Boy, there sure are a lot of web applications that let you make free slideshows. Because of this glut, I thought it would be helpful to my students, readers of this blog, and me to do a quick review of many of them, and identify my picks for the best ones. So, here’s another “The Best…” list.

In order to make it on this list (there is one exception), a site had to…

* be free.

* be simple. There are a number of web tools that just have too many “bells and whistles” for me, and they certainly don’t improve accessibility for English Language Learners.

* allow you to grab images off the Web, and not just from your computer.

* not have content inappropriate for classroom use readily available, at least not during the multiple times I visited the site.

* allow for the creation of captions and other writing.

I’ve come up with nine web tools that I think are worthy of being on this list. They all have some unique qualities, though, that make them ideal for different projects. So they are not ranked first-to-ninth. Instead, I’ve put them into different categories.

AUDIO-NARRATED SLIDESHOWS

Having said that I wasn’t going to rank the sites, however, it’s clear that one site is clearly the best, especially for English Language Learners. The ability to combine audio narration (and comments) with the written word at VoiceThread , along with its ease-of-use, make this a great application. Combine that with the special free educator membership and its benefits and you have the best site out there, period, for English Language Learners.

You can see a lot of samples at our Student Showcase blog, where Intermediate English students from various countries created VoiceThreads.

Just FYI, at our school we’ve been having a problem logging-in the regular way recently at VoiceThread. However, we can also log-in easily here. (Thanks to Alice Mercer for that tip!)

And since, for English Language Learners, having that audio component trumps other special effects, Show Beyond is another option if you can’t access VoiceThread for some reason. It’s not as easy to use as VoiceThread, and doesn’t allow you to leave audio comments, but it’s certainly accessible to English Language Learners.

You can easily embed slideshows from VoiceThread and Show Beyond into an online journal, website or blog. You can also just post the link to your creation.

Slide Six is a new web tool for audio slideshows.  You can read my post about it here.

Yodio is a relatively simple web application that lets you create a slideshow — either with your own photos our their stock images — and then record the narration by phone.

My Brainshark has recently added the capability of recording by microphone or by phone, but I haven’t really checked them out thoroughly.

Little Bird Tales lets you easily make slideshows where you can add text and, more importantly for English Language Learners, provide an audio narration. On nice touch is that you can virtually paint/draw artwork in addition to uploading images (unfortunately, the site doesn’t have the ability to grab photos off the web by url addresses). It’s free to use, but I’m unclear on if there will be an eventual cost to use the site. It appears to have an upper limit on the number of shows you can produce.

Present Me lets you upload PowerPoint presentations and easily provide audio/video narration. You can read more about it at David Deubelbeiss’ blog.

Here’s my post on Fotobabble’s new slideshow option.

SITES THAT DON’T REQUIRE REGISTRATION

There are several slideshow creation sites that don’t require you to register and still meet all my criteria. I think for most classes, if you don’t need the audio narration feature and you’re okay just posting a link instead of embedding the show in a blog or website, these should work fine.

Bookr is another great tool for anybody, including Beginning English Language Learners. You just type in a “tag” to search Flickr for images, drag them into a book and write about them. Here are samples made by my students. Here is a video tutorial showing how to use it.

Big Huge Labs is a site that lets you grab any image off the web — not just Flickr. The interface is not as easy as Bookr’s, but you do have access to far more images.

And, for the very Beginning English Language Learner, there’s the Colgate Smile Slideshow. You just drag-and-drop from a small number of images, and then do the same for captions. This would also be a good introductory activity for younger native English speakers, too.

A SITE WITH A FEW BELLS & WHISTLES

Magtoo is a newer site that has a number of features like being able to add music, show your slides in a variety of formats, and even create panoramas. But even with these extra features, it still seems pretty simple to use. Plus, you can embed your slideshow on a blog or website. (In the comments section, reader PJ Vermont wonders if some of the images that have recently been added to this site are appropriate for classroom use.  It’s a good point.  I still think Magtoo is an easy tool for students to use but, if you have them use it, you probably want to provide close supervision so that they focus on making their slideshow and not viewing others on the site.)

