Streaming a powerpoint presentation onto student devices and add interactivity during your lectures

One of the most popular ways of using an iPad in a lecture theatre involves streaming the content of your powerpoint presentation student devices in real time using Nearpod, a free app that comes in two parts, a teacher app for the lecturer to load and broadcast the presentation, and a student app which acts as a receiver.  To ensure only your students get your content, they are asked for a pin number when they join your session – the pin number is unique to the session, and displayed on the teacher app. Once students log in and enter the pin number, the content of your presentation is streamed onto their devices.

Going down that route means students are no longer able to annotate the pdf handout on the screen. Having said that, there is an added value in using nearpod as the app enables for more interactive presentations by embedding polls, surveys and quizzes into the presentation which can be taken by students in real time. Results from these polls are then broadcast to the lecture theatre in an aggregate form, which enable you to identify how students have responded to your questions.  At the end of the presentation, nearpod emails the lecturer with a report showing how each student answered each question, which could be used for assessment purposes.

To get started your presentation needs loading into nearpod on their website from which they can be published and made available to students with the correct pin number. You can re-use your existing powerpoint presentations by converting them into pdf and nearpod will treat each pdf page as a slide. On their website you can add new slides, add polls, surveys and quizzes. When you are done, you can publish the presentation, ready for streaming onto student devices on the day.

The YouTube channel for iPadagogy has two great videos demonstrating how to use nearpod and interact with students. They give a good overview of what can be done, and how easy the process seems to be.