Pear Deck: Engage Students While Presenting Information

For those days when you need to front-load students with information, the days when it seems like you do a lot of talking, the days when you worry about whether students are "getting it" — for those days — you might want to consider Pear Deck.

Types of Responses. The starred
options are not available on the
free account.

Pear Deck is a presentation tool that increases engagement by adding student feedback opportunities within each slide. Each student can respond to the question on their own device. The teacher can choose whether to share the responses with the class (names are hidden). The presentation can be lead by the teacher, or students can move at their own pace through the slides.

An example of a slide with a free text response option.

Creating the Presentation

The first step is to plan your presentation, then add the questions based on your goals for each slide. There are three options for creating your slides and adding questions:
1. Upload an already created Google Slide Presentation into Pear Deck.
2. Create your presentation within Pear Deck.
3. Use the Pear Deck Add-on within Slides.

Presenting

When it comes time to lead the class, you will choose to present your slides within Pear Deck or through the add-on in Slides. Then, you will simply have students go to joinpd.com. The students will enter the code that is displayed on the screen. Once all students have entered, their screens will reflect the slide you are on as long as you have selected Teacher-Pace, instead of Student-Pace. This video gives you a feel for what using Pear Deck in a classroom looks like.

What is Free?

Pear Deck has a free option as well as a premium option. Here is the pricing comparison. I have used PearDeck several times over the last two school years, and the free option has been adequate for my needs. I did sign up for the premium trial and the draggable option is nice, but not necessary. (See image below to see how I used this.) Also, I have hit my 5 uploads from Google Slides, so now all of my presentations have to be created within Pear Deck, which is limiting.

Draggable Slide: A Premium Feature.

Interested? Send Mrs. Dovre an email to talk through ideas for using Pear Deck or for help with getting started.