In this video I'm going to show you how to significantly increase engagement in
your classroom by making interactive Google Slides using a program called
Pear Deck. If I ask students to raise their hand in response to a question,
I'll be lucky to get maybe 50% participation. And when I call on a
student, I only end up hearing from that single student's perspective. Only hearing
from around half of my class simply isn't enough. In order for all students
to learn, teachers need to be using a variety of active participation
strategies to engage students in different ways. Pear Deck is an
incredibly easy to use Google Slides add-on that you can use to transform
your Google Slides from a one-way lecture to an interactive conversation
with your students. Pear Deck is a clear example of how education technology can
increase engagement and participation and make your class a more equitable
space for all students. I can honestly say that whenever I use Pear Deck I
consistently get nearly 100 percent participation from my students. This is
my YouTube channel for The New EdTech Classroom where I provide practical
ideas and tips for how to transform your class with education technology.
Using Pear Deck, students can respond to short answer questions that you asked, respond
to multiple choice questions, answer numerically in math class, and even drag
icons or draw an image to respond to a question. First I'm going to show you
what interactive slides look like from a teacher perspective as well as a student
perspective so you get a sense of what it would be like to use it in the
classroom. Then I'll show you how to use Pear Deck to set up interactive Google
Slides as well as talk about some of the most important settings that you need to
know to get started using it in your classroom. In order to effectively use
interactive Google Slides, you're obviously going to need to have students
on laptops. It can also work to have students working in pairs.
As the teacher, I have the ability to advance the slides that my students will
see on their screen. So you can see on this slide that I've written a
question that my students will respond to. Now let's look at what that would
look like if I were a student. Here you now see what the Google Slide looks like
on the student end. They're going to see the question that they need to answer as
well as a box where they can record their response. So let's see what happens
when I have a few student answers to these questions. On my teacher slide, I
can now see that four out of the four students that are currently in this
Slides presentation have responded to my question.
In order to see their answers I can click 'Show Responses.' If I want to get
students attention and ask them to stop responding to the question, I can hit the
'Lock Screens' button and that will lock the students' Google Slide presentation
so that they're no longer able to respond. After students have responded to
the question, I'll project these answers in front of the class and then we'll
have a quick discussion about what people notice. I've also used this as a
way for students to take notes based on what they've learned from their
classmates so that they can build off each other's knowledge. On this next
slide you'll see that I'm asking students to read an article to answer
the question that I'm posing. As you can see on the student facing slide, the
website URL has been pushed directly to a student's Google Slide so they can now
read the article that you want them to read and respond to a question or
discuss the article. Now I'm back on my teacher facing slide and I'm going to
ask students to respond to a question in multiple-choice form. Here you can see
what the multiple choice options look like as a student. Later I'm going to
show you how you can customize the answer choices that students see. When I
click 'Show Responses,' we can now see as a class how we responded to a question.
Multiple choice questions can be used in all kinds of ways like checking for
understanding, seeing what students already know, or providing them with a
choice about where they want to go next. In this teacher facing slide I'm asking
students to respond to a question numerically. Here on the student facing
slide you'll see that a student can input a number into their answer box.
When I click 'Show Responses,' the dots represent the numbers that my students
enter. Similar to multiple-choice, a numerical answer can be used as a check
for understanding in a math class or for a question that would require a
numerical response in another subject. I've set up this question to have
students draw their response as an answer. Here on the student facing slide,
you'll see students have a variety of different drawing tools
that they can use to sketch out their answer to a question. Now when I choose
to show the answers, I can see and project all the drawings that students
drew on their slides. On this teacher facing slide, I'm asking students to drag
an icon to the box that represents their answer choice. Here you can see I've set
it up so that students can select from either a thumb up or thumb down that
they can drag to the box to represent their answer. And back on my teacher
facing slide, when I select 'Show Responses,' we can see where everyone
dragged their icon. You can use this for a quick check for understanding or as a
way for students to vote on a particular issue or topic. Here's another example of
a slide I created for students to be able to drag an icon. This is a model of
how I could use the draggable icons as a way to give students choice about where
they want to go next. A student would drag their icon to the choice that they
have selected and then when I go back to the teacher slide and show the answers,
we can all see where everyone in the class voted. In this last slide, I'm going
to close out the lesson by having students write a short answer response.
