Interactive PowerPoints with Pear Deck
Many educators I work with are always looking for ways to increase the student engagement possibilities in their classrooms, but without having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to remaking a lot of their classroom materials. Pear Deck, from GoGuardian, is one such tool that allows educators to take existing PowerPoint slideshows and enhance the student participation aspect with numerous interactive overlays, making the passive experience way more engaging.
Available as an “add-in” in PowerPoint Online, Pear Deck allows for any existing or future PowerPoint to be turned into an interactive and engaging learning experience. (Instructions for adding the “add-in” can be found at the end of the post.) Pear Deck has long played well with Google Apps for Education, but now supports PowerPoint, as well. This integration allows for formative assessment and interactive question types to be available directly inside PowerPoint for Microsoft users!
Pear Deck integration icon located in the “Home” ribbon under the “…” menu.
Once the “add-in” has been installed, a Pear Deck button will be found on the “Home” ribbon, oftentimes at the end under the “…” menu. Clicking on the Pear Deck icon will open it up as a side menu option, with questions choices such as Text, Number Response, Multiple Choice, and Web Slide available to be used on certain slides you choose. (An upgrade to Pear Deck Premium will bring two more interactive question types: Draggable and Drawing responses.) Aside from the different question types, there are also templates located on the side menu bar, as well. There are pre-made interactive question slides for Social Emotional Learning, as well as Critical Thinking…plus even more customizable templates for a wide-range of use cases found here (Pear Deck Templates — Pear Deck). These template slides can be added via copy and paste into any slideshow to bring them into the slideshow.
As a question type is added, a green bar with a mini QR code is added to the bottom of the slide, which indicates that it is an interactive slide. It is important to note, however, that moving that green bar with the QR code to a different locale on the slide can cause it to lose its interactivity if both sides of the bar do NOT touch both sides of the slide!
When your presentation is ready to share with the students, instead of clicking to present normally, click the green “Present with Pear Deck” button located on the side menu. (You will have the option for a Student-Paced or Instructor-Paced session.) This opens your slideshow in a new window, presenting a join code for students to utilize, usually with some catchy phrase that students just LOVE to help remember the code. Once all students have joined, you can click to start the presentation and launch the Teacher Dashboard as a separate window, or my favorite, on a secondary device like an iPad I can carry around the room with me.
The Teacher Dashboard provides A LOT of power when it comes to Pear Deck…from here you can see and share student/class responses (both anonymously or with student names), or what I believe really makes Pear Deck transformational for educators: the ability to pivot quickly when needed and add new interactive questions on the fly, without needing to stop the slides, build new questions, and then join back in! Imagine being in a classroom, sharing a PowerPoint with Pear Deck and noticing that the students are missing all of the review questions you thought were a layup for them. This educator could realize the students are not understanding the concept well enough to continue further in the lesson, and instead, could quickly pivot with a few more interactive questions from the Pear Deck library and figure out where exactly the disconnect is with the learning. Rather than leaving students stranded and not understanding content while foraging on to meet a deadline, that educator could instead circle back, build up their students’ knowledge before continuing on!
The Teacher Dashboard can save your results at the end of every slideshow, which makes it excellent for educators who use the same PowerPoint for multiple class periods of students each day. The separate sessions are saved to the Dashboard, results and all, and educators can go back in later on, see the results, and even share individual feedback with each student based on their responses to interactive components. Talk about flexibility AND power!
There is also a Pear Deck add-on for Teams that permits educators to do the same things from inside of Microsoft Teams! Found under the Tab button (+) in Teams, click Pear Deck, find the lesson you want to run from inside of Teams, and watch the magic happen!
Pear Deck inside of PowerPoint and Teams is a truly transformative application for student learning. It’s quick, easy, and does not require reinventing the wheel of already created content for the classroom. Educators enjoy the flexibility and data collection aspects of Pear Deck, as well as being able to go back and look at the sessions after they have concluded to see who still needs more assistance with the content. If you are further interested in Pear Deck for Microsoft, check out their website for more information (Pear Deck for Microsoft — Pear Deck).
Adding the Pear Deck “Add-In” for PowerPoint:
From inside PowerPoint Online, select “Insert” and then “Add-In’s”
Click on the “Store” and search for “Pear Deck”
Click “Add”
Back in PowerPoint, select “Home”, look for the “…” at the end of the ribbon, and there will be a Pear Deck button.
Click to open and let the fun begin!