Nearpod

Nearpod is a teacher-to-student synchronous screen platform that features interactive presentation, collaboration, and quizzing functions between iPads, iPods, and iPhones. Prior to engaging the app, users must choose between the formation of a “teacher” or “student” account and then create a profile. “Teacher” users can then create and maintain access to a personal library of their own presentations, polls, quizzes, activities, and images by uploading their content to the Nearpod website (www.nearpod.com).

“Student” users enter a pin number, which grants them access to the screen of the Nearpod “teacher” user. As the “teacher” user selects material from the library, the desired material appears on the “student” users’ devices. Although the “teacher” user sets the pace at which they navigate through the content, both student and teacher users may engage and share material as desired in real time.

Ideas for Classroom Application

1. As a hook for a lesson, teachers can use Nearpod’s polling activity to evaluate students’ prior knowledge or opinions on class topics.
2. Teachers can load a PowerPoint or PDF file and have students view the document in Nearpod as they conduct a mini-lesson about the document’s content. This will allow teachers to provide all students with an electronic copy of the material.
3. Teachers can have students respond to open-ended questions using Nearpod.
4. Within a lesson, teachers can instruct students to share their answers to formative questions on the lesson material via the whiteboard drawing function in Nearpod. The teachers can then share the best answers back to the class.
5. Teachers can lead a classroom discussion by sharing current events and news stories via the web-page sharing and video-sharing functions in the Nearpod app.

Screenshots