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It’s Teacher Appreciation Day and Week here in the U.S., and we want to give a special shout-out to all of the amazing, innovative, inspiring educators in our creative community, all around the world!

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Teacher Appreciation Tips

Just for our teachers, we’ve collected a few power tips to make your lives easier, save you time, and keep you (and your students) inspired.

1. Managing Accounts

The easiest way to manage a classroom of iPads is to create a single email account for the entire class to use. You’ll need to sign in to the app on each individual iPad once–after that, the app will keep you signed in. Have students include their name(s) either in the deck title or on the first slide so you can easily keep track of their work. Once students have published their decks, you can sign in to the website using the class email account to view all of them in one place (click Gallery, then My Gallery). Read more about publishing and sharing here.

2. Turning Auto-Capitalization Off

If you’d like students to practice correct capitalization as they work, you might also want to adjust the auto-capitalization setting as you’re signing in to your classroom account on each iPad. From the Main Screen, tap the Settings wheel, then adjust the Use Auto-Capitalization? toggle to OFF. Read more about Main Screen settings here.

Toggling Auto-Capitalization On and Off

3. Teaching Digital Citizenship

Haiku Deck not only helps students focus their message and explore visual storytelling, it’s a great tool for teaching digital citizenship as well. The app’s unique  image search taps into more than 35 million beautiful, high-quality images that have been made available for (free) use under Creative Commons license, and proper attribution is pulled in automatically. From Play mode on the iPad, tap the CC logo in the bottom right corner to view the photographer as well as the type of Creative Commons license. (In Web view, look for the CC logo in the bottom black bar.) Read more about our Creative Commons image search here.

4. Image Searching

Haiku Deck does include an explicit terms filter, which prevents searches on naughty terms. Unfortunately, we can’t control how photographers tag their photos, and it is possible for some “inappropriate” images to appear in the search results. (This is why Haiku Deck has a 12+ rating in the app store; you can read more about that here.)

We’re working on ways to improve this, but in the meantime, we’ve been thrilled to see many forward-looking teachers using this as an opportunity to work with their students on digital responsibility as well as digital citizenship. There are also some creative workarounds if you’d like to use Haiku Deck with your students and are concerned about image results:

• Do some searching on your topic ahead of time to look for (and possibly discuss) trouble spots.
• Create a folder or set of pre-screened images in Google Drive, Flickr, or Dropbox for your students to access.
• Have students generate their own images by using the iPad camera (here’s an example), or by creating illustrations and pulling them in off the camera roll, like this one:

Sample Haiku Deck Using Student Artwork

5. Publishing Without Email

We heard from teachers that many classrooms don’t have access to email, so you can now publish straight to the website. Tap SHARE, then select one or more categories and tap PUBLISH, and your deck will be published to your Gallery on the Haiku Deck website. If you like, you can tap COPY URL to grab the link right from the app. You can read more about publishing and sharing here.

6. Adding Notes and Printing

By limiting the amount of text on each slide, Haiku Deck encourages students to keep their message focused and to discuss their topic (instead of reading slides word for word). They can take their decks to the next level by signing in to the website (using the class email account as described above), opening their deck in Web Edit View, and adding supporting details and even links to more resources. You can then click DOWNLOAD (look for the text buttons immediately below the deck) to create a great-looking PDF that you can save, email, or even print. Read more about adding Notes here.

Sample Haiku Deck with Notes

7. Embedding in a Classroom Blog or Site

If you have a class blog or website, you can easily embed your Haiku Decks right from the app or from the website. From the app, tap SHARE, then PUBLISH, then POST TO BLOG. From the website, look for the EMBED button right under the deck. In either case, simply copy the code string and paste to your blog. Read more about embedding Haiku Decks here, and see a couple of Haiku Decks embedded in this great post on Free Technology for Teachers.

8. Ideas

If you’d like to see how educators are using Haiku Deck for a wide range of teaching purposes, from fact gathering to creative expression, be sure to visit our Education Case Studies Pinterest board frequently–we add new examples every week.

Haiku Deck Education Case Studies Pinterest Board

More Inspiration

You also might enjoy reading about 4th graders creating sensory poems and character studies, Haiku Deck for vocabulary development, and Haiku Deck Goes New School. We also invite you to participate in our brand-new Haiku EDU community on Google+.

And if you’d like us to feature your work, please email link(s) to gallery@haikudeck.com, or tweet us using the hashtag #hdgallery.

Teacher, thank you so much for everything you do! And if you have a question we didn’t answer or a tip you’d like to share, let us know! Drop us a line any time at team@haikudeck.com.

We hope you’ve had a chance to download the latest version of Haiku Deck, try out all the cool new features, and set some new kinds of stories free! Our Gallery is bursting with beautiful decks, and for your own presentation inspiration, here are a few of our favorites. (Hot tip: you can now browse the Gallery right from the app! Learn more here.)

Lists

In “Through the Noise,” Fenella Olynick uses short lists (and the striking Picaresque theme) effectively to deliver her “students matter, teachers care” message. (Learn more about creating lists here.)

Click to view the full Haiku Deck

Colorful Backgrounds

If you’ve experimented with solid-color slide backgrounds, you might have noticed that the palette of color choices has been expanded. We love mixing in solid-color slides to punctuate the flow of a presentation. Check out how Therese Beale uses them to make her message pop in “Message Gap: Three Clues You Have One.” (Learn how to select a solid-color background here.)

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I just wrapped up a series of three webinars, Presentation Boot Camp for Power Agents, with our friends at TruliaPro. I have attended plenty of webinars and given many talks to audiences of all sizes, but presenting a webinar was an entirely new experience.

