Week 11: Infused Classroom- Pear Deck

  This week I looked at Holly Clark's blog Infused Classroom and her review of Pear Deck. 

What are some benefits of Pear Deck? 

I was really excited to learn about Pear Deck this week! Pear Deck is a teacher-led or student-paced tool that allows your lessons to be interactive. Educators can intergrate formative assessments into their daily slides to check for students understanding. The biggest benefit of Pear Deck is the fact that it is an extension of tools that teachers already use. Google users can add it as an extension to Chrome and Microsoft users can add it to their Teams page. Educators have their students go to app.peardeck.com and they can sign into the session. This allows students to interact with the lesson from their personal computer. Pear Deck is also free, so any teacher can easily utilize it into their everyday practice. According to Clark, Pear Deck allows you too, "embed formative assessment, create learning activities and easily gather important information about student learning and growth" (Clark, 2020). For someone who is still teaching remote being able to incorporate student participation and engagement is crucial. Pear Deck allows teachers to do this with a tool they already utilize. 

Check Holly Clark's blog post for more tutorial videos on how to use this app! 

Can I use Pear Deck in the classroom? 

I am a huge fan of the tool Nearpod. My students love the app but it does have its flaws. What I love about  Pear Deck is that I can add the extension to chrome and then edit my already existing lessons on google slides. Clark gave me a few ideas for how I can incorporate Pear Deck into my class. 

First, I can see myself using Pear Deck in math. It has a feature that allows students to draw. Due to tech issues or missing materials my students can struggle showing me their whiteboards when they work on problem solving. Allowing them to work on Pear Deck would eliminate that issue. Students would be able to show their work on their computer and then I would be able to assess it later. 

Additionally, I could see my self using Pear Deck as a way to send links to my students. When teaching 8-9 year olds, an issue that comes up is typing in the correct URL. This issue typically prevents the lesson from moving forward. Being able to put the link right on their computer screen would save me instructional time and set students up for success. 

Overall, I think teachers can get creative when using Pear Deck. It offers unique opportunities for engagement without forces teachers to learn a new tool.