John Yan was the creator of ShowBeyond, a very nice alternative to VoiceThread that was on The Best Ways To Create Online Slideshows until it shut down last year.

Now, John has just unveiled his new tool for education, UTellStory, and it’s a good one. It’s sort of a streamlined VoiceThread that I think is easier for both teachers and students to use.

You can make slideshows with your own images or grab ones off the web and easily add a audio you record, as well as text, to it. You can make them private or public, and they’re embeddable. You can also let your slideshows be re-used and mixed by others.

It’s free to use, though it costs $50 each year if you want to be able to manage student accounts (Disclosure: I was given one of those free accounts so I could try out those features, but it in no way influenced my decision to review the site or to say these positive comments about it).

The only advantage I see, and it’s a big one, that VoiceThread has over it is you can’t leave audio comments at UTellStory.

Here’s a video explaining a few of the ways to use UTellStory: