Nearpod

Nearpod is a great tool to use in the classroom for various reasons. Some of those reasons are... it enables 100% student participation, enhances ELL instruction, creates digital citizens, and promotes skills such as communication, collaboration, AND creativity. Sounds pretty awesome right? Nearpod not only allows students to learn interactively, but also teachers can assess students in real time. Nearpod has endless resources for pre-written lesson plans that cover any and every topic you may need to teach. On Nearpod you can choose what grade level you are teaching and it gives you endless lesson plans to choose from. Nearpod does have a free version with limited lesson plans to choose from, but there are a couple paid versions as well. The gold package costs $10 per month, the platinum costs $29 a month, but there is also a school and district package that most principals are willing to purchase if you ask. Students can connect to Nearpod with any device they have. They can also do the lessons at home if needed. The lessons have several ways to assess the students. They have open-ended questions, multiple choice, even questions where they can draw to show their answer. They also have a game titled "Time to Climb" where they can compete with their peers to complete a task or answer questions about a certain topic. Wait...There's more! Nearpod also offers virtual field trips to 450+ locations that are attached to a lesson plan. This is a way for students to be actively learning if they can not actually go to the location that is being taught. After the students have completed the lessons, the teacher receives a session report that shows the teacher where each student is in their learning. 

I learned so much about Nearpod... I learned that there are more than there are endless pre-made lessons. I also did not know that Nearpod offered virtual field trips. I plan to use Nearpod in my future classroom on a regular basis to give students an opportunity to actively learn and work at their own pace. I look forward to using the virtual field trips when I am teaching about a certain location. I plan to use Nearpod in numerous ways in my future classroom and I hope that you will too!