Nearpod

Do some of your students have a hard time seeing your interactive lesson or videos?  Do they have a problem staying engaged in the lesson?  With Nearpod there's not a bad seat in the house!  Nearpod is a website with its own app for tablets and smartphones that allows students to have your interactive lessons on their own devices!  Whether you are 1:1 or BYOD, all students have access to the lesson.  Teachers create their own free account with Nearpod and start browsing lessons.  There are a lot of free lessons with some paid options as well.  A teacher could also create their own lessons to meet their own specific needs.  Once a lesson is launched, the students simply enter a lesson PIN that can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, Google Classroom, e-mail within the website or app.  Once connected, the teacher controls the pace of the lesson from a computer, tablet, or smart phone.  There are also interactive components to the program.  In one lesson I have conducted, the students drew a moon to activate prior knowledge before learning about moon phases.  All the students drawings popped up on my screen in real time as they finished drawing them.  I immediately had an idea of what my students saw in their minds when thinking of the moon.  There were also videos that showed on all student's devices at the same time!  After watching the videos, my students were asked to draw the alignment of the Earth, Sun, and Moon when we were experiencing a new moon.  This was a great, easy formative assessment.  I knew which students needed to hear that part of the lesson again without anyone being embarrassed about not knowing!  Nearpod also helped my students stay engaged in the lesson because they were constantly asked to participate in the interactive components of the lesson.  Nearpod has lessons for every age level and every subject!  

Image from: http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/28823/nearpod-transforms-lectures-guided-journies