creativity side. As iterated above, these tools provide an opportunity for creating a more creative slideshow for my presentations. Tools such as Animoto and Prezi are what I have been looking for as I feel that you can only do so much in Microsoft PowerPoint to differentiate yourself from all the other slideshow presentations. I feel these tools both give me an edge in terms of showing the instructor my creativity and I look forward in using these tools in my future presentations.

This week in Feedly, I found a really cool article called “Whybig brands are getting into the subscription-box model”. I found this article particularly cool as it is amazing on how far subscription box model has gotten. When I was younger, I always thought that purchasing a subscription based product was always a waste of money as you are literally buying something that a company thinks you will like. You have no idea what you are getting and I found that a real deterrent from buying. Finding out that this model is actually gaining traction is surprising, but I do look forward on what major brands can create from this model.

Thanks for reading and let’s see what next week has in store.

Photo 1: https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/animoto.png?w=400