The Haiku Deck Difference

In the educational world, teacher training is often structured around the same basic format: a presenter stands before the group reading from a Power Point while the audience sits and stares at a personal printout of the exact same information, wondering why this all couldn’t be accomplished through email. These same adult educators, will then leave this boring event and to return their classrooms only to subject their poor students to the exact, same process. In middle school, this is often called “taking notes”.

The justification of these teachers is that some information just has to be delivered this way, so let’s just go ahead and deem this to be truth and move on the more important concern. Are students really listening and learning this way? Could we not make our point or provoke thought with fewer words or without copying from the screen?

For those that might be looking to move beyond the pale of Power Point,  Haiku Deck might be a great place to start. This simple, easy to use presentation app allows the creator to design a slideshow by selecting a photo and then adding only two lines of text or a few bullet points.  I believe this word limitation not only causes the presenter to focus on the “meat” of the content, but, with the right images, can evoke a deeper and more meaningful or  independent thought process on the part of the viewer. Haiku Deck offers simplicity that is unique and artistic.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

To use Haiku Deck, go online and create an account. This will allow you to have access to your decks on all devices. Then, download the newest version of Haiku Deck from the iTunes store and start designing. You can use the search in Haiku Deck to find suitable images or use your own. If you don’t like the photos in Haiku Deck, use another program to create a picture or group of pictures (In fact, this is a great use for that Power Point program! Just create a slide and save as .jpeg)

For those presenters needing more details and notes added to slides, those can be easily added from the Haiku Deck website.  For more information, check out the Haiku Deck FAQ page.