Two Interactive iPad Apps that Work!

I recently learned about two iPad Apps that allow you to get immediate feedback from your classes. They both work really really well.

Nearpod puts teachers in control of student iPads

1. Nearpod allows the teacher to control what students see on their iPad. Teachers can upload any PDF file and Nearpod separates each page into a slide. Students sign into a "room" and the teacher takes control of the slides that each student sees. If that wasn't cool enough, Nearpod also allows you to intersperse different types of interactive questions throughout the presentation to check for understanding. I tried this recently with a grammar lesson and it was great. I was able to see who was getting the concepts and who wasn't immediately.

Space Race on Socrative

2. Socrative allows the teacher to create interactive quizes which students answer on their iPads. Students can see immediately if they are right or wrong. You can also show a graph of the answers after students have responded and use that to spur discussion about the topic. Socrative will send you data from the session in an excel file with each student's response. The other fun feature is the Space Race which puts students in competition to answer questions first and win the race.

Both of these Apps are free, Nearpod allows you pay to upgrade for more features such as large response groups and the ability have more students in a session, store more slideshows and share them with others.