OUR ELEMENTARY COLLEAGUES LOVE IT FOR A REASON! IT CAN BE JUST AS GREAT FOR SECONDARY STUDENTS.

Skyline and CDL’s math teacher Gabe Schepergerdes loves it and uses it on a daily basis. At Skyline, it is used so commonly that a subscription is provided for the staff. The CDL team was converted immediately upon seeing a demonstration about how he uses it. Throughout K-12 education, the teachers that know it, love it. No matter what grade or subject you teach, if you use slideshows, PearDeck is a fabulous engagement tool that is as easy for you as for them. Are you curious?

Gabe sells it better than I can. He provides a demonstration about how he uses it on a daily basis with his class. Because his demonstration was provided for an audience, you will be able to see both the teacher view and the student view of the experience. If you are someone who struggles to keep students engaged, or if you are also looking for new engagement tools, Gabe’s video explores this fantastic option.

GABE’S TRAINING SESSION (16min): https://bls.webex.com/bls/ldr.php?RCID=5d0c5c95db134b91adf591b635a3aa68 PASSWORD: YcqQSNP2The Pros of Pear Deck:

• The Pro’s of Pear Deck:
  • Screen-sharing take A LOT of bandwidth and students don’t always have enough as it is. Pear Deck allows students to open your slide show, thus allowing you to remain in a regular WebEx session which is much more manageable for the bandwidth capabilities of many families.
  • Pear Deck works with either of our slideshow platforms: PowerPoint or Google Slides.
  • You get a real-time typing view of student work, meaning that you don’t have to wait until they press ‘Send’ to begin to prepare your responses. This also allows you to message students directly based on the direction you are seeing them heading in, rather than having to wait until they are finished to offer guidance.
  • Students do not see each other’s responses unless you share screen so that they can. You see everybody’s, but they do not. This allows you to ask more challenging questions, or for students to complete more challenging tasks without needing to send work to you through a different platform.
  • Pear Deck is free as a Google Add-on. This means that if you click on the 3 x 3 buttons on the top right of your screen, Pear Deck will be one the of the options.
• The Con’s of Pear Deck
  • The platform improves significantly with $150/teacher. (To see the comparison list: https://www.peardeck.com/pricing) I know we are not there yet, but hopefully, in the future, we can begin to consider site or department tech subscriptions as part of a site’s curriculum or tech budget, rather than only available if provided by the district or if a department is willing to pay the entire bill (which would take most of a department budget).
  • One of the improvements in a Pear Deck subscription is a student-paced option, which would allow you to use Pear Deck for asynchronous presentation as well. Free Pear Deck is live delivery/teacher-paced.
  • Also with a subscription comes the options for students to use a drawing feature to show their work in more ways than typing words.

On balance, Pear Deck is a superior application that dramatically enhances the engagement potential of our slideshows. Whether in a live or virtual classroom, this is an app you can use. If you agree that Spring Break is an excellent time to pick up a new tech skill, we encourage you to consider this one.