An Intro to Premium Pear Deck
Google Slides just got better.
Pear Deck Premium was recently purchased for all of our Iowa educators as an excellent add-on for Google Slides for teaching in both synchronous and asynchronous learning environments. It allows the teacher to create and add interactive elements to a Google Slides presentation to engage students, gauge social emotional well-being, and gain data and feedback about student learning. Additionally, Pear Deck allows students to respond during an instructor-paced or student-paced mode, providing a variety of learning opportunities for any learning environment.
To get started with Pear Deck there are a few things you need to do. First of all, log into Pear Deck by using your school domain Google account to authenticate. Once you are logged in, your profile picture should be wearing a crown (see below) to signify you have a Premium account.
Lastly, you may want to install the Pear Deck Power Up Chrome Extension. It helps run videos and gifs more smoothly in Pear Deck. After installing it, you will see it in your Google Slides toolbar.
- Add a social emotional check in from the template library at the start of each lesson.
- Decide on whether the Pear Deck will be shared as an instructor-paced lesson (synchronous) or student-paced lesson (asynchronous). This might help form the types of Pear Deck templates/questions you choose. (Watch for a future blog post about why and when you might use these different paces.)
- Add content you would like students to engage with onto Slides between the added Pear Deck Slides, especially for student-paced lessons. Pear Deck Slides should be used as a processing, reflecting, connecting or formative assessment tool.
- Once your build is complete, it will be time to share the lesson with your students. In the side panel, you will find the green ‘Start Lesson’ button. Once you click this, it will give you two different options to deliver the lesson to your students. Choose instructor-paced or student-paced.
Now you are ready to play! We suggest pairing your Pear Deck with a colleague to try it out before using it with students. Let us know what questions you have! Check back on Thursday to learn when to use instructor-paced and student-paced sessions!
Additional Resources
DLGWAEA's Pear Deck Handbook
Edtech Take Out: Episode 81: Perfect Pear Deck Presentations
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~Mindy, Amber, and Beth