To animate or not to animate…..

In less than an hour I will be doing a webinar (repeated later today to accommodate different time zones around the world. We (that’s me and Pearson) will be using the Saba platform which means the people attending get to see and hear me and they get to see my Powerpoint slides. In return I get to see who’s come along and I can read their text chat which runs as the webinar is going on.

(Above is one of the slides I’ll be using)

Saba as a platform? Well sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t. Last time we did one of these the slides worked fine in the morning session, but in the afternoon they didn’t at all – kept getting stuck. Was that because they had animation in them?

This time, to try and minimse the risk of glitches, I have done a Powerpoint presentation with no animation (by the way I don’t use Powerpoint if I can help it; Keynote – for Macs – is infinitely preferable, in my opinion….but I digress). The slide above is one of a sequence where the diagram is built up, one slide per ‘bit’. This is unusual for me. I like my animations, slide transitions, flames and pinwheels and all that stuff. It makes, I always think, the screen come alive, makes things more interesting.

But some people don’t agree. When I’ve used the ‘flame’ animation that comes with Keynote to help a negative image or point appear, many people laugh. But others find if childish and distracting. The same with my flopping, twisting, open door slide transitions.

I quite like the rather stark Powerpoint I’ve done for the webinar (starting in 28 minutes….). Would you?

Here are my questions:

1 Do you like visual presentation with lots of tricks, flashes and animations? (or Prezi with its swoops and turns)?

2 What presentation software do you like to use and why?

3 What will future presentations look like (e.g. what’s just round the corner)?