Ms. Pugh's Tech Site

What is Nearpod?

Nearpod is a fantastic website that can serve as a great resource for teachers, especially during this time of virtual learning! It is great for creating fun and interactive lesson plans. There are so meany great features Nearpod has to offer to keep students engaged. I will discuss some of these features throughout this blog. Teachers can create lessons and share them with their students, so that the students can go through the lesson at their own pace, or the teacher can do a live lesson with their students using Nearpod as as a visual guide (similar to how a Powerpoint presentation would be used). I highly reccomend Nearpod in any classroom for any age, it is fantastic!

What I created with Nearpod!

To the left is an example of a Nearpod lesson I made for Kindergarteners about weather. While going through this lesson, you will see that it is set up in a slide-show type format. This is how all Nearpod lessons are designed, however, you can add components such as videos and games. Not every single slide has to be text and pictures. In this lesson, I introduced the students to four different kinds of weather using a variation of text and interactive materials. One of the greatest things that Nearpod has to offer is the various interactive components. When creating a lesson on Neapod, you can select "new slide" and then choose between different content options such as video, audio, slide, wtc. or different activities options such as drawing, quiz, games, and even FlipGrid! This option to incoroprate so many different interactive options makes it so much easier on teachers when doing virtual lesson planning. Some examples of interactive features that I used in my Nearpod lesson include drawing, a matching game, a game called "time to climb" in which students answer questions and race to the top of a mountain, and open ended questions. This is just some of the interactive options that can be used in Nearpod!

Collecting Data

Another awesome feature that Nearpod has to offer is it's data collection. After creating a lesson and sending it out to students for completion, you can click on the tab that says "reports" to see in-depth details about student participation with the lesson. There is a different tab for each different interactive activity that you include in your lesson, and the tabs show the responses that students gave. The examples on the left show the data I recieved on this lesson for the open ended question and the drawing portion of the lesson. This feature is great because it helps teachers get an idea of who in the class is participating, and it can also help them identify and areas that students might be struggling with. This feature is also helpful for grading purposes, whether a teacher wants to grade this lesson for accuracy or just for completion, this feature will allow them to do that! Nearpod also gives teachers the option to download the data report, if they want to print it out and store it in a file, or they can email the report if they want. For the quiz data, it shows which students answered each question correctly, and which students answered each question incorrectly. It also shows if there is a student that did not participate at all.

Other Features

Nearpod has a lot to offer when it comes to lesson planning. There are many features included on the site that can be helpful to both students and teachers when it comes to virtual learning. I highly reccomend taking advantage of all the different resources Nearpod has to offer!

Discussion Boards

Teachers can create their own collaboration board using the "collaborate" feature. This feature allows teachers to pose a question for their students. The example I chose asks, "what are different kinds of weather you have experienced?" Posting this discussion board allows students to think, and respond, as well as see their classmates responses. Students can use words and pictures to participate in discussion boards, and it is a great way to get students engaged. One great way to use discussion boards is for a warm-up question or for an exit ticket. Students can use computers, iPads or cell phones to enter the participation code and answer the discussion board question. This is a great way to activate student thinking at the begining of a lesson, or review at the end of a lesson.

Nearpod Library

Nearpod library allows you to look at lessons that other creators on Nearpod have made. You can choose a subject and a grade level to narrow your search. There are thousands of lessons that can be found in the Nearpod library, and this can serve as a very useful resource to teachers in order to help them save time. Teachers can also use Nearpod Library lessons as inspiration for their own lessons, and incorporate some of the ideas into their lessons. Once you find a lesson that you like, you can simply press "add to my library" and then use it in your classroom!

Quick Launch

The Quick Launch feature is great because it allows teachers to use some of the interactive features included in Nearpod lessons, without having to create an actual lesson for it. For example, if you wanted to give students an open ended question or a drawing oportunity without making an entire Nearpod lesson, you can simply press "Quick Launch." This feature is similar to the discussion board, however it has more options to build off of. Overall, Neapod is such a great website and so many awesome and useful features that can be used by teachers in their classrooms!