Shiny & Pretty

Two things that always grab my attention. I swear, I'd be a terrible fish-I'd see a blinged out lure in the water, and then swipe it not knowing the ramifications behind it. Good thing I'm not a fish (but if I had to be one, I'd be Dory from Finding Nemo).

Back to shiny and pretty. I have an app crush on Haiku Deck. It started when I entered a contest for the aforementioned Techlandia cast (I did win a Haiku Deck upgrade-yeah for me). I started playing around with the app a little more.

Haiku Deck

For the sake of time I will limit my praises for Haiku Deck (which is FREE). I love the limited amount of text because it keeps me focused on the content. I've created two for fun decks and one deck for my 6th grade class on ancient Rome. While creating the decks I realized that I had to concentrate on the theme or main idea that I wanted to convey. Some may say that the reduced text is limiting but I say it's liberating. I hate presentations that are all text or even worse, read to you...boring!

As the saying goes," a picture is 1,000 words." This is especially true with Haiku Deck. Since the text is limited, the images chosen need to add to the message and tell the rest of the story. Fortunately, there are a multitude of images to choose from for your deck.

My students began experimenting with the app towards the end of the school year. These are my observations: students were more directed using this app rather than the other presenting apps with bells and whistles. Due to the limited text, plagiarizing diminished. Students thought more critically about the images they selected for their decks. Students were less likely to read slides and more likely to present information.

To be honest, it has been a month or two since I signed up, so I have forgotten the class management side of the app. These are the things that I need to doublecheck on:

1. Do students need to sign in on their own? I know you can sign in with Facebook, Twitter, or email. (My students are too young to have FB or Twitter-even though some of them do have accounts.)
2. Do I have to create a dummy account for students to use? 

I'm including the first Haiku Deck I created for my students to use.  It primarily follows the outline of History Alive Ancient World Grade 6.  The purpose was to allow students to review key information, but still fill-in-the-blanks using the images.  The title page refers to something that was mentioned in class-there is more to Rome than the food, right?

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad