I just received my invitation to try-out Powtoon, a new site (still requires you to request an invite) that lets you create very dynamic-looking presentations. In just a few minutes of playing around with it, it seems to me that it makes it easy for someone to make the kind of PowerPoint-like presentation that only someone very, very experienced with PowerPoint would be able to do.

I could see myself using it for presentations I make for my blog or for when I do public-speaking. My concern with a tool like this for students is that they could get so focused using all the cool tools that they would spend more time on the presentation than the content, but I might be wrong.

Powtoon will certainly make it on the year-end “The Best..” list for Web 2.0 applications. I’m also adding it to The Best Ways To Create Online Slideshows.

Here’s a video on how it works: