Khoi 9G & Chi Dung 9J
Before COVID hit, Teams has been the go-to app for communication in school. It does the job of giving the teachers and students a global means of communication. But ever since online learning started, using meeting apps such as Teams every day isn’t perfect and can be lacking at times. Before online learning, these shortcomings were resolved by us being in class with the teacher directly for half of a day. Now that the direct interactions and all of its perks are gone, Teams alone can’t carry online learning entirely.
That’s why schools have started implementing other things to connect more with each other. Nearpod is one of them, and it is a great way to engage students in learning with accessibility for visual aids when accompanying the unengaging meetings in Teams.
First of all, there are issues that happen in Teams but not in Nearpod. For example, if the teacher is experiencing Wi-Fi problems, it would affect screen-sharing quality and lose time during a lesson. Other problems such as microphones not working could also affect the teaching lesson. Worst of all, Teams fails at being an engaging app between the low-resolution video quality, choppy screen sharing experience, making videos look more like PowerPoint presentations in terms of frame rates. The sometimes-monotonous experience of online classes combined with the myriad of interruptions makes for a jarring learning experience that can affect what the student can learn or remember. This is where Nearpod comes in.
A unique feature of Nearpod is the ability to hand out quizzes. This ability is a great way for teachers to see and test the knowledge of students after finishing the presentation in real time without a competitive setting compared to apps such as Kahoot. Additionally, quizzes could improve memory retention of what the student has learned in the lesson itself.
Presenting other content is also made much easier. In Teams, the quality of screen-shared content can be hindered through bad Internet connections. However, Nearpod allows you to share the videos themselves, improving the quality a great deal.
That being said, Nearpod isn’t an alternative to Teams, it’s another addition to the tools that teachers can use to lessen the jarring experience of using the more basic features in Teams. With the lockdown possibly extending for a bit longer, teachers should be able to use a wider range of tools to give their students a smoother and more rewarding experience.