Fellow GUHSD teachers, have you tried out
Pear Deck yet? During the rush of our back-to-school days, we received emails from
GUHSDtech regarding the addition of two new premium-level tools to our existing
toolset: Adobe Spark and Pear Deck.
I've had the chance to use Adobe Spark a lot in the past since the free version allows you to do quite a bit. Pear Deck, however, is a tool that was too limited for me to use without premium access. So, I was quite excited to hear that we now have premium access in our district.
What exactly is Pear Deck?
In terms of its module for Google Slides, Pear Deck simply allows you to make your slide decks interactive. You can intersperse traditional slide content with opportunities for students to engage in answering questions or adding their own personal responses. This creates opportunities for formative assessment and allows you to customize instruction on the fly.
How did I get started with it?
I chose to attend a professional development session about Pear Deck offered by our
Digital Learning Coach team to get a sense of the basics, but my best learning happened through experimentation within an actual classroom setting. Although I'm just getting started myself, I'll share what I've learned so far in case it is helpful to other newbies.
For context, my first opportunity to give Pear Deck a try was as part of the 9th grade library orientations that English teachers kindly allow their students to participate in during the first few weeks of school. In the past couple of years, I've paired a Google Slides presentation with a scavenger hunt. This year, when updating the slides, I just went a step further by customizing them with Pear Deck. Here are links to compare the two versions of slides.
The two slide decks look very similar. In fact, I started the Fall 2018 slides by simply creating a copy of the Fall 2017 slides and then inserting Pear Deck slides. Where exactly did I go to customize the Pear Deck slides? This takes me to Takeaway #1.
Takeaway #1: Get to know the various teacher interfaces (browser windows/tabs) of Pear Deck.
When you're first using Pear Deck as a teacher, the most confusing part is probably figuring out the various interfaces that you will need to navigate as a teacher. Below is a summary of these interfaces in my own words.
- Pear Deck Website - The Pear Deck website has both a student and teacher login. When students log in, they are simply joining a teacher's session. As a teacher, when you log in, you have the ability to access past sessions to review student responses. You can also access other resources such as the Pear Deck Vocabulary tool and help resources. You don't need to have this open to prepare your slides or when presenting them, though.
- Pear Deck Google Slides Add-On - The main Pear Deck website will link you to opening a new Google Slides presentation with the Pear Deck add-on enabled. But, you really can just open the add-on anytime you want from within Google Slides by going to Add-ons in the main Slides menu (NOTE: I never needed to add the add-on. It was already added automatically for me).
Once you open the add-on, it will appear on the right side of your Slides window. Simply click on different slide templates from the add-on window to add interactive slides. Then, when you're ready to start a Pear Deck session with students, you similarly just need to have your Google Slides open with the Pear Deck add-on open. From within the Pear Deck add-on, select the "Present with Pear Deck" button and a new browser tab/window will open with a join code.
- Pear Deck Session Browser Tab/Window - As mentioned above, as soon as you choose the option to "Present with Pear Deck," the Pear Deck session browser tab/window will open with a join code for you to project. As the teacher, you need to be using extended desktop with your classroom projector so that you can drag the code to the projector screen for students. Students follow the instructions of going to joinpd.com and entering the code. Once joining the session, the student view will match the projector view in terms of the slide that they are on. It will differ somewhat, though, because students will be interacting as individuals on their own screens when there are interactive slides. Logistically, as you have the code projected for students to successfully join the session, this is when you can click on the option under the pear to "Open Teacher Dashboard."
- Teacher Dashboard Window - When you open the Teacher Dashboard, it will be another browser-like window you can locate under Chrome, but it doesn't show up as a regular tab. You should be sure to drag this back to your teacher computer monitor. The Teacher Dashboard is what you use to navigate through your slides and to view and interact with student responses.
Takeaway #2: Plan your first slide with intention.
Since it takes students a varying amount of time to join the session, put some thought into your first slide. The one I had turned out to be a good one by accident. It had an easy to identify design so I could simply instruct students to click through screens until they "got to my name tag." At a quick glance, I could scan students' screens to tell that they were at the right place. Also, while I was waiting for the final students to join, I was able to fill the time by introducing myself verbally. Students still joining didn't miss out on critical content; at the same time, students who were already in the session weren't so distracted by what was on the slide.
