Ensuring Lesson Authenticity, Learners' Collaboration and Engagement in the English Classroom with Nearpod

The teaching of English in second or foreign situations often calls for more intentionality on the part of the teacher so that learners can have more productive learning experience. Apart from the affective factors such as anxiety or boredom that learners may experience in such situations, learning another language often calls for authentic language teaching and learning opportunities that would make learners collaborate with one another in order to produce the language being learnt. This type of wholesome learning experience could be made possible with the use of mobile technologies, which are popular essentialities for both learners and teachers.

The unprecedented rise of mobile technologies such as mobile phones and tablets in recent years have made them potential tools for transforming the teaching and learning processes even in educational settings which had no prior preparation for technology use. 

Against this background, this week, I will be discussing how English teachers can integrate technology in their classroom by creating lesson activities with the use of mobile devices. According to Kearney et al (2021), the use of mobiles can transform teaching and learning by ensuring authenticity, collaboration and personalisation. These three features are affordances of the nearpod, a lesson creator app which is functional on mobiles.

Nearpod is a website, also operating as an app where teachers can stream already prepared lessons for students to join online using their mobile phones. It is a tool which requires that teachers create lessons usually using PowerPoint or Google slides and then integrate some tasks or lesson activities such as polls, matching tasks, quizzes etc. into the lesson content created. Nearpod has a free version tagged the silver tier and as a silver subscriber you have access to the basic features which is enough to create engaging lesson experience for your students. Also you have access to many already prepared lesson activities that can be utilised. Although instructors can display lesson activities from Nearpod via a projector and engage in the verbal demonstration of activities, however, it is best when students participate on the platform by using their mobile devices.

Affordances and Benefits

Authenticity

Nearpod provides teachers the opportunity to provide authentic tasks for learners through the integration of diverse audio-visual elements in the lesson. For instance, teachers can integrate pronunciation videos in the lesson content or videos showing how some  vocabulary are used in their specific context. Learners are able to understand how language works in the real-world. The various tasks students are exposed to on the platform also provides learners with opportunities to use the language in authentic ways and not in abstractions. For instance VR field trip can provide learners with teh authentic resource they need for a writing task. 

Collaboration

Teachers can encourage learners' participatory culture through the collaborative learning community that Nearpod provides. Students can express their ideas and improve their English skills through the collaborative affordance of this app. For instance, the use of Collaborate Board and Openended Question give students authentic ways to discuss and interact with each other so that their communication and collaboration skills can be practiced and improved. In addition, matching Pairs and Drag & Drop help  afford teachers and students more opportunities to evaluate and regulate the learning progress of the lesson. Furthermore, group work can be encouraged as nearpod provides a fun way of learning and reduces any language anxiety that might want to surface. As such the Nearpod platform supports the socio-cultural theory of language learning which describes learning in a social context.

Engagement 

Nearpod is an engaging website as a result of the diverse learning activities it affords learners. features like matching pairs and drag and drop can create a fun activity for students. Time to climb can provide competitions which learners can engage in and the Poll feature also encourage learners' interests in the lesson thereby, preventing boredom.

Challenges

Despite the discussed strengths above, Nearpod is not without some challenges. First, just like other learning website described for the past weeks, Nearpod relies on internet connectivity and availability of devices. As such, it will not work where there is lack of access to high-speed internet. Additionally, Nearpod can be time-consuming and it also requires more organisation as such, teachers have to be deliberate about its usage and understudy how it works while patiently creating lesson content and activities that learners would love.

However, in spite of these challenges, the amazing benefits: lesson authenticity, learner's collaboration and engagement it affords makes it worth being giving a chance in the English classroom. 

I have created a video on how to create lesson content and activities in Nearpod, watch this video below:

Have a go at this Nearpod lesson using this code:75K6C

Image acknowledgement according to order of use

Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay 

Image from nearpod.com