Technology Lesson Demonstration

Technology Lesson Demonstration Explanation

The program I selected to use in my lesson is called Nearpod. Nearpod is a program that allows for presentations to become interactive through the use of open-ended questions, matching, quizzes, drawings, collaborative boards, and polls. These different activities can be plugged directly into the lessons to give students formative assessments with immediate feedback and collaboration. Nearpod gives students live participation to keep them engaged during a lesson and to do check-ins to insure understanding before moving forward. Nearpod has been beneficial in teaching lessons in all content areas. I have been using the Nearpod program to teach base ten blocks. This has been helpful and added to lessons. Nearpod gives me the ability to break up my lesson into different sections and also allow the students to participate in the instruction. I found Nearpod to add to my lessons on base ten blocks and not take away from it. Nearpod gives students some ownership over what they are learning and motivates students to participate without the pressures of speaking in front of the class.

Nearpod offers many different opportunities for differentiation and access to content. Nearpod offers different options for responses. As I know my students and that they may not be able to type out an answer, I can set up drawing and picture matching options for them to complete formative assessments through Nearpod. Nearpod also offers two different presentation options. Presentations can be live with live responses, or can be student-paced with a turn-it date to have the interactive slides completed. When using the live presentation option, I can control the pace of the lesson and can assist students through reading the questions and guiding them through. I would use this especially when first introducing a new concept. When using the student-paced option, students can access nearpod during scheduled times throughout the day and work at their own pace. This is beneficial for both high achieving and lower ability students to focus and answer questions. There is also an option to pre-record the directions and slides of the presentation to help students who are beginning readers. As a teacher, this helps me to assess my students on the content being taught and not their reading ability. I have found Nearpod to be very effective for all learners' engagement. It also allows me to see the areas we need to revisit in real time and find focus points for future lessons.

Check out Nearpod: https://nearpod.com/