Use Google Slides In Nearpod for Continuous Activities

There are some activities in class that you may have students work on throughout a lesson. These could be completing study guides, completing labs, assessing your own previous thoughts and adjusting with new information or even the popular KWL activities.

In the below video I demonstrate how to use Google Slide Presentations to create individual assignments that students can begin and work on throughout a lesson. I use a KWL activity about Covid-19 to demonstrate.

Create the Google Slide Activity

Create the activity in Google Slides. I created the background activity in Pages (a Mac program) to allow for design freedoms. I then took a screenshot so that I could insert it as a background photo in Google Slides. By adding the activity as a background photo it prevents students from accidentally deleting parts of the activity. I added text boxes in the Google Slide where I wanted students to type responses. I then duplicated the slides so they were all the same. To duplicate a slide, highlight the slide by clicking on it. Then right click the slide. Select the option "duplicate". When you have a few slides you can select multiple slides at one time by pressing shift to duplicate more than one slide. This is a little shortcut if you have to make a lot of slides.

I then made a student list on slide 1 with students assigned to a slide number starting at slide number 2. Finally, change the share setting to anyone with a link can edit. Copy the link. Paste the link in a "Web Content" slide in Nearpod to insert the Google Slide presentation in Nearpod. Then you can copy the Nearpod "Web Content" slide to paste at any point in the Nearpod presentation.

Ways to Use Google Slide Activities in Nearpod- Study Guide, collaborative Process, and More

Not every activity is meant to be completed in one shot. One example is having students work on a study guide as material is presented. Additionally, this process allows for other creative solutions for collaboration. For example, have students re-enter the slide presentation, but present a change in their slide numbers. Have students enter their new assigned slide. Keep in mind a different student previously worked on the slide. The second student can now assess the previous students' work, make corrections or notes, and/or build off of the previous students' work. This could look like a virtual round robin for discussion or even completing a multi-step math problem. It can be used for an editing activity or some other form of error correction. Additionally, I can see ways to use this for students to work on a creative process, building, brainstorming, and creating.

Make a Virtual Notebook With Slides

Student can use completed activity slides to create a virtual notebook. To make a virtual notebook or study guide, students can copy their personal and completed slide at the end of the lesson and paste it into their personal virtual Google Slide Notebook for the corresponding chapter. Be sure to end the Nearpod lesson with the Web Content Slide or provide students access to it in some other way (Google Classroom, Zoom chat).

Students fist need a Google Slide Presentation designated as a notebook. I would pre-create it, adding sections and vocabulary. As the teacher you can create one virtual notebook shell to share to each student in Google Classroom or whichever process you use. If you do not have the feature to automatically create one for each student you can use one of the several methods to instruct your students to make a copy.

This virtual notebook would not be linked in Nearpod. However, they can add work that is completed in Google Slides via Nearpod. After students complete a slide that should be added to the notebook they can simply copy the slide by right clicking and add it to their notebook in another tab. I would save this for the end of the Nearpod activity.

See how it's done in this video:

Learn how to Use Google Slides for “drag and drop” activities in Nearpod.

Read more: more about Nearpod: The Benefits of Nearpod, Using Nearpod for MathUsing Draw It Slides for Math, Using Jamboard with Nearpod for Collaboration and On Screen Demonstrations, Create a DonorsChoose Project for a Nearpod Subscription