My eyes have been opened to several new websites that I can use as a SLP for social language therapy! It’s always exciting to come across fresh ideas, but as a more “seasoned” SLP, I worry a bit that it might be too complicated for my non-techie mind. When a speech friend sent me a link to a video created using Powtoon, I thought it was worth a look around the website. Boy am I glad I did! Powtoon is a site to create cartoon based video presentations for businesses. However, I used it to create a video from the materials in one of my TeachersPayTeachers products, #sorrynotsorry , as an instructional video on the steps to apologizing. I exported it to Youtube and you can check it out HERE or on my Social Videos Pinterest board. Warning, it was my first try and I am still tweaking timing and placement of the text, but I put this together in less than 20 minutes after watching the tutorial. If I can do it, you can too!!
The site has great step by step tutorials and walks you through visually how to create your Powtoon using pictures and text, with music or voice overs in the background! There is a free membership with plenty of basic creating options, all the way through a professional membership which runs several hundred dollars a month. It would also be interesting to use it as a marketing tool for a private practice. Another project for another day…in the summer.
You could create the videos, but what a fun and engaging way for your students to create them too! Whatever concepts that you are working on in a social language context, for example, the Zones of Regulation or Expected vs. Unexpected behaviors, could be the focus of the student created video. What a better way to see if they understand the concepts than by asking them to teach it to others! Collaborative learning is a big focus in the schools, and your students can work on delegating tasks, creating a script, accepting another person’s point of view/opinion and advocating for their ideas in a group all while creating their own Powtoon. And on those days that our friends seem to have completely forgotten what we have been working on? These videos are a great visual reminder to review concepts and strategies, and you don’t even have to say a word!
As our world moves faster and is more savvy electronically, how do you see using these types of cartoon videos in therapy or for marketing?
SmartmouthSLP 