Let me tell you about a little treasure I found, well I found it thanks to FIU and Dr. Patricia Barbetta. It’s called Nearpod.

Teachers have to conduct learning probes to see if their students are truly understanding the concepts being taught, so there’s a few steps teachers go through to do so.  Teachers:

• are checking for understanding
• are asking questions/have them ask questions
• use a wait time to have students think before answering and also allow their students to answer so it’s not always the same students.
• try to be fair in the calling order
• have all-pupil response moments

Well, Nearpod does all that and more in one place.

Nearpod allows you to create presentations using your own library of PDFs or PowerPoints, as well as Nearpod’s library (teachers can ask to create lessons for them and it pays!).  Teachers then share the lessons with students and control their activity in real time, (which keeps them from surfing onto different webpages because the teacher has the nifty master control indicating students that are actively involved or not!).  This programs allows teachers to request all-pupil responses and assess their students’ understanding of the lesson without the students experiencing the pressures of answering out loud.  Students who need more time can be assigned this lesson as home learning, and they can review it independently at their own pace…because yes, Nearpod creates a flipped classroom.  This program is easy to use and has been picked up by some big school districts already, and given a variety of awards for the quality and effectiveness of their product.  Nearpod can be used on any platform, which is relatively unheard of.    A little more about Nearpod…the creators are based out of Miami, Florida, and they provide the best customer service; you run into any issues or have any suggestions, well these folks are very open to that because they are constantly improving their incredible product.  I’m a big fan as you can see…and I’m a fan that’s a parent, a teacher, and more specifically, a special education teacher.  This product meets the needs of many students so check it out!