Love 'em or hate 'em, presentations of varying degrees of formality are pretty commonplace in librarianship. This Thing looks at some apps that can be used to help create presentations. I scoped out two apps-Haiku Deck (Apple only) and Deck Slideshow Presentations (Apple and Android) for this thing.
Haiku Deck-Right after opening the app for the first time, there is a brief presentation about Haiku Deck (promotional more than informational). Then, as with anything else these days, you have to create an account to get started. Once you've done that, you'll see your "decks" (presentations). At this point, there is just one-"Meet Haiku Deck for iPhone." That is when I realized that Haiku Deck currently has limited functionality for iPhones. You can view decks but you cannot create or edit them on iPhones. Supposedly this ability is coming soon, but in the mean time if you try to click on the "+" to create a new deck, you are offered email links for the web version of Haiku Deck or a link to the iPad version of the app. I don't have an iPad, so I had to check it out online. For anyone familiar with Microsoft PowerPoint, Prezi, or any other slide-based presentation application its easy enough to use, even without a demo or tutorial. One really slick feature is the image search box. Pop in a search term, "beach" for example, and up pop a bunch of beach photos you can use in your presentation (of course you can also upload your own photos). Supposedly (hopefully) the images are all free, Creative Commons licensed images (more info here: https://haikudeck.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202231193-Free-Images-Licensing-and-Commercial-Use), which is a GREAT feature. And, if you've typed some text onto a slide it might automatically find relevant images for you. For example, I created a slide that had the text "What about libraries?" on it, then clicked on the images button and it automatically searched for 'libraries' images for me! Neat! In my honest opinion (and in my limited user experience since I cannot use my phone to edit/create decks), that is the app's coolest feature. Overall, it was very easy to use and a fun alternative to the more commonplace PPT or Prezi. I will definitely keep this in mind next time I have a presentation, and hope for continued updates that bring more functionality to the iPhone app.
Deck Slideshow Presentations-This app does actually allow users to create and edit slideshows on their iPhones. It is simpler, doesn't require an account, and has no tutorial or anything upon start up. Its focus is on 'Twitter-like brevity" (from the Sample Deck that comes pre-loaded on the app)-it actually limits the number of characters each part of a presentation can have. This is great-many people put WAY too much text on their slides, then simply read the text...BORING. This app might help eliminate that problem. The app itself has a selection of 'professionally designed' themes-you choose the one you want, punch in your text and data, and you're good to go! Some (like Paper Planes) are fun, but could get old fast (imagine orange and grey paper planes unfolding and refolding, and flying across the screen to reveal your text...cool right? Only for so long, and only ONCE. Show the same group of people that same theme again and it loses its cool factor-in my opinion!). Anyway, most the themes are pretty nice and creating a deck is pretty simple-there is a very clean, easy to follow layout in the creation phase. There is also an option to create and input your own charts and graphs-Probably not ideal if you have a lot of data, but easy enough to use. Overall, this is a great app! Easy to use, really fast, and worth a download if you're looking for something fresh (note-you will have an ad message at the end of your presentations-"Effortlessly create unique presentations with Deck at deck.com" or something along those lines).
I haven't had to do a presentation that required a slideshow or anything of that nature for at least a year (when I finished grad school), but believe it or not-with these apps I'm sort of excited for the next opportunity to come up! Cheers!
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