Nearpod for iPad

Nearpod is an interesting tool that, from the buzz the company has produced, seems to be the holy grail for education. On further testing, it proves to be useful but limited.

Here's how it works:
1. You, the teacher, create a lesson at nearpod.com ahead of time. Here is where you hit the first limitation -- the lesson cannot be created or edited on iPad. So, if you don't have a computer in your classroom, you cannot change anything mid-class. This also means that you and your students must all be connected to the Internet, since it is being run from nearpod.com and not from your iPad locally. Depending on your school's Internet speeds, this could be dicey.

• A lesson is made up of slides
• A slide can be either a content slide or an interactive slide. 
• A content slide can be a page from a PDF document or an image or a movie. 
• An interactive slide can be a poll, a quiz, a Q&A or a drawing the students produce on a blank page or on an image (e.g. graph paper).

2. In class, you "run" the lesson on your iPad:

• You give students a pin and they each enter it into the student version of the nearpod app on their own iPads. As they join the lesson, you see their names pop
• You control exactly what is displayed on everyone's screen. Results of interactive slides (e.g. poll) show up in real time to you and you can choose to display them to everyone. Same with anything the students produce on their own drawing slides.

My opinion: It is an easy entry point for a teacher who wants to have some interactivity in the lesson. If you want, you can ignore the "content" aspect of the tool and simply use it as "clicker" app -- but you need to decide on all the questions ahead of time. The fact that everyone in class is forced to be on the same page is either a plus or a minus, depending on how you teach.

A similar, but less restrictive and more feature-rich software is GoClass, but it is still in beta. It allows creation and editing of lesson elements on iPad, students can proceed at their own pace, and quizes/polls can be timed. Being in beta, the stability and buggyness of the app are unknown.

Other reviews of Nearpod:

• http://craigsworld37.blogspot.com/2012/05/nearpod-review.html
• http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2012/05/nearpod-create-and-deliver-quizzes-on.html#.UDfYm6Pud8E

Running a survey

If you want to create a survey, there are a number of good options. Google Forms works well if you are already using Google. If you want an alternative, I just found an excellent online tool that definitely beats polldaddy.com (which has previously been my favorite) by miles. It is kwiksurveys.com.

In-class poll/survey on iPad/iPhone/laptop

If you want to take a quick pulse/poll/survey/quiz in class, there is a nice app for that: Socrative. For iPad/iPhone, there is a student version (iTunes link) and a teacher version (iTunes link). Both are free. You can also use Socrative on your laptop via a browser. A teacher creates an "activity" consisting of question(s) for which students provide responses. The teacher can choose between free-form responses or multiple choice. The teacher needs to register (email and password), but the students do not.