Welcome to your second day of #12brightapps – Today’s app? Nearpod!

A quick note about our survey
If you haven’t taken our survey yet, please take a moment to do so when you get a chance.
https://brighton.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/starter-survey-12brightapps

On the subject of the survey, it was a bit of a warm-up activity… We are implementing some gamification into the proceedings throughout #12brightapps and you will have the opportunity to retrieve some secret codes as you take part. Collect the codes for the opportunity to win a small prize at the end.

What is it?

Nearpod is a great tool to introduce interactivity into your lectures by adding polls, quizzes and more to a presentation which is pushed to your student’s devices during a class.

What can it do?

Think ‘Powerpoint’ but with interaction.  Nearpod is a presentation application, where you can add activities that students can use in the classroom.

• Add quizzes, polls and Open-ended questions to your presentation
• Easily upload existing powerpoints into Nearpod, then add your interactions
• Build presentations natively in the app.
• Create a library of presentations on the web, for access from anywhere with a web connection.

Download it now.

1. Open the App Store or Android market on your phone or tablet, search for ‘Nearpod’ and download.
2. Using a computer (or tablet-browser) go to http://www.nearpod.com
3. Click on Teacher Sign-up.
4. Create your free account.
5. Click on Explore in the Nearpod Menu, and take a look at any of the examples of Nearpod presentations. Try one out, using a computer to run the presentation, and your mobile-device to see what a student would see on their mobiles.

10 Minute Task:

Let’s create a Nearpod presentation, and add some interactive, real-time assessing magic to your presentation.

First, be logged into Nearpod on a computer or a tablet device.  (Sadly you can not be in “Teacher mode” on a mobile-phone.)

Click on “My Library” in the top left menu of your Nearpod. Click on the New Presentation button.

Browse your computer for your favourite powerpoint slide-show.

Drag the .ppt file onto the Nearpod window.  This will convert your powerpoint into a Nearpod Presentation.  Depending on the size of your powerpoint, this may take a minute to process.

(*Please note, some things may well ‘break’ in your powerpoint.  Transitions, animations, and the occasional web-links will not work anymore.  Don’t worry, once you’ve spruced up the presentation with some interactive magic, the students will never notice.)

Once your Powerpoint presentation is “Nearpod-ised” It’s time to add some activities.

Click on the “Add Slide” button.  You will see three buttons, the Add Content button (this is to create a slide), the Add Web Content (This is a ‘premium’ option so ignore it.) And finally the “Add Activity” button.

Choose “Add Activity” and let’s make a poll.

Decide what you would like your poll to ask the students, and make one up.  It could be a ‘get to know your class’ sort of poll… Or, if you asked a question somewhere in your presentation, perhaps you could add a poll there, or an ‘Open Ended Question’ instead of calling on students in the classroom.

The poll will automatically appear at the end of the presentation.  You can click on the poll, to ‘pick it up’ and move it to anywhere in the presentation.

Now try to add an Open Ended Question to your presentation.

Finally, at the end of your presentation, let’s add a relevant quiz.  Create a three question quiz that will test your pupil’s knowledge of the topic you discussed in your presentation.

Once you’re done adding your interactivity… Click on Publish.

Your new Nearpod presentation is ready to go, for your next class! Congratulations!

And Finally…

What kind of athlete stays warm at Christmas?

A long jumper.

PART 2:

Discussion Board

How do you feel about your students all having their mobile-phones on, in the classroom? Discuss on the App Discussion forum!

PART 3

Further Tasks

Be sure to try out your presentation using your computer as the “teacher” and your mobile/tablet as a student.  See how the two interact with eachother.

Useful resources

Here are a few useful links to help you get started with Nearpod

Nearpod presentations, that show you how to best use it: http://www.nearpod.com/help/#started

Great tips and tricks for making the most out of your Nearpod experience: http://www.ipadeducators.com/#!top-10-tips-for-nearpod/c40y

Welcome to your first day #12brightapps and your first app!

We would love it if you would take our exceedingly short starter survey over the next few days. There might even be something in it for you…
https://brighton.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/starter-survey-12brightapps

What is it? 

Skitch is an app created by Evernote which allows you to edit and annotate any image or screenshot and share this through email or social media.

What can it do?

Skitch can be used on PC, tablet or phone. You can use it to:

• Annotate images, screenshots or maps
• Blur out faces or confidential information
• Share ideas and give feedback.

Download it now

1. Open the App Store or Google Play Store on your phone or tablet, search for ‘Skitch’ and download.
2. Launch Skitch
3. Get started! (no need to log in)

10 Minute Task:

This task is aimed at showing you how easy it is to annotate any picture or diagram:

Save the following image to your camera roll (press and hold on the image to “save the image”):

https://pixabay.com/en/christmas-tree-plant-decorated-23384/

Open Skitch and under the ‘photos’ tab, select the image that you just saved.

Use the icons on the right hand side and the colours on the left to annotate the tree with different parts and decorations. Some of the things you can do are:

1. Click on the arrow icon to draw an arrow

2. Click on the ‘a’ icon to write some text next to your arrow

3. Click on the shapes to circle parts of your diagram

You can now share your diagram on social media, via message or in an email or simply save it to your camera roll by clicking ‘share’ in the top right and using the tabs along the bottom.

An everyday example of how this might be useful:

A student approaches you as they are unsure of how to upload assignments to Turn It In. You can use Skitch to screenshot the pages they need and annotate this with an explanation of how to upload.

And Finally…

What do they sing at a snowman’s birthday party?

Freeze a jolly good fellow

Discussion Board

How can Skitch be used as a collaborative tool within education?

Further Task(s)

Using Skitch to give directions:

Go on the maps tag and search for a location, click ‘snap’ in the top right hand corner and this will allow you to edit it in the same way as before. Use the highlight tool to draw the directions from one place to another, you can add arrows and text to give further instructions, then share or save as you did before.

Optional:

Annotating PDFs For £1.49 you can get an In-App purchase called Skitch PDF Markup. This can be used to annotate PDFs and can be useful for giving feedback. If you want to get this, go Skitch on the app store and click on ‘in-app purchases’.

• Go to your web browser and find a PDF or use this one: www.worldanimalfoundation.net/f/reindeer.pdf
• Click ‘Open in’ and select ‘Copy to Skitch’
• Use the icons on the right hand side to annotate the PDF
• you can draw circles or highlight parts of the text, draw arrows and add your own comments. There are also ‘stickers’ which you can use to add ticks.
• Share your annotations in whatever way you like

Useful resources

Here are some useful links on using Skitch:

Using Skitch on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch: https://evernote.com/skitch/guide/ios/

Using Skitch on Android: https://evernote.com/skitch/guide/android/