Check it out, Narakeet.
Here is a tutorial about Narakeet.
Narakeet is a video tool that allows the creator to take power point slide and change them into a video with voice over. To include voice over you simply type in what you want it to say in the presenter notes in powerpoint. It also allows closed captioning to be included with the video.
Narakeet is free to sign up, but the number of videos is limited, and if you “finish” the video and there is a mistake, there is no way to delete it. So you have to be careful to edit it correctly before downloading the final product. I learned this the hard way and I now have two free accounts, and this was only to make one mistake proof video.
It wasn’t too hard, but it was time consuming to make the first video and to have the end product something I was reasonably pleased with. For my product I created a video about adding using a ten frame. The first time I found that I included too many words and it was just too much. I also discovered that you had to apply new items one in each slide because there is no way to integrate animations. I also had to play with the timing a bit. After some unfortunate results I finally discovered a tab that said ways to improve your video and this helped. I learned that by hitting return after every sentence, the pauses between them were better suited for my end product. I also discovered that if I typed numbers like this: 1,2,3 they read the comma as the word comma versus putting in a pause. I ended up adding on counter on each slide and counting up on each individual slide.After that I was finding small mistakes, like missing periods in the closed captioning.
The voice over was very computerized sounding, however there were several options to choose from and if you are uncomfortable recording yourself or in a situation where that is not possible, it is great to have. In Narakeet, you do have the option to record yourself doing the voice over.
While it did take some time and playing to get it to a reasonable end product, I think it is a decent tool. I feel like there are some possibilities here. Most people by the time they are in middle school have created a power point so they would be comfortable with that portion of it already. It’s a matter of learning the idiosyncrasies of the tool and getting comfortable with it. I feel this a good option for creating a presentation to share online, especially in a remote learning situation.
