So now comes the hard part. Actually presenting a technology driven subject, using technology to deliver it and getting a wide spectrum of teachers to work together to learn this new tool.
First, though I think that nearpod can transform the classrooms of our teachers, and I am fully in support of it, we almost got shot down because of pricing. Nearpod just released their “Education Edition” which is supposed to give more features to teacher and be affordable... The pricing I got at first was crazy and basically would spend our entire app budget on this one app, which meant I really had to win over the principal before anything else. I spent alot of time in his office using and showing him how nearpod could really transform pedagogy and allow for immediate assessment of knowledge and understanding.
My first success was getting the Princapal, who also teaches a Senior Bible class, to use Nearpod for one of his presentations. All of his students also have iPads so he said he would try it... though he admits that he is really a “Gutenberg” at heart... He transformed one of his lessons and presented it to a small class of 12 students... the kids loved it and he tried all of the little add-ins.. polling, quizzes, website links, etc... they ate it up and he loved getting the “real time” feedback of their understanding of the materials.
My second success was negotiating a package with Nearpod that fits into our budget and opens the door for a school-wide implementation next year... I am so excited.... now all I have to do is train my faculty and get them excited....
First, though I think that nearpod can transform the classrooms of our teachers, and I am fully in support of it, we almost got shot down because of pricing. Nearpod just released their “Education Edition” which is supposed to give more features to teacher and be affordable... The pricing I got at first was crazy and basically would spend our entire app budget on this one app, which meant I really had to win over the principal before anything else. I spent alot of time in his office using and showing him how nearpod could really transform pedagogy and allow for immediate assessment of knowledge and understanding.
My first success was getting the Princapal, who also teaches a Senior Bible class, to use Nearpod for one of his presentations. All of his students also have iPads so he said he would try it... though he admits that he is really a “Gutenberg” at heart... He transformed one of his lessons and presented it to a small class of 12 students... the kids loved it and he tried all of the little add-ins.. polling, quizzes, website links, etc... they ate it up and he loved getting the “real time” feedback of their understanding of the materials.
My second success was negotiating a package with Nearpod that fits into our budget and opens the door for a school-wide implementation next year... I am so excited.... now all I have to do is train my faculty and get them excited....
Fast forward... it has been two weeks and I am finally getting my faculty together for a PD session. I have four sets of PDF pages (3 pages in each set) about four different subjects. I have created a scenario where they need to take these three pages, and in groups put together a presentation to teach the subject in the pages back to the whole faculty using nearpod..
So the Agenda is simple... first model the process... I have three PDF pages of material I took from huybblesite.org and am going to create a quick presentation about the Hubbel Telescope.
I will open with a the quick Panasonic Challenge video... this is a great video to get us in the ‘technology’ mindset... I know that even this video will get some of my teachers to start grumbling...
So I play the video.. introduce Nearpod and have them all watch as I show them the three PDF pages that I downloaded... Then I display on the screen (my iPad is hooked to the projector via my HDMI dongle) me going to the Nearpod.com website, logging in, and clicking on CREATE which takes me to http://np1.nearpod.com/presentations.php. Here they see my library of presentations. I explain to them that not only do you get a personal library, with the Education Edition, teachers can share presentations with other teachers in our school. I then click on create a new presentation and I upload the three PDF pages that I have shown them into Nearpod and now they are the first three pages in my presentation... I have also created a simple title page in Word and saved it in PDF format... I upload it and make it slide 1... I display the information on the first PDF (How it works) and come up with a couple learning assessment questions so I insert a Poll using the Add button... then select Poll... I pose an opinion question about the Hubbel and insert it after the first PDF slide... then we look at the next PDF slide.. this slide talks about the Birth of Planets... I insert a Q&A slide and pose a question about this page. Then I look at the third PDF, the one about Dark Energy... The website has a very cool, and short video about Deep Energy that I captured... I insert a new slide and choose Video and upload the Dark Energy video. I then decide that we have given alot of information so we need to assess again.. this time I insert a quiz where I create 3 questions.. 1 True/False and 2 Multiple choice about the Dark Energy page.
This all took a little longer than I had planned as there were a number of questions... so this segment was almost 15 min long when it was planned for half of that... anyhow, we pressed on... I showed them how to save the presentation and then wanted them to experience it as a student so I launched the presentation and left the projector showing my view as the teacher... I had each of them login to the presentation as students so they could see what we just created. I pushed the first slide to them... then the poll.. .they all answered and the results showed on the board in real time... then I sent the next slide... let them look at it for a minute and sent them the Q&A... they answered both questions and those answers displayed on the board in real time... they were all pretty stoked about this... I then pushed them the last slide... and after a minute of looking it over, i sent them the 2 min section of the Dark Energy video that I had captured... it ran on each of their iPads...
(Note: I forgot to have them all bring earphones or earbuds... so having the video play on 28 iPads at one time... some just a little off due to IP Lag was a little distracting.. but once everyone turned their speakers down to the lowest setting, it was manageable..)
Once the video was over I pushed the quiz to them.. they each completed they simple quiz and I showed them how the results were displayed on the teacher’s view...
Everyone was pretty excited... even my reluctant teachers... now was the moment of truth though.. They had to try it for themselves...
I broke the room up into 5 groups of 5-6 teachers each... and made sure that my younger, more tech oriented teachers were evenly distributed between the groups. The assignment went up on the screen... each group had to create login’s at Nearpod.com... then as a group download a set of PDF’s that I had stored in folders on my Google Drive... I gave each group the URL to the Publicly shared folder for their group and this gave them access to three PDF pages, each group on different topics. Their job was to, as a group, distill the information and decide how to ‘teach’ the subject back to the whole faculty in a 5 minute presentation. They could just push the three PDF slides into nearpod and do what we had just modeled... add polls, quizzes, etc.. and then get ready to present it back to the group by having everyone log into their presentation as students. Each group was given 20 minutes. they all hunkered down in their own corners of the room with a couple groups going to the room next door.
My hope was that they would be creative and use the 3 PDF pages as a starting point but go out and find other supporting materials... videos, pictures, etc... so their presentation would become more than what I had supplied... I wanted to get their creative juices flowing. Now my staff is pretty competitive, so having them present back to back really upped the ante.
When the 20 minutes was up, I had the groups come back into the main training room. We went through each group and as I had hoped, all the groups had garnered additional resources and information beyond what I had supplied and they each put together and presented the information to the whole group.
All of the faculty would log into the presenting group’s presentation using the student code so every group was able to experience, first hand,. Nearpod from the teacher’s and the student’s perspective.
The feedback i got was very positive. The most frequent comment was how much fun they had collaborating and actually ‘doing’ something... not just listening and watching.
Most, if not all, teachers were excited about using the app in their classes.. I did a simple exit poll on PollDaddy that asked if they thought they would use the app for their lessons and most said yes. I also asked how comfortable they were with using the Nearpod app. (Very comfortable, comfortable, with a little practice, not at all). 80% were comfortable or very comfortable. Only one teacher listed “not at all” and the remaining thought that they just needed a little more time with the app.
I am excited that this went so well. I was really expecting alot more push back particularly from my veteran teachers. Only the Juniors and Seniors have iPads this year, so there will only be some of the teachers who will be able to actually start using Nearpod this year, but in August, the rest of the high school are getting their iPads so 90% of the classes next fall could potentially use the app. I am hopeful that this will spawn an chain reaction among the staff.
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