 We had an opportunity to do our first joint peardeck together the first day back after the long Thanksgiving weekend. In regards to the program itself the outcome was great students were engaged and found it pretty cool that they were able to be taught by another teacher over 130 miles away. It was also good for them to be able to see not only him but his students as well. | Travis Armstrong @dmsarmstrong from Dublin City Schools wrote this post. My comments are in RED, where needed. As mentioned in one of the previous blog posts (#Kahoot via #skype: Distance gaming!) Garth and I have been trying to find ways to have more interaction between our students. Our first method of increasing interaction was very successful by gamifying the way we review with our students via Kahoot. The next method on our to try list was a joint Peardeck. Peardeck (See Posts about Peardeck: One and two) is a presentation software that allows you to conduct a formative assessment while presenting new material. You can have slides that ask the students questions ranging from multiple choice to short response questions. You can also have your students move a colored dot, or have them draw directly onto the slide to highlight something to illustrate their understanding.  |
So how were we able to do this? Garth and I both have two projectors in our rooms one projector was being used to show the other teachers classroom and for this we used GoogleHangout, while on the other projector we had skype up and were utilizing the screen share feature so the projected version of Peardeck could be seen by both classes. Now I mentioned the outcome of the program was great but we did think the experience would work better if we were able to use a video conferencing system assuming it would make it easier for the two classes to hear one another by eliminating some of the background noise and provide us with a better image into one another's class.
Please email or Tweet Travis or myself is you have questions.
The tools today, that we have access to really do "take down the WALLS of a classroom". To think I was pushing a presentation 150 miles away to 50 students in Columbus, on cell phones, ipads, and laptops, while in the blink of an eye I could "SEE" if they understood what I had just explained. The use of quick questions, short responses and other types of formative assessment built into PearDeck, allowed both Travis and I to understand what OUR student's were learning and if were on the right track.
I am blown aways with the possibilities of what we can do with the technology being produced for education.
Cheers, Garth
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