Design Something Cool with Nearpod

Participants at EduDesign Shop await proposal pitches.

About year ago I had a really amazing experience.  I was selected to participate in EduDesign Shop, a design thinking weekend organized by Jessica Artiles, a graduate student at MIT.  100 people - 25 educators, 25 policy makers, 25 designers, and 25 students - met on a Saturday morning, ready to solve a problem in education that focused on incorporating arts in STEM education, motivational structures, or retention and support for diversity in STEM fields.  It was reality show-esque:  We learned and worked all day Saturday and Sunday in teams of 4 to ideate and prototype an idea and then pitch it in a 2 minute proposal to a team of experts.  Watch my team's pitch here.  I have never had a crazier weekend.  And I loved every minute of it.

With no experience in design thinking, it was a tremendous experience for me.  Because I so enjoyed the weekend of design, I was thrilled to read the news today that the movers and shakers at Nearpod, one of my fave webtools, collaborated with the designers and thinkers at Stanford to create a high school introduction to design thinking.  The premise is very cool.  First students answer questions in order to partner with someone.  Then they tackle a PBL with a goal of creating something that will help the partner's morning get off to a better start.  The Nearpod Presentation walks the teacher and students through the process, alternately teaching some design thinking and challenging students to apply the steps to the problem at hand.  By the end of what seems like two class periods, the students should have prototyped their ideas.

The materials developed by Nearpod and Stanford are detailed enough that I could do it with little background but rich enough that I don't think I would need to supplement the project.  They supply the presentation you can use in class, a template you can alter for a different version of a task, and a teacher guide.  Take a look:



One of the things I like best is that they show how this tool can very much be used to support inquiry learning or PBLs.  At first glance Nearpod looks like it could be just a lecture enhancer.  This terrific set of tools shows that Nearpod is so much more.  I am looking forward to showcasing this presentation next month at the Educate to Innovate STEM Conference at Clarion University.

If you are a high school teacher and you use Nearpod, I recommend you check it out.  If you don't already use Nearpod, this might be a great time to take a look at this tool.

You'll Never be Bored if You Storyboard That

In February I attended a webinar, hosted by Richard Byrne, on the terrific features of Storyboard That.  I was immediately impressed by the variety and versatility of this tool.  I couldn't wait to try it out.

The picture at the left is a storyboard I created with Storyboard That.  I started with a template and customized the headings and colors of almost everything I added.  The characters are posable and customizable too.  Many (many!) backgrounds are available.  Filters are available (black and white or sepia and so on) and many features in the background can be customized.  I like the idea of creating storyboards like this one for the families of the periodic table.  It was a lot of fun to create this board and it looks like a high quality visual.

I enjoyed Storyboard That so much that I designed an extra credit project for my students to see how they liked it too.  Over spring break, students could choose one of my templates or start from scratch and make boards that show chemistry concepts.  There were many excellent and hilarious submissions.  Here is one of my favorites, by Taylor H:

  
Here is a quick list of features that I think set Storyboard That apart from other tools:

• It's so easy to use.  As my children - ages 9 and 11 - watched me make the first one, they were begging for their own accounts.  Many new tools have a steep learning curve, but this one was very simple.
• Everything is so customizable - change the hair color, shirt color, background color, poses.  With a few clicks you can get exactly what you want. 
• There is a great variety of characters, backgrounds, images, and photos.  The possibilities really are endless.
•  There are a great variety of templates to start with, but you can customize all of those too.  If you want a standard three cell starter, that's available.  Add more cells, a title or description?  That's easy.  Frayer model, web, timeline - all these and many more.
• Excellent teacher guides - you can see the example work of many other teachers with descriptions of how they use the boards in class and background information too.  

 And speaking of teacher guides, I put together 5 boards about atomic structure and a teacher guide.  These were added to the Storyboard That collection last week.  Here is an image from one of my boards about atomic number and mass number:

Storyboard That is loads of fun and a great web tool.  I almost wish there was more time left this school year so I could use it again.  Almost.  Definitely at the top of the list for next year! 

Comparing 3 Popular Presentation and Student Response Platforms

After I blogged about the new features of The Answer Pad, I received this comment on Google+.





I put together a nutshell chart comparing Nearpod, Pear Deck, and The Answer Pad because I see a lot of overlap between them.  Please don't see the YES or NO as an endorsement or lack thereof.  Sometimes a NO is a strength!  These are all great tools that I encourage teachers to try and regularly use.  I would be hard-pressed to choose any of them as the greatest.

I also just learned of a similar feedback tool called Formative.  I hope to try that one out this week or next with my students and then I will add it to the above chart.

I will put together a similar chart about Socrative and Kahoot and a new favorite, Quizizz, soon.  

Simple Stop Motion Animation with Parapara

Earlier this week I read about Parapara Animation in a headline of Free Technology for Teachers.  I am always on the lookout for a quick and simple way to animate molecular motion, so I thought I would check it out.  Richard Byrne's post gives a great overview to the features of Parapara.  

I headed over to the Parapara site and clicked around a little.  After a few failed attempts where I figured out how things work, I was able to create a simple animation of 2 water molecules.  It looks like I should have used a different colored background, but, otherwise, I am pretty happy with my first attempt.



I love that this is a free tool and does not require any account or registration.  When you finish your animation, you get a link and a QR code.  When you click your link to see the animation, you also get the embed code and the option to like it on facebook and to tweet it.

