10 Must-Have Production Tools
1. Camtasia Studio
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Many people know Camtasia Studio as a screencast app, which lets you record your computer screen and create tutorial videos. It's actually way more than that. It is actually a fully featured video editor, so I use it to create most of my videos.
In fact, it's more than just a video editor. It comes with highly customizable animation and annotation tools, so I animate a lot of things in my video lessons and add a lot of annotations to my tutorial and feedback videos all to increase the educational values of my videos.
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2. Nawmal (formerly known as Xtranormal)
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Animated characters talking, moving, and interacting with one another can be so engaging to watch when used at the right place and right time. With Nawmal you can create professional looking 3D animated cartoons really fast with no 3D animation design skills. Instead of showing a simple picture to explain a particular context, I sometimes created a short animated cartoon to have 3D characters create the context. Creating a live action video clip to do the same can be much more time consuming and costly, so 3D cartoons are a great alternative. Students also enjoyed using this tool, so it's a great tool for them to use for creating video reports.
SAMPLE VIDEOS:
- US Copyright Basics (9:05) |
3. Plotagon
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I began using Plotagon when Xtranormal went out of business. With this tool you can also have 3D characters talk, move, and interact with another 3D character. With this tool things are less customizable compared to Nawmal. One interesting thing about Plotagon is that you write a movie script that specifies all the settings and character lines and moves just like a screenplay script, and Plotagon will generate an 3D animated cartoon according to your script. This means, with this tool you need even less 3D animation skill. A techie person may feel it's too limited, but your students can learn to use it within a minute of using it.
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4. PowToon
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I use this web-based app when I don't have a lot of time to create high quality animated explainer videos. It has many nice built-in animations and transitions. One of the animations I really like is a variety of hand motions to place or remove presentation contents (pictures and texts), which creates a very intuitive feel and helps with student attention. It's also a great alternative to PowerPoint and Prezi for students to present information.
SAMPLE VIDEOS:
- PowerPoint Development Tip - You are not an aid to your slides (2:12) |
5. Autodesk SketchBook
I use SketchBook when I have to hand-draw quick and dirty diagrams or pictures for my live and video presentations. I also use it to bulk-draw pictures for creating a storyboard for my video planning. If hand-drawing is not your thing, this may be be much of a help, but if you are comfortable with hand-drawing, this is definitely a must-have tool for efficient teaching. Students will also benefit from this for their personal presentations and storyboards.
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