Amazing Mobile Learning Tool- Nearpod

Hello, everyone. How are you doing? I feel it’s been a quite long time since the last posting. :P Today, I’d like to talk about M-learning and introduce an amazing app “Nearpod.”

I believe all you have some experience with mobile assisted learning or teaching. I very often online dictionary and podcast through my phone for my own learning. You will undoubtedly agree that M-learning (learning using personal electronics) allows distance learning, encouraging online interaction, access more authentic, richer learning materials and activities.  In Korean classrooms, it is not allowed for students to use wireless internet due to the difficulty of controlling imprudent use of it, but “Nearpod” is an app I’d definitely like to incorporate into my class but probably outside class time.

You can download the app through you mobile appstore or also use it on your laptop. With your Google account, you can easily sign up. One thing you have to make sure before you are going to bring it into your class is that everyone should have his own phone with the access of wireless internet.

• Search and download “Nearpod” at the appstore

• Go to the website: https://www.nearpod.com

If you are in, you will see the main three taps on the top of right.

• EXPLORE LESSONS

• MY NEARPOD

• JOIN SESSION

 

 

 



     1. EXPLORE LESSONS

Nearpod offers ready-to-use lessons you can just download and use. There are hundreds of different subjects lessons available from math to social studies. All lessons show you for what grade the lesson is for, so it is not so difficult to find suitable lessons for your leaners. But most of them you need to pay around £3-4.

      2. MY NEARPOD

Now, it’s time to create your own mobile learning. With this platform, you can create new slides or easily turn your Powerpoint, Google Slides, or PDFs into an interactive Nearpod presentation.

 

If you click “New Presentation” as bellows, you can add your slides just like using PowerPoint. Not only the content with your own words, but also content from web, Twitter, videos, Nearpod can added to create a lesson. Furthermore, you can also add activities your leaners actually can do while learning such as quizzes, drawing, poll, open-ended questions. It means Nearpod is not just a medium for conveying information one-way, but an interactive learning tool.

Basic platform

Activity platform

 

I tried making a class for “Asian culture” using slides and the functions such as Field Trip and Quiz making. 

Now you can see there is my Asian culture class made in my library(my nearpod).

    3. JOIN SESSION

 

Click “Live session” then you will be given the pin number which should be provided to your students to join this class. All your leaners have to do to join this virtual classroom is download the app and enter the pin number into “JOIN SESSION.”

    

 

 

If everyone is in (you can also see who’s in or not once you start the session), you need to control the presentation in order not to go too fast or slow considering your students.

One really good feature is that you can get immediate feedback on how your learners are doing. For example, when learners are given some questions as review on the lesson, they answer the questions and send them. Then, you can check how they did right away. It would be really nice especially in terms of open-ended questions since everyone in the session can share theirs to each other.

It seemed quite innovative to me because it implies that learning and teaching can happen anywhere just with a phone. We cannot even complain the quality of teaching. As you can see Nearpod does offer rich recourse teachers make use of. Some might worry if leaners can more easily get distracted using their phone, but we need to have a think about the advantages of learning in action. If my classroom is allowed to have wireless internet, I would try the lesson using this app, especially when my leaners seem too bored with traditional communication in classroom.