Connecting Theory to Practice. Building upon the underpinning pedagogies of Presentation tools.

Facilitating Pre-cognitive and Meta-cognitive evaluation through the use of NearPod and Padlet.

Part 1

NearPod in a Nutshell. 

    NearPod is the go-to tool for interactive presentations and assessments. Teachers that use NearPod can create their own multimedia presentations or use a growing library of pre-made offerings which resembles an on line store as it both offers free and paid lesson plans-presentations with many of them directly deriving from the Khan Academy. The presentations are multi-modal (that means that they include both video and text-amongst other things)  and promote engagement, interactivity, feedback and assessment (which is basically achieved through giving the students a chance to answer questions along the way). Perhaps more importantly, NearPod presentations, give teachers the freedom to build their own custom tailored presentations that allows them to control the pace of the lesson. A student cannot just fly through the lesson to get to the end. The only way to advance to another page is when the teacher advances it. Teachers also have the ability to put test results or student drawings on everyone's Android, Microsoft tablet, iPad, smartphone or laptop.

Nearpod's advantages:

     This tool is a great way to introduce multimedia lessons in front of children/adults learners without the assistant of an OHP (over head projector). Users are able to literally hold in their hands vibrant videos and cool pictures, interact with them, answer open ended questions and provide feedback. However, the real power comes from every student "being forced" to respond to every question which is mainly achieved through real-time feedback-monitoring of student engagement.This means that the teacher is empowered to receive immediate feedback on how each student understands the content. This information can be emailed and reviewed on a later stage via a very clever reporting interface. The teacher even receives "badges" for having completed all of the stages in reviewing other Nearpods, making his own, launching a live session, receiving feedback on polls and questions and reviewing the detailed summative report on his presentation-lesson plan which is initially send by email but is available at any given time.

    My own friction with this tool proved just how quick and easy it is to set it up and running. The straightforward interface allows for little planning yielding however maximum results. And that was what saved me when I was feeling frazzled the night before my final Professional Practice presentation at the teaching grid at the University of Warwick. Even more so, this tool allowed for a smooth, paced introduction of my sample of  6 hours of teaching materials to my colleagues and placed me in a position to avoid any superficial approaches into my work. This experience made me realize the potential of this tool, which can be used to prevent students attacking their work at a sprinter's pace when I am tackling a very difficult subject. So to sum up, in my humble opinion, the greatest pedagogical value of this tool is "the value of a well structured and paced multi-modal input session that helps learners digest the information that is presented at them" and the power to pause, completely abort or fast forward a section/activity that doesn't seem to be working (I guess we all had that feeling).  

   To sum up, I totally agree with Stewart Morrell when he says that the greatest advantage of using this tool can come from using it in large audiences and university lecture rooms where:

1.It can be difficult for tutors to make a personal connection with a large cohort of students 

2.It can be difficult getting students in large cohorts to engage with the each other and with the tutor 3.Changing delivery patterns can negatively affect attendance 

4.The challenging nature of this subject means some students struggle to grasp new concepts and theories in a lecture setting, and they can ‘switch off’ in ways that it is difficult for the lecturer to detect

NearPod's disadvantages :

    Basically, all things aside, it is still a textbook. There is nothing really interactive about it. Students are still passive learners and there is a clear danger of moving from a Teacher-centred / "heads-up"approach to a tablet-centred, individualistic approach.  

    I also noticed in my presentation that (even with advanced teachers) Nearpod's ability to compress and offer an abundance of information ends up in confusing the audience. In reviewing my detailed report sheet, I saw that the highest achiever was my Professor. (Mrs Tilly) 

    I also had some issues with "glitchy" ipads that were just not keeping up with frozen screens and lost colleagues looking at each other in awe but this maybe attributed to the "Teaching Grid's"wireless connection and broadband speed. 

   Another serious issue derives from the ability to slow down. Don't get me wrong! This is an amazing feature, but what happens when some students have finished and some want to continue?DEADLOCK. (I am not being negative and I am merely following my tutors advice to seek the true limitations of every tool - in the cadre of being a true researcher).

    I also had a problem with the slides. The ones that contain text are very simple and lack flexibility in the number and shape of characters, colours etc resulting in a "statement-like" slideshow presentation that can definitely be characterised as being "telegraphic in nature".  

    And although it can be argued that this tool is used by educators as an initial step to developing the SAMR model, I guess that for teachers who are looking for authenticity, creativity and HOTS development, Nearpod isn't the way forward and if teachers just want to build rapport and incorporate some live-feedback and testing into their teaching practice then they might want to look at Socrative or Flubaroo which will do the same job just as well.

(Notice that I managed not to mention the low-resource classroom argument which frankly is starting to annoy me for some unknown reason!) 

Underpinning theory and pedagogical values:

    The basic affordances of using Nearpod in classroom derive from its ability to:

1.Increase student engagement with each other, the lecturer and the subject material
2.Assess student knowledge of the subject in real-time and provide an opportunity for discussion within the classroom
3.Prepare students for the end of unit exam (Morrell. S., 2014, Case study)

    Below you will find a video tutorial made by me, using a screen capture program called "Snag.it". The reason I deviated from the traditional focus on its various functions and how to go about making a presentation of your own is because there is plethora of YouTube videos that deal with the aforementioned. Instead, I chose to focus on the most interesting pedagogical part, which in my opinion is the advanced reporting facility that this tool offers and that empowers teachers to develop self-reflecting and evaluation skills on their teaching practice by an "a posteriori" manipulation of data. 

Conclusion:

    Nearpod is a very powerful, effective, multi-modal presentation tool, that allows for considerable pre-cognitive and meta-cognitive evaluation by effectively leveraging the advantages of "face to face" (or "1 on 1" if you prefer) environments into a homogeneous (but not heterogeneous) classrooms.
   So, I am going to conclude with a very nice quote by Michelle Pacansky-Brock who said: "Teaching with emerging technologies is, by nature experimental and failure is an implicit step in an experiment. If we don't fail, we don't learn, and if we don't learn we don't improve upon what we're already doing. And in the 21st century, improving upon-a centuries old tradition of teaching and learning is critical"   (Pacansky-Brock M. 2013, p.42)

   Below you will find embedded my first presentation for my Professional Practice module in ICT and M/M in ELT using Nearpod. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. You will notice that although you can use the "open button" on the bottom of the slide share to skim through my slides, full access requires a code. I consider this to have many advantages and disadvantages, but I will leave this to your own better judgement. 

Bibliography


1. Stewart Morrell. (2014) Case study LI022, Using Nearpod to enhance student engagement in large lectures. Accessed publicly via Stewart Morrell


2. Pacansky-Brock, M. (2013) Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies.Routledge.