Today I am going to introduce a very useful tool Nearpod to make your class more engaging and allow you to interact with your students in the classroom through multimedia devices. Here is the link: http://np1.nearpod.com
The most unique feature of Nearpod is that it allows teachers to integrate simple files (such as slides and pdf) with a variety of other activities such as polling, writing, linking, sharing, etc. Students can interact with the teacher in real time through their account, and the teacher can see what the students are learning and quickly count the problems that arise during the lesson.
I will use my own slides and classroom activities designed for my peer teaching as a demonstration to show you how to use Nearpod's features.
First, I uploaded my slides to Nearpod. At this point my students were able to see my slides via their own devices and accounts. As shown below:
But that seemed far from enough, because my course had a polling session and a time-limited writing session in addition to what was presented on the slides. Using Nearpod's polling fuction, I was able to pre-craft each question and option and give the students a certain amount of time to vote. After the poll, the students and I were able to immediately see the results of the poll we had just taken. This is very effective in saving valuable class time. For example, I need to ask the students to choose the most powerful superhero in their minds. Then I need to enter my question in the poll function, as well as the options. The demonstration is as follows:
After clicking the button to save, I was able to drag this poll to where I wanted it to appear, for example:
Afterwards, you can check the classroom activities you have created using the preview function:
Since I have a creative task that requires students to write an short essay about a superhero's backstory in 10 minutes, I can choose "Open ended question" in "Discussion" section, then enter my writing task and my requirements:
As you can see in the students' accounts, they can enter their writing in the box and submit it on time:
In addition, Nearpod provides multiple-choice, drawing, filling the blank, matching games, class discussion, and other activities. Teachers can also use it to enrich their teaching materials with images, audio, video, 3D objects, VR trips, and so on.
Through my introduction and demonstration, you may find that this teaching website not only meets the needs of teachers and students in class, but also provides teachers with many new ideas for their lesson design. If you want to make your teaching more efficient, smart, and fun, please feel free to explore any of the features in Nearpod!
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