What was hardest to get used to was…the silence! I wasn’t nervous about talking to 1,000+ people, but I realized how much I depend on visual and audio cues to develop a connection with my audience, to read how things are going, and adjust. It was as disconcerting as the first time I rehearsed my Ignite talk with the slides timed to auto-advance every 15 seconds. But, just like the Ignite talk or any new presentation experience, practicing was the key. By the third session, the host and I had developed a comfortable back-and-forth dialogue to keep things moving, even though we’ve never actually met in person! (Hai-5, Jovan!)

Session 1: Three Keys to Presentations that Wow

Click to view the full Haiku Deck with Notes

In the first session, Three Keys to Presentations that Wow, we covered some presentation best practices that are central to Haiku Deck, but that can be applied no matter what presentation tool you’re using: in a nutshell, keep things simple, beautiful, and fun. We also touched on the #1 mistake that most presenters make (and which I’ve certainly made myself in the past), which is treating your slides like content-rich documents instead of visual aids to illustrate and enrich your message. Using the Haiku Deck Notes feature is a great way to avoid this pitfall.

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After many weeks of hard work and at least 8 times that many afternoon trips to the neighborhood coffee shop, Haiku Deck 2.0 is now available in iTunes!

Yes, we’ve released updates in the past, but this is a big one, and it’s packed with all kinds of awesome new stuff! It’s like Christmas, New Year’s, and a disco-ball dance party all in one.

What’s New In Haiku Deck 2.0

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

For all the details, read more about:

• Making the best-looking charts and graphs you’ve ever seen, using only your fingertips
• Creating numbered and bulleted lists
• Cropping and repositioning images, right from the app
• The new streamlined publishing and sharing flow
• Cool new features you can access from the Main screen

But really, what we MOST want you to do is download or update Haiku Deck 2.0 TODAY, try it out, send us your feedback, rate and review it, tell your friends about it, and set your story free!

Love,

Team Haiku Deck

You’ve always been able to import charts and graphs into Haiku Deck, but one of the most exciting features of our new version is the ability to create your own, right in the app. Like everything we do, we worked hard to make it simple, beautiful, and fun. That’s right…fun! No linked spreadsheets, no fussy formatting, no complicated formulas–just magical drag-to-edit and tap controls. Seriously, it’s actually fun.

Here’s a Haiku Deck that includes all three kinds of charts you can create: bar charts, pie charts, and stat charts.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

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One of the most magical features of Haiku Deck is the built-in image search, which puts millions of beautiful, free (yes, free!), high-quality presentation images at your fingertips. And of course, you can also snap or import your own photos for a personal touch. Our palette of 14 professionally designed text layouts make it easy to position your header and subheader lines so that your text doesn’t cover up the graffiti tag or vintage Phillies ball cap that perfectly illustrates your point, but sometimes you just need more…control. We hear you loud and clear.

Haiku Deck 2.0 is packed with fantastic new features, but one of the most useful ones is the ability to crop and reposition your images, right from the app.

Resizing Presentation Images

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We remain big believers in limiting the amount of text in your presentations and focusing on one idea per slide, but we’ve heard from many of you that sometimes you need just a bit more to work with. And so….to expand the possibilities for presentation ideas and inspiration, Haiku Deck 2.0 includes the ability to add simple, beautiful bulleted or numbered lists, like this one.

Sample Bulleted List

True to form, we’ve designed these new layouts to help you keep your message focused and bring your ideas to life with beautiful imagery, if you choose.

Click “more” for a step-by-step how-to.

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If you’ve already mastered the basics of creating Haiku Deck lists, it’s time to level up with some power tips!

1. Haiku Deck automatically adjusts the spacing for your list, based on the longest item. The less text you have, and the more uniform your items are in length, the better your lists will look.

2. If you need to reorder your list items, the built-in iPad cut and paste feature will save time. Hold your finger on your text, then choose Select or Select All, then Cut, Copy, or Paste.

3. Your list title will be centered by default. To choose left alignment, tap the green Layout icon, select your preferred layout, and tap the green DONE button.

Choose left alignment or centered

4. If you’re using a solid color background, choose one that coordinates with your theme. In the example below, the dark blue color looks great with the Zissou palette for charts and graphs.

Match the background to your theme

5. We’ve purposely limited the number of items in a list to 5, because there’s only so much your audience can absorb at a time! More on why simplicity rules here.

We’d love to see your Haiku Deck lists! Send your links to gallery@haikudeck.com.

Note: For getting-started Haiku Deck help, be sure to check out the Haiku Deck Tutorial and How the App and Website Work Together.

It’s been truly amazing to see thousands and thousands of beautiful Haiku Decks published since we launched last summer, but we also know that the vast majority have never actually been published, and remain trapped on iPads all around the globe–beautiful stories yet to be set free. We know there are a number of good reasons for this:

1. You started decks but didn’t finish them. (That’s ok, we kinda got sucked into Downton Abbey, too.)

2. You’re sharing your decks directly from your iPads. That’s definitely the slickest way to do it, so well done–but there are still great benefits to publishing your decks to the Haiku Deck website.

3. You’re concerned about privacy, and who will see your decks online. Even though you’ve always been able to control your privacy settings from the Haiku Deck website, it’s an extra step, and it’s not straightforward enough. We get it.

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If you’ve already mastered charts and graphs, resized your images, learned how make lists, and tried out the new, streamlined publishing flow, here are a few cool new features of Haiku Deck 2.0 that you can access from the Main screen.

Copy Decks

Haiku Deck already saves business users so much time that Walt Mossberg once commented the app would raise the national GDP, but pitches and presentations can now be easily modified for a new client, event, or meeting. Just tap and hold to copy a whole deck. (John James and Greg Bamford: This one’s for you!)

Copy a deck with a long press

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