An alternative to Power Point

Click for link to Itunes App Store

Haiku Deck is an Ipad app that allows you or your students to make great slide shows.  The problem with many slide shows with Power Point is that people write out way too much and then just read their slides.  Haiku intentionally eliminates this by limiting the amount of text you can type per slide.  Due to this brevity users will have clean concise slides.  To use this app you enter a few key words and Haiku Deck will search its huge database for Creative Commons images.  Once this is done your text will be displayed large enough to fill the screen so it can easily be read.  There are five free theme templates and eleven more for a $2 fee.

From an interview on Fastcodesign.com, "Our approach was to make a presentation tool that people would love to use and to obliterate the dreaded 'death by PowerPoint,' phenomenon that so many experience on a regular basis, whether in the workplace, in the classroom, on a committee, or at a conference," founder AdamTratt said. "To do this, we tried to productize best practices espoused by the presentation design gurus like Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte. They say things like, 'use one idea per slide,' 'have a consistent look and feel,' and 'use an impactful image.'"

These are principles that Haiku Deck’s limited feature set essentially forces you to follow. It’s similar to some of the thinking behind Apple’s iOS, just on a much narrower scale: The user doesn’t always know best, and if you give him the option to customize everything, don’t be surprised if you end up with a dreadful result.