Digital Storytelling Presentation Tools

lThis week has been interesting. I have always been a sucker for a good story! I enjoyed watching all the clips this week. Several of them reminded me of my undergrad classes. I was always thankful when a professor, special guest, or video would interrupt the lecture to offer a story. The story seemed to re-energize me, especially when I was becoming stressed out with the homework, papers, and exams. They always had a way of reminding that the stress would all be worth it one day. This week had several examples of digital storytelling.
I enjoyed the Prezi presentation by Predernal. She defined and described the parts that are imperative in creating an attractive and entertaining digital story. After watching the presentation, I decided to try one of the digital storytelling programs she offered. One of my first choices was the Xtranormal program because it was fun in a simplistic way. However, once I started to research this program, as of July 2013, the program was no longer available. For a moment I was disappointed. Meanwhile, other programs have become available offering some of the same characteristics of Xtranormal. The one I chose was Powtoon.
Powtoon is a free, online program that offers creative animated presentations. The basic set-up is similar to PowerPoint in that the author creates several slides to the presentation. However, each slide can have several sets before transitioning to the next slide. This program was not as similar to Xtranormal as I was expecting. Xtranormal used cartoons providing the information in a conversational format. Powtoon is more of a presentation tool. Creators can create slides with animation, voiceover, and music. I created a small presentation just to assess the features. I had fun working with this program. Here is my attempted Powtoon presentation!! A problem I have with this program is the difficulty in sharing the presentation in another format other than via links. For instance, I was unable to post the program into this blog.
I also tried another storytelling program suggested by the blog, Metta. I was fairly surprised at how easy this program was to create presentations. Within a couple of clicks- easily identified by the program site- the creator can have an attractive and professional presentation. This presentation is a fairly short presentation, but did not take long to create. This would be a good program for educators that are looking for a fun way to present a quick story. Caring for the Elderly  (Please use password "elderly") A problem with this program is very similar to the problem I have with Powtoon; I am unable to load the presentation directly into the blog.
The final presentation software offered on the blog site was Camtasia. I watched the videos offered, but did not try to create anything. I have seen this presentation tool used in a statistics course I took and wanted to concentrate on learning new programs. While Camtasia offers a one month free trial, the cost of nearly $200 scared me a little. I am hoping other programs are available with similar features for a lesser cost.