Technology Tuesday: Haiku Deck and a Freebie!

Happy Tuesday everyone!  I hope everyone is enjoying their last few weeks before school starts, though I hear that some people are already back?! I can't believe it! Anyways, it's time for another Tech Tuesday. I know that  I have mentioned this one multiple times in the past few weeks, but I just wanted to take a minute to fully talk about it. It is so amazing that it definitely deserves its own post. 

Haiku deck is a presentation software. It can be used on computers, ipads, and iphones. Our school does have an ipad cart, so I was lucky enough to use it over the summer with Haiku Deck. Now that school is back in session, I probably won't see the ipads as much so I will be using this program with the laptops this year. 

First things first,  you'll need to set up accounts for your students. If you need help with this, feel free to check out my post on using one Gmail account for student emails.  Once you have them logged in you will see this screen:

Click the "Create New Deck" button on the right corner of the screen. Then your new deck will pop up. A deck is like a presentation. In the top left hand corner you can rename your deck. Then if you look on the left side you will see the four different slide formats. 

It's extremely simple from there. Your students just insert the information they want into each slide. There are a few options for customization, but not much. Once they enter in their information they can find images or take images for their background. Just click on the picture button on the left hand navigation bar. 

Underneath of the picture button is a button to choose different font arrangements. 

There is also a section for notes for the presenter. Make sure that your students know that they will be the only ones able to see that. Apparently, you can link an iphone to the computer to be a remote for the presentation too. 

You can also change the font. There are six different free font packs. On the ipad, a lot of paid packs come up as well. 

Finally, the two things that I had to learn the hard way with my kids was the  importance of telling them to click the new slide button for each slide (in the bottom right hand corner). I thought it was self explanatory but one student didn't quite understand. Also, if you are using the ipad app you  need to SHARE the deck to save it. When you click on the box with the upward arrow in the upper right corner, a box  will come up that lets you share it privately so you can access it from any device. (We learned this the hard way a few times...)

This app is awesome for kids though! To help you use it in your classroom, I went ahead and created a basic planning page to help you. Click here to go to my TPT store and download the  Freebie. It's really basic so that you can change it to fit your needs. 

When explaining to my students, I had them all come to the rug and demonstrated with one ipad while they watched. The third and fourth graders got it with no problem... well practically. :) 

In case you haven't used Haiku Deck, you've got to try it! If you have, how do you use it in your classroom?

Happy Teaching!