If you’ve had the pleasure of meeting me in the last twelve months or so undoubtedly I would have mentioned Haiku Deck. It is one of my favourite apps. If you haven’t come across it, Haiku Deck is free presentation software which works on pretty much every platform. There’s an iOS app, you can use it in your browser and despite there being no Android app you can still use it in your browser on your mobile device.
I love it for a number of reasons. One of my big gripes when it comes to students creating presentation to demonstrate learning is that I often find that the students will try to spend more time making it look pretty and adding 341412313 different animations which really have nothing to do with their learning outcome. What Haiku Deck does is not only make the presentations look completely stunning but it focuses the work of the student on the content they provide. Content is king.
Another reason why I love Haiku Deck is that it picks up the words that you write on to your slides and then suggest beautiful creative commons free images to use as the background.
To see what I mean, check this presentation of mine:
LEARNING WITH TECHNOLOGY – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
To top off these great features, not only is Haiku Deck free, but you can also download the presentation in to PowerPoint format when it is done so that you can run the presentation offline if you want to. If you haven’t tried it, try it yourself and then perhaps look at your students using it too. It’s super simple to use with very little training required to get you presenting beautiful content focused presentations straight away.
Are you using Haiku Deck in the classroom? I would love to hear about it in the comments.
I’m using Haiku Deck more and more these days. What I love about it is that it’s simplicity encourages you boil down your presentation to the key facts that you’re trying to get across and the end results look so amazing.
Absolutely!
During the 2012-13 school year, our school purchased some iPads for teachers to use in their classrooms (only 1 per classroom to start). I don’t remember how I heard about Haiku Deck, probably at FETC (Florida Educational Technology Conferece), but I was so glad I introduced it to my students as an alternate to PowerPoint. Though my rule for presentations has always been content first, bells and whistles (including font, color, animations and transitions) last, so many students would spend half a class even choosing an image, and then I would always require citations for images, which was a struggle. What I love about the images available in Haiku Deck is that the CC at the lower right can be clicked at any time and displays the photographers name and usage info. It is a great way to introduce the concept of copyright and usage to students. When I introduced the app to fifth grade students who were 10 and 11 years old, I first showed them the description in the Apps Store, which indicates a 12+ age recommendation. A class discussion about inappropriate images and digital citizenship followed. Then, on to the fun part. Since Haiku Deck is a presentation tool, we used fellow classmates as our audience (you want viewers to be captured by your images), and I passed the iPad around (Apple TV enabled me to have the image on the TV wirelessly), and each student typed a word, and the class chose their favorite image from the ones that first pop up. The student with the iPad then clicked on that photo to insert it into the deck, and typed their word. This enabled me to assess whether each student understood the basic functions of the program, and the other students remained focused, since they were helping to choose the images. I also asked individual students why they preferred a particular image, which illustrated to the students the different qualities of an image that can grab a viewer. It was a small class of about 20 students, so each student had a turn. I liked to introduce students to apps and programs that they could use for presentations in their other core area classes. I got quite a few teachers hooked on the app this way! But, you know you have a hit when the next day, students arrive at school and seek you out during home room, and tell you that they got the app for their iPad at home!
We’re definitely on the same page then! 🙂 Thanks for commenting Michele!