Thing 13 Presentations

Having already considered Google's presentation tool as a necessary evil--if the circumstances forced me into using it--until the full-fledged version became available, I am approaching these mobile presentation apps with a jaundiced eye. They are going to have to prove to me that they are worth the effort, the hassle, and the frustration of using them. In other words, they are going to have to prove me wrong. I hope they do . . .

Deck Slideshow Presentation: I spent a lot of time "playing" with this app--it's that much fun. I liked its features: themes, basic pages, images, graphs, and tables as the main visual items to use. I liked how all the information is decided upon on the main page and then each line becomes a separate slide; I also liked the lively animation between pages and the close-up or zoom in on individual images for better viewing; and finally, I liked how easy it was to reorder the slides or to add more slides if needed. The export tool was also useful in maintaining the sharing/collaborative aspect of this app. It's not PowerPoint, but for free, it offers some impressive features. Now for a potential problem: When I emailed the presentation to myself as a PPTX,the images did not follow the rest of the presentation.

Haiku Deck: The positives about this app are that it has a nice step by step tutorial that guides you through each step and allows you to use its features and that it has some fairly impressive graphics; the negative is that after I used it once the screen went black and hasn't worked again. Curious. I rebooted my iPad and even went back to try to download the app again--no luck. Thumbs down.

Educreations: This deceptively simple looking app could serve as an effective learning tool--either as a dynamic tool in live demonstrations or as a recorded presentation for later viewing. Some of the features that make it worthwhile: options including a plain white to lined to graph paper to grid background; the ability to draw right on the screen with your finger or to use the text function to type in information anywhere on the screen; the options of using a camera, photos, dropbox, or the Web--which quickly finds images to insert into the page; and the ability to add audio over the presentation. It takes almost no time to learn how to use, it's fun, and it would be fun for students to use in class. I can see elementary students enjoying this app, along with art, biology, engineering, math, and a host of other subjects.

This app has a wide variety of potential classroom applications, and I give it a thumbs up.

Like the old Meatloaf song goes, "Two out of three ain't bad." Maybe it will soon be three out of three. I'll return to Haiku Deck again to see whether the glitch has been resolved.