I would use this to create animations to show particle interactions to my students.  I might also give my students a challenge to show me things.  Maybe everyone gets a different chemical reaction that they have to animate?  Or groups do different chemical processes or mechanisms that they animate and share.  The tool is easy enough to show it and create something in less than a period.  It's definitely going on my "try this with students" list for next year.

Collect Student Responses Easily with the NEW The Answer Pad

One of my favorite student response systems is The Answer Pad.  This week The Answer Pad released a new version of itself, a sleeker and cleaner interface with some excellent new features.  I participated in the beta testing and am anxious to start regularly using this new version of a great tool.  The color scheme and graphics look new and fresh, but those changes are just the beginning.  

 Here's what you can look forward to:

Log in to the new version and you are greeted by a new home screen with six choices - set up answer sheets, interactive, reports, portfolio, library or news.  I clicked on Interactive first because that is the way I like to use TAP best.  Here you can send out screens for students to answer the questions you ask on-the-fly during lessons.  There are some significant changes here.  First, a new option for Quick Connect means that students no longer need accounts to use this tool.  Now they can use a 5 letter code to instantly connect.  This is a major time saver and a significant plus in the new version.  Once in interactive mode, teachers can send out screens for multiple choice, true/false, yes/no, thumbs up/down, a fill-in box, a slider, or a blank drawing for students to use for responses.  Teachers see the responses in real-time and can capture and save to a portfolio.  There are also 12 free templates available in the free version and the ability to upload templates in the premium version.  I like that users can now designate templates as favorites and those are stored in a favorites folder so if you never intend to use the music staff or clock faces, you don't have to favorite those.

In addition to using The Answer Pad interactively, you can also create answer sheets that students can use with a paper test or quiz (free version) or paperlessly (premium feature).  These will be graded by The Answer Pad and reports are stored in the account.  Here is a chart that shows some of the different features available with different accounts:

The Answer Pad is an easy to use, intuitive tool, but they offer lots of help too.  Click on LEARN in the upper right hand corner of the screen and you'll go to a tutorial area with 13 videos, each showcasing a different feature, and a presentation that you can use for training.  I clicked through the slides and learned a few things.

In my classroom I have enjoyed using this tool on iPads using an app formerly called TAPit that will now be called Answer Pad (formerly called TAPit).  The iOS app is not yet ready, but is expected at the end of April.  The Android app is available.  For now, it can be accessed on any web-enabled device.  

This was already a great tool with a generous free account.  Now it is an even better one.  If you are looking for a quick way to gauge student understanding during lessons while engaging them in the content, check out the new version of The Answer Pad.

Free Lessons in the Nearpod Content Store for Teacher Appreciation Week

I have written about how much I like using Nearpod several times before today.  Nearpod is a presentation platform combined with a student response system.  Plus, Nearpod has a  feature that allow teachers to keep tabs on whether or not students are participating in the class or checking their twitters - a small persons icon that turns red when someone leaves the herd.  This is a major plus, especially with teachers who are hesitant to try some webtools for fear that students will disappear into the internet and never look back to the day's lesson.

One of the things I like best about Nearpod is how responsive they are to the needs of teachers.  With webinars and lots of help available, a content store for ready-made lessons, and features that improve as teachers give feedback, it is obvious that they appreciate teachers.  To celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week, Nearpod is offering some lessons for free in their content store.  Each week between now and May 8, 6 more lessons will be added for a total of 24 free lessons!  With a variety of lessons, there is almost certainly something for everyone.  These are not typically free, so grab them while you can!

As a Nearpod author, I also have content in the store available for teachers to use.  My NPPs are free every day.  There are four in the store so far, but more are coming soon.  If you teach science, you might check these out too. 

Get Ready for Quizzes with Quizizz

On Friday, during our 5 minute class change between second and third periods, I saw a tweet about a tool called Quizizz that I hadn't heard of.  Intrigued, and still during the class change, I quickly searched and read about the tool.  It was one of the fastest and easiest tools to use I have ever tried; my third period class played it at the beginning of class.

Press the green Get Started button to do just that.  I searched for quizzes about the topic I was quizzing on Friday, acid and base theories.  I found several that, when previewing the questions, looked like the right content, but you can also write your own quizzes.  I  clicked on the title of the quiz and arrived at a screen where you can play the quiz or duplicate it to make changes to the questions.  If you press Play, you have a chance to add or remove 5 features -- jumble the order of the questions, show the leaderboard, show answers at the end, time the questions, and show memes after kids answer.  Press proceed, give your class a join code and the game is on.

As my students joined the quiz, they were assigned a little monster icon.  From my screen, I could see who had joined.  Playing this interactive quiz game is a little like Kahoot!  Depending on the features you enable, kids answer questions and score points based on the correctness of their response and how quickly they give it.  They can run out of time and lose the opportunity to answer too.  My students thought the memes that pop up after correct and incorrect answers were really funny.  While the game is on, I couldn't see how everyone was doing individually, but I could see a tally of right and wrong answers, so I had a sense of how the class was doing as a whole.  After the game, I saw a chart that showed how each student did on each question.

I did all of that - find it, learn about it, and use the tool - in about ten minutes.  Our game lasted another five or ten minutes.  Two of my classes played on their phones, but one class elected to use the web browser on our iPads.  Any web-enabled device would work.  I didn't need an account to launch a game or search.  Quizzes are tagged with keywords and grade levels to make them easy to search.  My students and I liked the tool so much that I created an account and will make a quiz this week and try it again.  If you're looking for a fun and easy content-review or formative assessment tool, Quizizz is worth a look!