Teaching Apps

For this post, I am exploring an app that can be useful in class presentations, Nearpod. I found this to be interesting, as I could include parts of existing lectures and add to them with build in activities.

Building a new presentation was fairly easy to add in slides. The options were clearly labeled and easy to understand. In this example, I made a very quick intro slide. Then I added a short PDF to the next slide for them to flip through. The last slide had a comment board to post their thoughts on the topic with an example image given. Other activity options also included things like quizzes, polls and other interactive activities.

There were a few delays in the process, as I found it took awhile to save the work and would not let me proceed to the next part of sharing it. The second issue which is good and bad. It allowed me to have a link to send out to students to work on it, but it is only active for a set time period. That is great for the class activity, but not so much for this blog post. So I have a PDF shown.

I do think some apps add a nice activity level for in-class and online lessons. They do need to be kept focused on the lesson at hand and not just used to entertain the students. I also look to see which have limited access requirements. If each student needs to download the app to participate, that is usually a no. Too many of the companies’ collect data, and I want to keep the students as limited as possible.

Overall, fun to have some activities they can interact with. I will probably use them more online than in class, but one never knows what opportunity for a lesson may come up.

Design Concepts_Nearpod.pdf

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