While composing my PowToon, I succeeded and was challenged in many aspects. One of these aspects are the sound and images within the PowToon. The first thing I realized was how different composing the cartoon was in comparison to the academic paper. More particularly, there were so many elements that make up a single second in the PowToon. When writing my paper, I had a complete lay out of what was to be said/written for every sentence. With the PowToon, in one second you must think of the timing of the audio, music, visual and what/how the visual would appear. With this being said, I was not the most comfortable with the voice over at first. I felt my voice was too high pitched and too fast. I couldn’t get myself to take the necessary brakes when reading the script. At this point, I decided to record my voice in Garage Band in order to add “fake” pauses. I feel this was a large learning moment for me and one of my strengths. I was able to really problem solve and get creative with each individual slide. I loved creating my academic paper into an entertaining video. At the same time, I feel that initial attempt to record and time the slides with the voice over was my weaknesses. Even though the sound track was not my strength, my favorite part was the clever remarks. I think these remarks really added the personality of my PowToon. On the other hand, my favorite part of the visual track was all the blank slides where I got to really be creative. Overall, I feel I really learned a lot about me as a writer through many different modes.

Prior to this PowToon, I had very little experience in designing a visual presentation. With this being said, many of the designing process was enjoyable and difficult. I really enjoyed creating the blank screens. It felt like it was an empty canvas where I could create whatever I wanted. I was able to choose the colors and the location of each picture as to where with the templet screens I was more limited. In opposition, the hardest part was having the images appear in sync with the sound track. Therefore, there were several decisions that I had to make that I was not initially anticipating. I had drawn out on paper what I originally wanted with the script, but once I got on the website I realized that my character and visual options were limited. I had to rethink several ideas but I believe in the end it worked out for the best. For example, I really wanted to have younger and teenaged students at one point in my slides. The only issue was there wasn’t teenage aged animations in PowToon. On the other hand, I think that my favorite design choice was choosing the classroom theme. It really helped create and further express the topic of my argument. In conclusion, I found that I liked using the electronic environment more than I anticipated.

I believe that remixing my initial paper into a cartoon was both good and bad. For starters, by having a written paper I already had my actual argument planned out for me. The down side to this advantage was that some of the academic evidence that I had used in my paper was harder to express through visuals. Therefore, in reaction, I prefer the essay over the PowToon to express my argument. I think that I liked the essay better for the sole purpose of being able to build strong creditability to my argument. Yes, it was possible to add creditability with the PowToon, but I was able to analyze and expand on my sources more with the written paper. In opposition, I feel that with my topic being standardized testing, taken by children and young adults, the animated visual was more effected in reaching the audience the topic refers to. The students that take these test addressed in my paper, are more inclined to watch a cartoon than read a lengthy essay. In addition, I feel that one of the advantages to using the visual animation was that the words were easier to compose because they were short and more relaxed. On the contrary, I couldn’t use many of the credible quotes from my original paper. At the end of the day, I enjoyed composing the visual medium but I could better explain my argument through the academic paper.