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Do You Tackk?

Recently, I discovered Tackk, a new way to post and share content online. It allows you to create an attractive one-page design that can incorporate content from over 250 online sources, including ThingLink (as in my example below), YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, SlideShare, Google Maps, Prezi, and more. You do not need to create an account, but if you don’t, your Tackk will be deleted after a week.

(Scroll down to see the full Tackk.)

I have found Tackk to be very easy to use with many options to customize your work so you can get your Tackk to look just the way you want it. You can also turn the ability to comment on or off. One feature I especially like is that Tackk has partnered with 500px. If you need to add a photo to your Tackk, you can search 500px and the photo credit will be automatically added to your Tackk.

Applications for education: You could use Tackk to present content, give assignments (as in my example), but even better, you could have students create their own Tackks as evidence of learning. For example, students could each create ThingLink to examine various aspects of a problem and then combine them into one Tackk to provide an overview of the issue. You can create Tackkboards (collections of Tackks) for your students to post their content.

Haiku Deck slide

Save Haiku Deck slides to your iPad

After attending a presentation on iOS creation apps I did this weekend, a participant asked me about the best way to save Haiku Deck slides to her iPad so she could use them as the basis for Thinglink and Pic Collage projects. If you are not familiar with Haiku Deck, it is a free iPad app that allows the user to create beautiful presentations using Creative Commons licensed images (and they are gorgeous). The themes are simple and elegant and the app is easy enough for primary students to learn in just a few minutes.

The presentations can be exported directly from the app as a PDF or PowerPoint, but saving the slides as images requires a few extra taps and button pushes. It turns out that the best way to save your work as images is by doing screenshots of each slide as you play your presentation.

To do it, create your Haiku Deck. Click the Play button.

Haiku Deck slide

As you proceed through your presentation, take a screenshot of each slide by pressing the Home and Sleep/Wake (Power) buttons at the same time. You will know you are successful if you see the screen flash white and you hear the camera shutter sound. The resulting screenshots will be saved to your iPad and can be accessed and used just like any other photo.