Nearpod: A teaching tool

The Nearpod website logo. 

Nearpod is a tool that helps teachers make their classrooms more interactive, whether in the physical classroom or virtual. You can create lessons, activities, and add questions to videos (if you choose to have a lecture video). I decided to create a lesson, and there are many different tools on Nearpod to enhance your lesson. You have a choice of making your own slides on Nearpod, uploading ones you've created on Google Slides, adding pre-made sites and slides, and uploading PDFs, images, and audio! I imported my Google Slides onto Nearpod and added one of each feature that Nearpod offers. They have interactive feature such as videos (from YouTube, Nearpod, etc.), BBC videos, web content, Nearpod 3D, simulation, and a virtual fieldtrip. There are two categories under the "Activities" section: quizzes & games, and discussions. In the "quizzes & games" feature, you can choose a multiple choice quiz, drawing, fill in the blank, memory test, time to climb, and matching. In the "discussions" feature, you can add a collaborate board, Flip videos, a poll, and open-ended questions. When you are ready to present your lesson, make sure to save and exit. When viewing your lesson library, you can hover over your lecture and select either "live participation" or "student paced." So, students can do this lesson on their own as they finish up another assignment while others are still working OR you, as the teacher, can present it and when it comes to the interactive slides, it will show the complete activity on the student's screens so they can all complete it.  

As previously mentioned, Nearpod has lots of tools for teachers to use to make their lectures more interactive. I imported my lecture on Parts of Speech created using Google Slides into Nearpod to add activities. I added the collaborative board, a video that includes 2 open-ended questions, and the time to climb activity. The Nearpod library has so many pre-made games to choose from, created for all grade levels and subjects! I appreciated how many grade levels and subjects were represented on this platform. If you want to take a look at my lesson, click here! 

I had a great experience using Nearpod. I believe that it is a wonderful tool to help with student engagement and participation in the classroom. It is suitable for ALL grade levels and multiple content areas, so I would think any student would have fun using this tool. I will most definitely find ways to incorporate Nearpod in to my future classrooms. There is so much potential for this tool! 

Remind: A communication tool

For this post, I decided to check out a communication tool called Remind. Remind is a private messaging platform that aims to help students, parents, teachers, and administrators communicate with everyone simultaneously. Remind can be accessed on the web using the site or by downloading the app, which is available on Google Play and the Apple App Store. The app and site are both free. There are many apps that can be integrated into Remind such as Google Classroom, Google Drive, One Drive, Survey Monkey, and more! 

A blue box with white 'R.' The Remind app logo.

Joining Remind was very easy! You can sign up with an email address or use your Google account. Once my account was created, I added a class titled "Practice with Remind." I added a few of my college classmates into the group so we could have some practice using the tool and communicating through it. It was very easy to add people into your class; once inside your class, you can click the "add people" button and select what role you want them to have: student, teacher, or parent. Then you type their name and email into the box and click "add people" at the bottom. When you create a class, you are also given a unique class code that you can give out to those you want to join, and they can do it themselves! One thing I really liked about Remind is that you can post class announcements as well as privately communicate with each individual person. A downfall to Remind that I noticed was that you only get so many characters for announcements and messages, which was a bummer because they were not a lot of characters. When sending messages, the screen reminds me of a text message chat on my iPhone, which was a feature I liked. It can make students more engaged in sending messages. There are chat reactions as well, which are a fun feature to the sending and receiving messages. There is also a section titled "files" in which you can add files for everyone to look at. 

One of my classmates sent me a message from the Remind app, and I was able to view it immediately on the website. Her feedback stat
ed "I really like this tool! I like that you can send messages to both the whole class or to individuals depending on your needs. It also helps students stay on top of their work, especially since not all students carry a planner around or check Canvas everyday. Thank you for showing me this tool!" If the student, teacher, parent, or administrator has notifications turned on, a notification will be received every time an announcement is posted and/or if you receive a message. In the "account settings" section, there are preferences for notifications as well as options to add widgets, see message history, and check out archived classes. In my honest opinion, I think I will continue my research and practice using other communication apps before I decide on which one I will use in my future classroom. I would let other teachers know that this tool is great overall, other than the maximum number of characters not being more than approximately a paragraph. I would also let teachers know that, in my opinion, I think this tool would work best with a smaller group of students.