Using Nearpod to Enhance your Lessons

By: Kristie Hughes

What is Nearpod?
Nearpod is an awesome tool for the classroom! You can create lessons using a slide deck format and allow your students to join the lesson with a code. They will follow along on their own device, and you can even insert questions into the presentation. Nearpod will collect all the student responses and put them into a report at the very end of the lesson. The lessons can be live (teacher directed/paced) or student paced.

How can I create an account?
Go to Nearpod.com and create an account. You can even use your Google Account to get signed in. There is a free version and an upgraded version. This Tech Tip highlights the FREE version.

Navigating Nearpod:

My Library holds the lessons you have saved. You can use already created lessons, and also create your own.
Explore is where you can go to see the lessons that are already created. You can save the ones you like in your library.
Join is how your students join your Nearpod session. Each session will be automatically assigned a join code for your students to type in.
Create is the place to go to create your own Nearpod lesson from scratch.

Reports holds all the lesson reports for each time you use Nearpod - student responses.

If you are first getting started with Nearpod, go to the Explore tab to see what lessons are out there first. Type in a key word and search through the lessons. Nearpod also has Virtual Reality lessons, so feel free to search for that topic, too. If you don't want to pay for a lesson, put the word "free" in front of your search terms, and you will only see the free lessons.

When you find a lesson you like, you can add it to your library. Once it is added to your library, you can edit it or just use it as is. You can also create a lesson from scratch using the Create tab.

To show a lesson to your class, go to your Library and choose the lesson you want to show. Select either "live lesson" (teacher directed) or "student paced" to allow your students to connect to it. A join code will pop up for your students to connect. Your students need to go to the Join tab on their device to type in the code and get connected.

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