Pear Deck is a powerful edtech tool for technology integration.
Getting Started
Pear Deck is a common edtech tool used by school districts. Pear Deck is an addon in Google Slides. You access it through the addons menu in any Google Slide. You can turn existing slide shows into Peardeck shows. If you have never used it before, here is a quick introduction video.
3 Best Practices in Action
Best practices are a great way to help us move from being reactive to proactive in our use of EdTech tools. Here are a few best practices of how we can use Pear Deck:
- Use the Pear Deck Template Library to find content and slides that will work for your subject and grade level.
- At the top level of Pear Deck, you can ask students a question in multiple ways: text, choice, number, draw, drag, etc… This makes Pear Deck very customizable and scalable.
- If you are a Pear Deck beginner or need some inspiration, the Template Library can help. It is divided into multiple sections to help:
- Lesson builders:
- Beginning of lesson
- During lesson
- End of lesson
- Learning development:
- Critical thinking
- Social-emotional learning
- Subject areas:
- Example questions
- Littles, Grades K-2
- Math
- Science
- Social Studies
- World Languages
- ELA
- These templates are a great way to learn how Pear Deck works. You can then edit these templates and learn to make your own Pear Deck slides.
- Use the SAMR framework to use technology to design your lesson in a way that allows your learners to reach the desired outcome.
- Check out this blog post for more information on what SAMR is. It is a framework for instructional design that helps you apply different levels of integration to your lesson for the desired outcome. The levels are Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition.
- Click on the picture below for a sample of how you can use SAMR to help craft a specific Pear Deck lesson.
- Use Takeaways from Pear Deck to allow your teaching to extend beyond your classroom.
- Pear Deck Takeaways are individualized Google Docs that contain the Slides from your session and the student’s responses. You can publish Takeaways for your students at the end of any Pear Deck session.
- Here’s a short video with more information on Takeaways:
- Here are some great tips from the blog post “Best Practices from Pear Deck Pros.”
- Sharing Takeaways every time you end a lesson allows your teaching to extend beyond the classroom. Students have the chance to reflect on the different thought patterns of their peers, and you can give individual feedback.
- Show students the Takeway the first time. Open up a student email account, open the file, and talk or show them how to use the Pear Decks.
- Always provide a specific goal when sharing Takeaways with your students, so that they can use their personalized responses to prepare for your next lesson.
- Here is an article that can give you more information on how to use takeaways with your class.
Learn More
If you are interested in learning more about using Pear Deck, this Knowledge Base is a great place to start. I hope that this post has given you some ideas on how you can use Pear Deck to integrate technology into your classrooms.