PD Fun with Slides Carnival, Pear Deck, & Bitmoji

Last week, I had the honor of delivering one of the most fun professional development sessions I've ever created - twice! During teacher professional development week, I had the opportunity to offer an introductory session on technology implementation for two schools implementing a 1:1 Chromebook initiative. 

While the background of each school was very different (I made some modifications for each school), I was able to bring an engaging session for staff about Digital Citizenship, Classroom Management, and SAMR/4Cs while modeling instructional technology strategies. I'm all about the meta approach to professional learning and thought I would share how I designed and facilitated one of my favorite professional learning sessions to date.

Slides Carnival

First, knowing I wanted to eventually use Pear Deck, I found a Google Slides template I like on Slides Carnival. If you're not familiar with Slides Carnival, it's an awesome website with LOADS of Google Slides and Power Point templates. You can see a sample template embedded to the right ->.

While I prefer using as little text as possible and full-bleed images when designing presentations (see design tips from Presentation Zen), I find it helpful to have an aesthetically pleasing template to fall back on when I feel more text is necessary, especially for interactive slides. For slides with full-bleed images, I use copyright free images from the Unsplash Photos Slides add-on. This saves me a great deal of time when finding images. For my recent presentation, I pulled slides from many of my previous presentations and converted them all into a common theme from Slides Carnival. ​

Bitmoji

Using an avatar of yourself, or other images can add a nice personal touch to any presentation. Bitmojis are an easy way to to this, especially with the Chrome Extension which allows you to drag and drop the images directly into your Google Docs. You will need to create your Bitmoji using the app (iTunes, Google Play) on a mobile device, but once you create your Bitmoji, you can use it in a variety of places. 

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I especially enjoy using Bitmojis on presentations slides that have some text and don't have room for much else. Did I wear the same outfit as my Bitmoji during my presentation? Yes - I happen to have the same outfit and it seemed too fun to not do it.

Pear Deck

Last, but certainly not least, is Pear Deck - the interactive slide tool I've already written about in my Top Tech Tools for Digital Coaching post. Using the Google Slides add-on, I added interactive slides to support teacher reflection and engagement. Pear Deck has a great how-to guide here to get you started. Periodically in my presentation, I added questions for a variety or purposes - checks for understanding, opportunities for written reflection, and sharing thinking with the whole room. 

While I could go on and on about the decisions I make for including question types (maybe in a future blog post), I want to highlight the presenter logistics I used to facilitate this session on the day of the PD.

Before Presenting My Session

• I created my presentation with Google Slides and the Pear Deck add-on.
• I turned on my Classroom Climate and Takeaways settings on my Pear Deck account.

To Present My Session

• I started my presentation using the Pear Deck add-on using the computer connected to the projector.
• I accessed my dashboard on a Chromebook by going to peardeck.com/dash.
• The Chromebook detected my session and let me control the presentation from the Chromebook.

If you're not familiar with Presenter Mode and Dashboard Mode, below are some of the features you can access in each mode.

Presenter Mode (Computer on Projector)

• ​Progress presentation slides
• Display student responses
• Turn on student-paced mode
• Lock questions
• End Session and publish Takeaways
• View number of students who have responded
• Display join code (projector)

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Dashboard Mode (Chromebook)

• Progress presentation slides
• Display student responses​
• Turn on student-paced mode
• Lock questions
• End Session and publish Takeaways
• View number of students who have responded
• View student responses with their name and mood response (from beginning of the presentation)
• Star student responses to display on the Presenter Mode (projector)

To End My Session

• I selected 'End Session' and checked 'Publish Takeaways' on my Chromebook (but you can do it from either device).
• Each participant had a Google Doc automatically created and shared with them via email with the slides and any responses they entered during the presentation.
• I can access participant responses and export them to a Google Sheet in the 'Sessions' tab on the Pear Deck Site.

Pear Deck is definitely one of my favorite presentation tools, especially to deliver and facilitate professional learning with a meta approach. Using the dashboard mode on a separate device is a facilitator move I would definitely recommend. While Pear Deck served as a great foundation presentation tool, combining it with Slides Carnival and Bitmoji helped take it to the next level. Not everyone may be ready to create their own tech tool mash-up materials, but I hope that my post helps show that so much is possible and it can be so much fun!