Here you'll see that I also inserted a timer to let students know how long they
would have to construct their response for this exit ticket. You'll see at the
bottom of the slides that it shows how many students in the class have
responded to the question you've asked. I'll often use this as an added
motivator for my class. I'll say to them, "Hey we have just a couple more people
that need to respond to really make sure that I get that 100%," and it works pretty
much every single time. Once I'm ready to end the session, I can click 'End,' title it
so that I can find it when I'm in my Pear Deck account. If I click 'Publish
Student Takeaways,' when I end the session you'll see that I have a link to their
responses that's now in my Google Drive that I could choose to share directly
back to Google Classroom for my students to see or I could give them to my
individual students. 'Student Takeaways' is also just a way to hold students
accountable for what they wrote and how they participated in the interactive
Google Slide session. All right, so let's say that you're starting from scratch
and you have yet to setup Pear Deck. Here you can see I'm on my Google Slides home
page. I'm going to go to 'Add-ons,' I'll go to 'Get
Add-ons.' Here you'll see that there are lots of different Google Slides add-ons
that you can choose from. Pear Deck is right at the top. I'm going to select it,
click 'Install,' and then it's going to have you create an account. Once you've
created an account, you can go up to 'Add-ons,' you'll see 'Pear Deck for Google
Slides Add-ons,' select 'Open Pear Deck Add-ons,' and here you'll be given the
different choices for the types of questions that you want to add to your
Google Slide. You'll notice that on the teacher Google Slides I created, that I
set them up with questions that students could actively respond to. This is
definitely an important part of how you create your Google Slides. When you're
making them, you're gonna have to think about the fact that you're asking
students interactive questions. You'll see on the right-hand side that all the
different question types are available to you. So on this slide, if you want
students to respond in a short answer question, select 'Text,' select 'Update
Slide,' and now it's added that interactive question that you saw in the
demo. In order to assign a website for students to go to, click the 'Website'
button and then you're going to enter the URL that you want to push out
directly to students. After you enter it, you'll see that a preview of the website
comes up below and that's the website that's going to show up on the student
facing slide when you're using Pear Deck. Select 'Update Slide' to put the website
in your presentation. On this slide I'm planning to have students respond in
multiple-choice form. To do that, I'm going to click the multiple-choice
button and here you can select the values or answer choices that you want
students to choose from. Here in order to answer this question, students will
respond with a number. To add a numerical question to the slide, I'll click 'Number'
and then when students respond, they can choose any numerical value. On this slide
I had students drag their icon to the choice that best represented their
answer. You can add the draggable by clicking the 'Draggable' button. It is also
important to note that the dragabbles are part of a premium Pear Deck account.
You will have access to the premium features when you first sign up for a
trial account. To add an icon, click on the 'Draggable' button. Here you'll be
given some different choices for the icons that will show up on student
computers. You can change the color and also the size of the icon.
Lastly, to add a drawing, which is also a premium feature, click the 'Draw' button
and this will add the drawing tools that you saw in the demo. In order to begin
the interactive Google Slide session, you're going to go up to 'Present Lesson,'
then students will go to joinpd.com. You'll give them the class code that
they need in order to enter the session. When you're ready to begin, click 'Start
Class' and then the slide that you are seeing on your screen will also appear
on your students' computers. Now let's say that a student comes into class late or
didn't get the code the first time around. That's not a problem. They can
still see the code at the top of the slides presentation throughout the
entire thing. If you're just going to use Pair Deck with your students in your
classroom, I would suggest that you go to the settings and change it so that it
requires student logins. This way you'll be able to associate responses that
students make to their email which is going to make it easier to keep this
Pear Deck private to just your students. It's also going to help you keep track
of who responded in what way and will allow you to share the students' work
back with them. If you want to go back after the presentation is done to look
at how students responded, click 'Review Sessions', select the session that you
want to review, and there you'll see all of your students responses to each of
the questions that you asked on the Google Slide. You'll notice on this one,
all the students have random icons and names. That's because I have a demo
presentation setup for anyone to join. That can be a useful feature if you're
using Pear Deck with a group of people that you don't know. For example, if
you're presenting at a conference or to a group of teachers and you don't
necessarily want to have everyone have to log in with their email. In my
classroom, interactive Google Slides have just become a part of the suite of
active participation strategies that I use to make sure I'm engaging my
students and asking them to participate in different ways in order to ensure I'm
hearing from all voices in my classroom. If you have any questions about how I
use Pear Deck to create interactive Google Slides, please ask in the comments
below. Thank you so much for watching my video to the end. If you found it helpful,
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