Nearpod is a way to push the boundaries of your Google slide deck to be more interactive with the students. After you create a lesson and send a link to the students (which you can also upload to Empower), you can watch in real time as they answer questions, respond to video prompts, draw or annotate, play games, fill in the blanks, match words to pictures and more.
How to create a Nearpod through Google slides
quiz
PDF viewer
DrawIt
open-ended question
collaboration board
How to start a Live Participation + Zoom lesson
note: This year I (Benes) am using one Zoom link for the year with my high school students that is posted on my web page. Using THIS version of the Nearpod lesson does not work for me because this creates a new Zoom session in the moment that you and the student enter using the Nearpod code. I prefer to run a regular "live participation" lesson after the students have already entered Zoom using my regular Zoom link.
Many other Nearpod features can be found here in the Nearpod help center.