You might also want to check out 280 Slides. You can read my post about it here.

SlideBomb is a new tool that lets you easily create an embeddable slideshow with videos and images grabbed off the web or uploaded from your computer, and you can add text to each slide, too. My only concern, though (in addition to not liking its name), is that some of the other slideshows accessible on the site made by other users might not be appropriate for the classroom. (The site just announced a free Slidebomb Academy site only designed for teachers and students. It’s looks great.)

SITES WITH A FEW BELLS & WHISTLES — PLUS THEY LET YOU COLLABORATE

There are two sites in particular that, like Magtoo, have a few easily usable bells and whistles, can be embedded, and let you create slideshows with others over the Internet (not in real-time, though). I was attracted to them because of the collaboration feature and the possibilities of using them with our international sister classes, but they are also excellent sites to use without taking advantage of that aspect of the site.

One is Mixbook, which I think is very accessible (though I wish their tool to write text was a little bit better).

A SITE WITH A HISTORY FOCUS

Digital Vaults from the National Archives has an incredibly easy-to-use tool to create online slideshows related to history. You can access images from historical time periods and easily drag-and-drop them into your show, along with writing captions. It’s just one feature of this extraordinary site.

LIFE has just unveiled a neat new feature that lets you search for any photos in its archives and create an online timeline/slideshow that you can share with a unique url address. Their Photo Timeline lets you use their original captions or you can edit them and create your own, as well as writing your own description for your whole creation. After you log-in (you can do so using your Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, or Google accounts — it would be nice if they allowed on site registration, but I guess you can’t have everything!), it’s just a matter of searching and dragging the photos to your timeline/slideshow.

I am going to add a new one to this list that does not let you grab images off the web, but seems very, very easy to use for simple slideshow creation with your own images.  It’s called PhotoPeach, and it’s worth a look. (They’ve since added the ability to both grab images off the Web and create quizzes within your slideshow)

Projeqt is a very new application — you still need an invite to use it (I requested one in December and just received it) that lets you create what you could call interactive slideshows. In some ways, I might describe it as a more sophisticated Prezi that’s easier to create and less confusing to watch.
It’s not as simple to use as the other apps on this list, but English Language Learners and non-tech savvy users could pick it up pretty quickly (and I’m adding it to that list). If you or your students wanted to create something with a little more pizazz, Projeqt might be the ticket once it gets out of beta.

Knovio might end up being one of the best Web 2.0 applications of the year. You upload a PowerPoint presentation, record a presentation with your microphone and webcam, and then it’s done! It’s free, and it is not open to the public yet, but I received an invitation about five seconds after I requested it.

Slidestaxx is a new tool for creating online slideshows. The nice feature about it is that it’s designed to easily grab videos, images, and websites (among other things) off the web to incorporate in the presentations. In fact, I may be wrong, but it doesn’t even look like you can upload anything from your computer. That’s fine with me, and my students. It would be nice if they were a little clearer about how to use it — it seems you have to “create” a slideshow first before you add anything to it but, again, I might be missing something. Once you figure that out, though, it’s about as simple as can be to create an embeddable show.

I’ve mentioned Storify on this blog in passing as an easy way to display “tweets.” In fact, I did just that in my post, Using Storify For “Poverty Matters When…”, when I displayed multiple tweets that began with that phrase. I had thought its use was pretty limited.

Recently, though, Storify announced some major changes, and its now one of the easiest tools to use to create a multimedia digital story. You can search the web for just about anything, including images, tweets, webpages, photos and videos, and use their “drag-and-drop” interface to add your own text and create a story (or a collection of labeled images, or just about anything). It’s really become quite versatile, and it would be difficult to find a tool that’s easier to use. You can also read this post from Read Write Web sharing other uses for the tool.

All feedback on this list is welcome.

You can find links to these sites, and to many more slideshow creators, on my website under Student Slideshows.

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