What is Nearpod?
Nearpod is like an interactive PowerPoint that allows a teacher to be in control of the presentation that appears on students' computers, laptops, or mobile devices. The teacher creates a presentation that has built in interactive features to increase student engagement. Some of these features include a poll, multiple choice quiz, drawing, and short response. The teacher can see as students submit their answers or ideas and then choose to share ones they want to acknowledge. Data from what students respond with is tracked into reports that the teacher can access later.
I first shared with students a 3 minute video clip I found on YouTube that is a time lapse video of driving from Chicago to Santa Monica on old Rt. 66. This helped fill the time of laptops logging in and troubleshooting login problems. Of course the mobile cart hadn't been plugged in before this, so I was stuck with a cart of laptops in which half were at the end of their charge. All worked out though and students were directed to go to the Nearpod website.
Once at the website, I gave them the code to access the lesson. First, students were give a chance to respond to a poll about if they had ever been on a long road trip before. I shared with them the pie chart that reported the results. Then, students read 2 simple paragraphs to get some background knowledge about what Route 66 was. Students were then shown a picture of the jackrabbit, one of the weird roadside attractions along the road. I had a boring sentence written and asked the students to type a sentence that had stronger word choice. As students submitted their responses, I read through them with the general ed teacher and once they were all in we shared a few. Nearpod allows the teacher to select an answer and share it so it appears on everyone's screen. Students verbally shared compliments for different shared responses.
Next, students saw a picture of the bridge that bends halfway through and saw 3 sentences I had written. Using the draw feature, they underlined the words they thought I used that were strong word choice. After submitting them and sharing as a class, we moved on to the pictures. Students saw 5 different odd roadside attractions that they had the chance to scroll through and study at their own pace. They worked in partners to write 2-3 sentences that described their attraction with strong word choice. To end the lesson, we shared some of the strong sentences we saw and the class gave compliments about why they thought it was strong word choice.
I can't wait to use Nearpod again! There are a few things I would remember the next time I use it. There is a little arrow in the upper right hand corner when you are in live mode. Students need to be directed not to click it or it exits them from the presentation. This happened during the lesson however it was easy to have the student log right back in in a matter of seconds. Unless you upgrade to the paid version, you are limited in how much content you can have in your presentation. There are also some other great features that only come in the paid version. In all, I think this would be a fantastic way to replace those horrible worksheets in the social studies and science packets.