Are you searching online for the best presentation software for students? There is a wide range of apps currently being offered to students. While most are suitable for use in classrooms, boardrooms, or offices.
This article highlights some of the best presentation tools for students or teachers. We discuss the free software apps that are available for video creation, often referred to as screencasting, including some that are designed for teachers. For easy image-based presentations, we also talk about the online tools that are available for creating digital slides to accompany your presentations.
LightMV (App)
One of the easiest and most effective video makers for students that you may use is named LightMV. This is a powerful, yet simple video editor that lets you create a presentation for your students using your mobile phone. It has video templates that can be added to your presentation. In addition to that, you can make a video by adding video effects. The app is also suitable for some occasions such as weddings, business, graduations, birthdays, and more. Follow the simple steps below to use this app.
- Click the button below to download LightMV app.
- Open the app on your phone and then select your video theme then press the “Try for Free” button and then import a file from your mobile phone.
- Once done, tap again the “Try for Free” button to save the video on your camera album.
- The last step is to tap the “Download” icon to save the video on your mobile phone.
Animaker
If you want a free and hassle video maker, use Animaker. It is a free online animation maker for students that can be used for education, marketing, presentation, or any personal videos. Also, this is a web-based video maker where you can easily produce a presentation in just a few simple steps. Moreover, it uses a very simple drag and drop interface that lets you to edit and add elements. Now, we will give you easy steps on how this video maker works.
- First is to visit the program on your browser and then click the “Get Started” button.
- After that, you can see the default templates on the screen and choose which one you want to use.
- Then, continue to customize your presentation by using different types of editing functions.
- Click the “Save” button and then the video will automatically save on your computer.
Prezi
Prezi is like PowerPoint on steroids. Like PowerPoint, this app allows you to create pages with images, videos and text ( no audio) , but with Prezi you can zoom in to specific content elements, and back out to see the bigger picture, then zoom in again to a different part. These have become popular lately, and once you know what it is, you’ll start to notice them everywhere, including TED Talks and TV commercials. You can use one of their templates, import PowerPoint slides or create from scratch. Your completed presentation lives on their site, so all you need to do is share the link. You need to sign up for a free account, which gives you 100MB of storage space. All your Prezis will be public. Watch this Presentation on Prezi Presentations to get some great guidance on building a good Prezi. See Prezi.com/learn for some short tutorials. The Prezi Video Channel on YouTube has additional tutorials, including how to invite collaborators, and use 3D backgrounds.
Slideshare
Slideshare is a popular and easy to use tool for putting PowerPoint, OpenOffice slides, PDFs and Word docs online in a click-through format or as a slidecast. Free accounts (signup required) only allow you to upload for public viewing, so anyone will be able to view, download and reuse or remix them unless you delete your file. The viewer just needs the URL of your slidecast.
Of course, simply putting a document or slide presentation online may not make for particularly exciting viewing, but with good design and a little creativity, there are ways to improve on this. See this award winning presentation about Cigarettes for a good example. One common technique to take your presentation to the next level is to add voice over, but this requires a microphone and audio recording tool such as Audacity. In Slideshare you upload your existing slides and .mp3 audio file separately and link them together using their interface. If your source document is PowerPoint and you would like to add audio, you will find it easier to use the built in recording capability and one of the screen capture programs listed below.
PowerPoint and Narration
Don’t have Microsoft Office? Office 2016 is available to all students through the CSUSM.
With PowerPoint 2010 and later you can record audio to accompany your presentation and save it as either an MPEG-4 video or a Windows Media Video (.wmv) and upload it to YouTube. To upload your video as unlisted, so it will not show in the search results see:
- Change video privacy settings
- Record a slide show with narration and slide timing
- Convert your recorded presentation into a video
Uploading to YouTube and Adding Video Enhancements
You can log in to YouTube with your student cougars account, which is a gmail account. You’ll find the help guide: Using YouTube with your student gmail address in the student guides on Cougar Courses. Once you’ve uploaded your video to your YouTube channel, you can still trim out parts of your video, made some tweaks and add effects with the Enhancements feature in the Video Manager.
Screencast-O-Matic
One of the first free screencasting tools, Screencast-O-Matic is the most powerful and works with both the Mac and the PC. You can download or record directly using the record button on their home page. There’s a quick demo video right there on the home page as well as numerous tutorials on their helppage. You can record and host 15 minute clips for free, and unlimited clips with their Pro version which is only $12 a year. One of the nicest features of Screencast-o-matic is the ability to host your video on their site for free, or download it, for embedding in a website or other presentation tool.
Jing
Jing, is a simple tool that lets you capture screen images, activity, record voice-over, and publish clips up to 5 minutes long. Once you download and install Jing it sits on your desktop ready to capture a window or just a region with one click. Jing works on both a PC and a Mac and their tutorials make it pretty easy to get started. Your completed Jing can be directly uploaded to their free Screencast.com site or you can also download the SWF format files to insert into PowerPoint or many of the other apps in this document.
Conclusion
These apps are ideal for teachers, students, administrators, and anyone who need to give a presentation. The online presentation tools range from the most popular types of presentation software to more specialized software for medical app presentations or program app presentations. Presentations can be made using an Android phone or tablet, an iPhone or iPad, or on a computer that supports Flash. At all times, there is free presentation software available for students.