Creating "Pear-y" Engaging Lessons

Eric Curts, from Control Alt Achieve, explained this week how to use Pear Deck, a Google Chrome add-on that is completely free. By adding the interactive elements Pear Deck offers to your existing Google Slides, students are able to actively participate during classroom instruction. Teachers have the ability to insert many different types of questions, including written responses, multiple choice, number answers, drawings, draggables, and fully functioning websites. Some of these tools are included in pre-made slides and others can be added to existing slides.

In order to try out Pear Deck, I created a Google Slides document that reviewed the Distributive Property, a concept we have been working on for about a week. It was very easy to insert the interactive tools onto the slides. I searched for the tools I wanted within the beginning, during, or end of lesson categories to insert a pre-made slide. I could also insert a question using the "Ask Students a Question" choices. If you are inserting a question from the "Ask Students a Question" choices, you will only see a bar as show below appear on the slide. You can add your question to the top of the slide. Answer choices will only appear on the student device during the presentation.

I was able to try out a presentation using my cell phone. As an instructor, I was able to track the number of students in the lesson, see student responses and choose to display those responses on the screen. As a student, I would follow along with the presentation as the instructor advanced the slides, select answers, and flip between the content and questions.

Using Pear Deck reminds me a lot of my limited experience with Nearpod. Both programs allow for teachers to create interactive presentations to engage students in the learning process. There are several benefits to Pear Deck. One, it is free. Two, it doesn't limit the amount of lessons you can create. Three, it syncs with Google Classroom.

I am still a novice at this tool, but I am looking forward to continued practice and implementing it with my students. If you want to read the detailed step-by-step directions provide by Eric Curts follow the first link below. He also created a follow-up after an update made to explain the new templates. You can find this blog in the second link below.

http://www.controlaltachieve.com/2017/12/peardeck-addon.html

http://www.controlaltachieve.com/2018/01/peardeck-templates.html#more

FINALLY, Eric is hosting a FREE webinar explaining additional Google Slides Add-ons on Thursday, Jan. 18th from 3:30-4:30. Check on the information below.

Supercharge Google Slides with Add-Ons January 18, 2018 - 3:30pm to 4:30pm EST
Webinar link - http://ti.apps.sparcc.org/videopd/20180118-slides-addons (click to register and watch live webinar)
Description: Google Slides is already pretty awesome, but with free Add-Ons you can make it even awesome-er! Learn how to find, install, use, and manage Add-Ons for Slides including tools for finding and inserting free images, creating a photo slideshow from a Drive folder, creating interactive presentations with Pear Deck, batch formatting of text and images, and more.