Blog #3: Nearpod

    My first tool that I posted about was Class dojo which was more of a communication and classroom management tool rather than a teaching and learning tool. In this blog post I will discuss the webtool nearpod and why I believe it is a great tool in the classroom. 

    During my time in my student teacher placement there were many times throughout the day where my mentor teacher would use Nearpod. Nearpod is a web tool that can be used to create presentations, engage students and create interactive lessons. All lessons on this site are premade and very easy to access. Lessons go all the way from kindergarten to higher education.Within each nearpod lessons there are several interactive points where students will get the chance either fill out a poll, draw to a prompt, answer a question or submit a message or phot to the the collaborative board. Students use their own device to complete these interactive parts of the lesson as well as follow along. The types of lessons that are on Nearpod can range from a simple math lesson to a lesson on Frida Kahlo. There really is a lesson for everybody and a teacher could use a lesson that fits them and their style. The part I love most about Nearpod is that the lessons on the site can be used as a stand alone lesson or a lesson that is more of an add on or accessory to a different lesson that may be apart of the curriculum. Nearpod has a ton of flexibility which is one of its best features.

    While I was student teaching during the month of February which was black history month I had several of my students who were black come up to me asking if we could talk about black history as a class. I saw this as a great opportunity to use Nearpod and see what resources and lessons they had to use. Sure enough there was a ton of lessons on black history. I ended up using it to teach those lessons that month and the students really appreciated it and loved it. None of this was apart of the curriculum but based on student interest and curiosity I thought it was appropriate to teach this. These lessons were interactive and engaging and best of all the generated a discussion amongst my fifth graders. As a teacher you are busy and having lessons that are premade can really make it a lot easier on you.

    I also used Nearpod for our times we had in the morning before the day started. Instead of using the short time we had before we went of to library, PE, music or art to do nothing and just wait we would use Nearpod and do this thing called time to climb. Time to climb is very similar to game kahoot which I am sure many of you familiar with. Time climb has the same format as Kahoot where you make your character and compete against one another by answering certain questions. My class was significantly below grade level when it came to math so these time to climbs would all be on multiplication facts as that was this groups biggest struggle. The mornings would be filled with laughter as the class would try to slove multiplication problems as quick as they could to climb the leaderboard. Most fifth grade math needs students to know their multiplication facts in order to succeed so this was a great tool to help students improve in this area. This was a lesson that was more of an add on to our main lessons that were apart of the schools curriculum.

    The best part of it all was that kids enjoyed it and had fun which is what they really needed. These students needed something to gte them excited about learning and Nearpod did just that. The variety and ease of teaching use that Nearpod provides is amazing and I encourage you to take a look on the website to see if there are elements you would want to incorporate into your teaching style.