Teachers are looking for active participation strategies to engage students.
Pear Deck is an Add-on (a third party app) in Google Slides and has a feel of a live, interactive PowerPoint. Students can respond to your questions or prompts in real-time or asynchronously in the ‘student paced mode”. Teachers create the presentation then provide students a code to access. Students do not need an account to join sessions. Students follow the lesson on their device with the ability to respond through typing responses, choosing responses, drawing pictures, and more.
Teachers can create their slides in Google Slides or upload a PowerPoint into Google slides and resave as a Google Slides file in order to see the Add-on tab. Open Pear Deck and add the interactive elements. Students can respond to short answer questions, answer multiple choice questions, answer numerically in math class, drag icons or draw an image to respond to a question. The teacher must initiate the PearDeck lesson from a computer but students may use any device since it is browser based.
The free version allows for interactive questions, assessments, and polls, as well as providing pre-made templates. The paid version allows additional features, such as the teacher dashboard and the ability to add slides while teaching, add audio, drag objects and draw. Pear Deck even offers a customized version to work with a school district’s learning management systems (LMS). Blackboard is a LMS, for example.
Pear Deck is being used by teachers and student interns in the schools.
Many of the ISTC301 students use Pear Deck to deliver lessons in class. A key assignment in ISTC301 is a Practical Teaching Experience in which students integrate technology (theory and standards, too) into a lesson and then teach it to the class. (Bonnie Brown, Educational Technology and Literacy Dept.)
Pear Deck 1st Grade Examples Elizabeth O’Kelly,1st grade teacher, Team Leader, Luxmanor ES, Montgomery Co.
Resources:
Pear Deck_Getting Started Step-by-step directions (Deborah Fuller, COE)
Peardeck.com https://help.peardeck.com/getting-started-with-pear-deck-slides