Nearpod

Technology is a fast nowadays.  It's so hard to keep up with it all.  Nearpod is one of those programs that you may not have heard about.  It's not an app, but rather a place where people can upload lessons.  From what I have seen the lesson are in the form of powerpoints with interactive links. What you do is you establish an account and you can do so with Google, email or Office 365.  Once you are in you can pick a topic that you're interested in.  They have generic topics like math, science, social studies, ELA and so forth but they also have very specific lessons ready to go.  The unfortunate part is that many of these lessons have to be purchased.  The ones I looked into were about $2.99 in that price range.  

This made me think that boy, this is a way for educators to earn a little extra money. Teachers Pay Teachers is a site that is similar to this one in that educators have come together and created time-saving physical resources that are attractive and can be sold to other educators.  I'm waiting for the day when somehow someway we can get an paid account for Teachers Pay Teachers, but that's another story for another day.  

Anyway back to Nearpod, there is a section that has free resources and these are definitely worth checking into.  I looked into one on "Finding Slope Review," and it started with an objective moved onto to a discussion question and asked for the students to type in their answer.  Looking further it I found that if you have iPad or some other tablet device you can "write," on it and add your notes. 

This is just one example, depending on what you look at you may not find the same thing.  I have to say that the lessons may vary in quality and so you will have to preview it, but the BIG positive here is that this is technology (scores big with kids), it's technologically interactive for kids and teachers (BIG score) and because it's technology-based you can e-mail, link it to various sites, save it in your Nearpod library and use it again next year and EVEN develop reports!! (TIME SAVER-YAY!)  

Now for the negatives:  you will need some kind of device (chromebooks, tablets) for students to use in order to have them participate in the lesson.  For the first lesson you may be able to get away with just using it on your tablet and picking students to come up and "write," on it for you.  So that would be a way to start, but eventually you'll need something for them to work on.  

Nearpod, it's not an app it's lesson ready to go-yay!