Tags

, , , , ,

Do you like encouraging your students to work out problems, draw diagrams, or answer questions in class?  How about assessing what your students know in the middle of a lesson to see how well they understood what you were trying to convey.  I was recently invited to participate in the Apple Education Leadership Summit and was trained on a number of apps designed specifically to extend upon existing educational workflows.  One app that I was impressed with was Nearpod – which allows a teacher with an iPad to present images, slides, videos, (etc.) from their device to a classroom of iOS devices (or website) and also wirelessly to an Apple TV. This is interesting in and of itself, but what is unique is that the communication is bidirectional and students can take quizzes, complete surveys, respond to questions with text, or even draw pictures – which are then collected by the teacher’s iPad – and then can be shared back to the class.  The results are then tabulated on the Nearpod website where they can either be viewed or exported into a spreadsheet, and then into your grade-book (or program).
There are a few places where I’d like the system to be expanded, including having a virtual “pointer” to highlight specific parts of an image or slide, and a “presentation mode” where the tabulated quiz results are not displayed on the Apple TV, but otherwise this app seems very well thought through.