Impact to My Classroom

# of Students Impacted: 1000

With our Champions for Learning Grant, we were able to provide a Nearpod subscription to 15 teachers, who in turn teach approximately 120 students each.  In addition to the Nearpod subscription, we were able to purchase one subscription to Quizizz and one for Kahoot.  All of these programs help students to engage in learning in the classroom.

This year has been especially challenging for both teachers and students.  One of the many challenges facing teachers is how to engage a blended class.  A blended class is a group of students which contains both in person learners as well as virtual learners.  With our subscriptions, we were able to teach both groups of students simultaneously and receive instant feedback on how well students understood information.  There are no other programs I am aware of that function in the same capacity as Nearpod does, allowing teachers to monitor and instruct the blended learning classes this seamlessly.

Nearpod can either be a teacher-led lesson or a student-paced lesson, which is wonderful for absent students, especially those forced to quarantine for 2 weeks, another challenge of the pandemic.  With the Nearpod lesson, the teacher can create a lesson by uploading previously created PowerPoint files to frame the lesson and then add in videos, activities, and assessments.  Our favorite activity is “Time to Climb” where students choose an avatar and answer questions to reach the top of a mountain summit.  Students love this challenge and there are various backgrounds and characters to pick from, which lets students choose options to become more involved in the lesson.  Another favorite is an activity where students can illustrate an image on their desktop and teacher (and sometimes the rest of the class) can see the image in real-time on the teacher’s screen or whiteboard.  This is a unique alternative to traditional dry-erase boards as all students can be assessed at the same time and also they can share their work with everyone.  For my science classroom, I can add virtual lab activities seamlessly into the lesson as well.  All of these activities, as well as assessments and other options have helped us survive teaching during a pandemic and keep students engaged no matter where they are learning. 

Kahoot and Quizizz are also very helpful.  Quizizz is program where you can build lessons and assess students with either self-paced or whole group games.  Kahoot is a slightly different platform which also capitalizes on student engagement.  Both of those platforms allow students to work in groups, which is another fun alternative to traditional lesson review activities. Kahoot and Quizizz help provide a variety of activities for blended learning classrooms and ways for students to practice teamwork and discuss answer choices.

Immokalee Middle School staff and students are so very grateful for these tools, which have helped us not only get through this school year, but to do so with some new and engaging activities that we hope to use in many years to come.  Without our funding, many teachers would not have even attempted Nearpod.  Now, we are happy to say that many of us could not live without it.  It is sometimes difficult getting middle school children involved in learning, but they are always excited when they get to start a new Nearpod lesson or play a game on Kahoot or Quizizz.  Thank you again for making this possible!