Having said this, I could also imagine experimenting with an interactive slide to begin with so that students could immediately jump into some sort of activity as they joined.
Takeaway #3: Students are not locked into Pear Deck.
When students join a Pear Deck session, they are kept in lockstep with what slide you're on, but only when they are on the Pear Deck browser tab. Pear Deck does not prevent them from having other tabs open and so you will need to use your regular classroom techniques for ensuring they are where they need to be (i.e., lower your screen to 45 degrees, GoGuardian, etc.). On a positive note, since students are able to work on other tabs, this allows you to have them move between the session and doing activities on other tabs. I, for instance, had students open a new tab mid-session to add the library cloud printer and to log into Destiny. The main complication that I found with having them do this is that several students accidentally closed their session tabs and so this broke the flow a bit.
Takeaway #4: Slide animations don't work. 
If you're someone who has slide animations added into your slides, they did not work for me. (If you do happen to know some workaround, let me know!) An example of this is with some slides where I intersperse random personal stories. The slides have numbers that are transparent and only show a portion of a photo, and then I reveal the rest of the photo. In the past, I would do the reveal with a slide animation; but, after realizing that I couldn't get slide animations to work, I simply inserted the "before and after" images as two separate slides. It was a simple adjustment to make, but something I didn't learn until trying out a test session.
Takeaway #5: When presenting, hyperlinks in slides are clickable for students and not just you as "presenter."
Having links clickable for students can be very convenient if you want students clicking on them; but, it has the potential to be distracting if you're used to being the sole presenter of slides with students following along as more passive audience members. For instance, when including playable video links in slides, remember that students will also be able to open them. This happened to me in one session! Several students clicked on a video link and audio started blaring out of their Chromebooks. If you have video links like this, you should preface the slide with directions to not click the link. Alternatively, you might choose to not include the link within your slides and simply have the video prepared in a tab that you drag over to be projected. Or, perhaps you may wish students to watch links at their own pace; but in this case, they should have headphones ready.
Takeaway #6: The effectiveness of displaying student results varies depending on the type of interaction.
The types of interactions that I experimented with included the following four:
- Draggable - In this case, I asked students to read the goals and move the star to what they were most interested in covering during the session. This kept me from just reading aloud or talking about the goals. Instead, students reading them on their own and then I displayed where the concentration of stars ended up. Every session, there was a distribution of stars across the different goals, which I said meant that at least some students were hopefully interested in every part of the session.
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| Student view |
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| View of responses in Teacher Dashboard that can be projected |
- Text - The text responses required a longer amount of time for students to reply and so I ended up cutting out one of them when repeating the session. I enjoyed projecting the answers and scrolling through some. I used responses as a jumping off point for sharing, which I think made the information seem more customized. It would have taken a lot of time to actually read through every response given our usual class sizes, but I am able to review them on my own time by accessing completed sessions via the www.peardeck.com website.
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| Student view |
- Choice - Mutliple choice questions were really easy to use and quick for students to answer. You could use them as a way to survey students or do some quick formative assessment. For me, I used them as multiple "make your best guess" pre-assessment questions and then discussed the answers after projecting student responses that are displayed in a bar graph format.
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| Student view |
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| View of responses in Teacher Dashboard that can be projected |
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- Draw - For this question type, I had students draw lines between book covers and genres they fit into. I could quickly tell that some students were going wild with their drawings, and so I never bothered projecting results. Did I scrap the question, though? No! I did find it useful to allow students the chance to complete the exercise and then I just had students verbally share answers aloud. Having the time to interact with the content before going over the answers allowed all students a chance to participate more fully and then check their work as we debriefed.
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| Student view |
Takeaway #7: You may need to adjust your timing due to the interactivity.
While I covered roughly the same content this year as last year, I found that using Pear Deck took more time due to the points for interaction. I do not think this is a negative thing, but it did mean me cutting out some slides and reducing the number of interactive slides that I originally started with. I think that the best way to determine pacing will be through more experience, but just keep this in mind if you are adapting slides you've used in the past.
As I mentioned above, the Digital Learning Coaches were my initial point of introduction with Pear Deck, and you may always
request their support. My door is also always open, as well! If you are interested in trying out Pear Deck and would like to bounce around ideas or collaborate in general (with or without Pear Deck), I always love working with other teachers on campus. Stop by the library, call x60461, or email
ssannwald@guhsd.net.
