Formative Assessment with Pear Deck & Nearpod

Here are your Tuesday tech tips!

This week's tech tips feature two great presentation tools that can be used to increase student engagement and gather formative assessment data from students.

Tip #1: Pear Deck

Pear Deck is an app that connects to your Google Drive account allowing you to take existing Google presentations or PDFs and turn them into interactive lessons with embedded formative assessments. Students can join the presentation and participate through their devices. You can also create new presentations in Pear Deck. Click here for more information (including some great videos) on using Pear Deck.

Tip #2: Nearpod

Nearpod is a website that functions similar to the Pear Deck app in that it allows you to add interactive formative assessment features to existing presentations or to create new presentations with these features. A Nearpod app is available for Apple and Android devices allowing students to easily join in on presentations. Click here for a video overview of Nearpod and visit Nearpod.com to get started.

So which should you use? Give both a try! Both have features that the other doesn't. For example, with Pear Deck you can ask "pop" questions that weren't initially part of the presentation and with Nearpod you can ask questions in which students can submit a drawn or handwritten response.

Google Spreadsheets for Lesson Planning & Haiku Deck (February 18, 2014)

Hello Colleagues!

Here are your Tuesday tech tips!

Per request of several staff, this week's first tip is about utilizing Google spreadsheets for keeping lesson plans!

Tip #1: Using Google Spreadsheets for Lesson Planning

A Google spreadsheet can be a great place for keeping lesson plans. Here are three reasons why Google spreadsheets are useful for lesson planning:

1. You can freeze rows or columns in spreadsheets to make headings or certain information accessible no matter where you scroll.

1. You can create drop down lists of items to fill in information (i.e. standards the lesson is addressing, chapters of a textbook, etc.).

1. You can access your lesson plans from any computer and you can share your lesson plans with colleagues.

Click here for information on creating a spreadsheet, freezing rows or columns within a spreadsheet, and creating drop down lists of items within a spreadsheet.

Tip #2: Check Out Haiku Deck!

Haiku Deck is a great tool for creating simple, yet great looking, presentations. Click here for an example. There is an iPad and web version available. Haiku Deck only allows a certain number of words per slide and pulls images that correspond to keywords on each slide that are free to use.