RSA Style Animations

I love RSA animations. They remind me of illustrated books I loved as a kid. They also remind me of the vintage cartoons I also loved. The first RSA I believe I ever saw was the now famous Ken Robinson talk.

I've been looking on and off for awhile for RSA animators that I could use for my teaching and for my students to use as they make reports.

I've found two that I will review here.

1. Mysimpleshow. I found Mysimpleshow from reading Jennifer Gonzalez's Cult of Pedagogy blog. Mysimpleshow is slow! At least it was slow for me. It took quite awhile for it to upload and it also had loading errors when I tried to go back to previous steps in the creation process. This, unlike the video I make below, was a serious effort. I wrote a script. The content matter is about Samuel Huntington's Class of Civilization thesis.

plusses- it is web-based. You can take a powerpoint, which I did, and modify it to make it the basis of your video. This is a terrific feature. Also, if you'd rather not record your voice, there is a auto-narration feature. Finally, unlike VideoScribe, it is FREE!

Minuses- OMG it is slow. In fact, it took hours to upload once complete.
Here is my serious effort at a mysimpleshow.

2. The other tool I'm checked out is VideoScribe. It is super easy to use. It does not let one start with a preexisting powerpoint. Did I say that it is quick and super easy to use? It is web-based and doesn't require a full browser as I made it on my iPad. It took me all of 15 minutes to make something decent looking. It is unscripted and hardly a best effort, unlike my legitimate attempt at mysimpleshow. Still, I think I like videoscribe better. Also, the pictures are "drawn" not just placed as they are in mysimpleshow. This makes it more visually appealing.

The downside, it isn't cheap. In fact, it is expensive. I made this with my free 30 day trial. It is $144! for a year and even more if you want to only buy a month, $29!

Click here to see my example.