Nearpod

What is Nearpod?
Nearpod has both web version and apps. It is a useful tool that can make your powerpoint become more  interactive by adding quiz, polls, videos, links and so on. The activities can happen in the classroom and act as formative assessments. You can also assign it as homework if you have the paid version.

How it works?
You may watch a tutorial prepared by Nearpod. The video is short but the explanation is clear!

For teachers:
After logging in, teachers can create a new lesson and import resources such as PPT files by clicking 'add content'. They can adjust the order of the pages and add activities. This is the most important step to transform PPTs into interactive Nearpod assisted lessons!The activities include Polls, Draw It and so on.
When they are ready to use it, they make the lesson ‘live’ and receive a classroom code. I suggest teachers to launch it live using a desktop and use a tablet to join the session as a shadow student.
For students:
Simply entering the classroom code provided by the teacher and enter the presentation.

Benefits
- Using Nearpod instead of PPT definitely make the lesson more interactive if you add interesting activities.
- Compared to doing it using paper and pen, teachers can read students’ responses on the same screen within a short period of time.
- Teachers can share students’ work to the whole class more conveniently. If students have written something on a piece of paper, it is either too small or too far for the other to see. This can be solved by using projector but if the teacher wants students to work on it (e.g. circle the nice phrases/ underline the mistakes) then Nearpod would be more useful.

Limitations
- Only 30 students are allowed in each classroom. If the class is too big, students may need to work in pairs or in groups.
- Some features  (including a bigger class size) can only be used when you have the paid version.

Some Tips
I'd like to share my experience of using Nearpod in class. I remember once I created an activity using 'Draw it' but students couldn't write on it as the lines are too close. Try to imagine this on an ipad screen.....

Hahaha the work that I received was so messy, but that's not my students' fault! I would not write better than they did. I didn't think of this when I planned the lesson. I'm glad that only one of the tasks were like this. We have to bear in mind that when we are using tablets, even if we have smart pens, we can't write as if we are using pen and paper!

So I learnt the lesson. I used 'Open-ended Question' function instead, (YES even though not all of them are open-ended questions, most of them are in fact structured practice).
As I'm always using a desktop and an ipad for the live session, sometimes I show the questions on the master screen in the classroom, just like this:

  Students type their responses in the box.

Or I use the same feature again, but attach an image in it and students can alway tap and look at the image in full screen.

I still used 'Draw It' a lot.

This activity seems easy because they only have to circle, but the linguistic and cognitive demand is in fact a little bit challenging! My students worked in groups and discussed the answer. I think this is appropriate to their level. Ahhhhhh writing this blog entry brings back lots of memories. It was so interesting to see them turning the tablets in different direction to find out where they were! I then taught them they should keep the tablet fixed, and use an eraser to 'walk' on the screen' instead.