Annotations Solutions Needed

Hi Creative e-Learning experts,

I am facing a small problem.  I am creating a course which if done using the tools that I know would result in a very animation intensive project and hence would be very time consuming.  So I considered "annotations" that I could use real time while syncing animations.  But the problem is that I need "line" type and/or shaded rectangle/circle type annotations.  The arrows and the cross marks will not work for this. 

I intend to teach students how to read and understand a sentence.  So that is why I want to pause briefly as I am speaking a sentence and I want to highlight on a few important things.

I tried using rectangle stretched as thin as possible to try to get a feel for a line.  But "thin" size was not think enough to give an impression of a line.  I have attached the pic here.   Also, the size is not consistent.   Can we get it thinner than this and a more consistent size.  Am I doing something wrong with it while I am making it on the screen?

Is there something less time consuming than animations here?  If not, then I will proceed with the animations route only and account for the increased time in my planning doc.  :(.

In ideal world, I would have loved to have the following ability - sync animations using articulate presenter, add on-screen circles and rectangles using ppt slideshow pointer.  That way I would have had the best of both worlds...

Would really appreciate your help.

Payal

What I want to avoid and what I want to do

How "Thin" Rectangles look?