Nearpod: Keep your Resources Near

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Image credit: Nearpod

Once upon a time, teachers used to have loads of papers with resources for their classes. When they felt busy, they asked their colleagues in their schools for new activities. Their boards were always full of ideas from their school's library......

I think most of you either took part in this story or saw it in reality. I can assume that you are able to complete it with what happened after the spread of mobile learning, am I right?! 😄

As you know, mobile learning or as it's known by m-learning is a learning process across electronic devices especially the mobile ones, such as laptops and the mobile phones. This turning point, in the educational process and in ELT in particular, changes the face of learning. Now, teachers can use e-boards, have e-resources and provide students with code to join an online class through different platforms such as Nearpod.

So, if you would like to be updated with new techniques of teaching and preparing for your class and to be a hero in the latest version of the story, this post is for you.👈

Nearpod has free and premium plans for teachers all over the world in all subject and for almost all learning stages from Kindergarten to higher education.  

How can Nearpod help you in your teaching process?

✅ It is a user-friendly platform that doesn't overwhelm you with lots of things to do for your first experience of creation. What you need to do when you first visit Nearpod is to "play with a demo" to see how you and your student can use the platform.

Image credit: Nearpod


Image credit: Nearpod


✅ If you are busy and you need a pre-made lesson or activity to use or edit, you have one of two options via Nearpod :
  • To "Explore Resources", you can find many pre-made resources that you can choose from.


Image credit: Nearpod


Image credit: Nearpod

  • Or to use the "Quick Launch" option where you can just write questions, use timer for an activity or use the collaborate board.
Image credit: Nearpod


✅ One of the useful tools in Nearpod is using the Collaborate Board either from the Quick Launch or via integrating it in a lesson you create. In the Collaborate Board, you can insert any form of media, e.g., picture or video with or without a text. This encourages your students to interact with you in a live m-learning experience.

Image credit: Nearpod

✅ You can create an activity, a lesson or a video on Nearpod. What's more is your creation of a lesson on Google slide. For activities, you have a number of options to choose from, such as matching pairs or even to draw the activity yourself. ✍



Image credit: Nearpod


In the lesson I created on Nearpod, I just added the slides I prepared for my students with the video they should watch. 

Image credit: Nearpod


Here you can find a link to preview the lesson. You can also find below the code of the lesson, if you would like to put on the student's hat and try it 🤠. In case you can't access it because of the expiry date of the code, you can preview it and have a look on the below video I used in the lesson.

Image credit: Nearpod



The video is from https://www.ted.com/


Nearpod's limitation:

Despite the fact that Nearpod offers collaborative m-learning tools through creating interactive activities, lessons, assessments and curricula, it has a limitation that affects one of its tools. 

As you may notice, Nearpod is distinguished by its Collaborate Board. One of its benefits is how it involves students in a live integration with their teachers and with each other, a point that won't be easily achieved because of the the following:

  • Students can't comment on each other's posts except if you have a premium plus option.
  • The space of the screen sometimes limits the discussion.
  • You may need to check comments every now and then as there isn't any notification option for the coming comments.
Although these limitations may affect the powerful option of Collaborate Board, but I think that Nearpod is one of the outstanding platforms that enhances m-learning.

Share your experience with Nearpod in the comments and how it helps students in your context.

Comments

  1. Yousra AhmedApril 29, 2022 at 1:05 PM

    I like the idea of the Collaborate Board, I will give it a try. I think it will increase my students' interaction.

    ReplyDelete

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