Module 5: Nearpod

Nearpod is a web tool that allows you to create interactive presentations in a guided way, allowing students to interact with them. Don't worry if you have PowerPoint presentations, for example, as you can easily export them to Nearpod. The main objective is to involve students through interaction elements (activities, open questions, closed questions, surveys, gamified tasks...) that teachers can incorporate into the presentation itself.

Let's take an example of how to use Nearpod:

First of all, we must access the Nearpod website and register. Once we are registered we can create a new presentation through the menu "my library" or "create" and then design our presentation. Nearpod offers the possibility of creating a presentation from scratch or importing files, even PowerPoint presentations already created.

As we have already mentioned, the differential factor of Nearpod is that it can create interactive slides, allowing us to insert videos, voice clips, images, or other web content. In addition, it allows us to create activities within the tool itself to carry them out when the teacher thinks it is convenient while he/she is giving a presentation. The activities that it allows us to design are: open questions, questionnaires, surveys, filling in spaces, generating moments of debate through blank slides where the students' opinions can be seen as the teacher gives the presentation, drawing, matching pairs of images and, finally, the time to climb mode. This mode allows us to gamify the presentation by creating questions about the content of the presentation and making the students compete with each other to see who can get to the top of the mountain first.

With the use of Nearpod, for example, all students have to answer the teacher's questions/quizzes of any kind. It also encourages feedback and feedback based on their answers.

A great thing is that the teacher can see in real-time the number of connected students and their names. Also, after each activity, the teacher can see how many (and even who) have participated. This encourages interaction. At the end of each activity, the results are displayed and at the end of the presentation, you can also get a report with the participation and answers of each student.

Nearpod's pedagogical recommendations:

One of the great challenges that teachers face when giving a presentation (especially when the session is online), is to know if their students are paying attention, are understanding, and also to encourage their participation. In some cases, it is obvious, as some of the students are likely to participate with valuable contributions that enrich the class. However, at other times we do not know if they are paying attention and absorbing what we want to transmit. These situations of uncertainty on the part of the teaching staff are multiplied when the learning takes place at a distance and the classes are given in a non-face-to-face format. On many occasions, we do not know who is on the other side of the screen. This is where Nearpod offers us a great advantage, as we can guide the students to interact with the class through the activities integrated with the presentation, thus providing spaces for all the students to show their opinions, establish judgments, and have their voices within the presentation.

This tool can also help us to encourage the practice of "retrieval practice". Through questions, quizzes, or small activities, previous knowledge can be linked to what is being taught at that moment.