How I use Pear Deck for a Computer Science Girls Who Code Club

Today, I would like to share one of my favorite educational technology tools! One of the tools I've used to teach is Pear Deck. When I was teaching Computer Science to elementary school kids (as part of the Girls Who Code Club) over zoom earlier this year, I struggled with getting students to participate in class. What was difficult about this class was that none of the girls knew each other since the class had started after Covid-19 broke out. Because of this, the students were all very shy and I had a difficult time having them answer questions in front of each other.

I first tired using zoom breakout rooms because I know that was a method that worked for high schoolers, but I quickly noticed that many of these breakout rooms just ended in silence because the students felt too shy to participate. I also realized that these elementary school kids tend to forget very quickly on what the assignment was. With Pear Deck, I was able to solve all of these problems.

Photo: Common Sense Education

Pear Deck is a presentation add-on that allows students to interact with the teacher. Just like how zoom allows polls, Pear Deck does a similar thing where educators can add polls, questions, and fun quizzes. In a unique URL, students can interact with these activities by drawing on, typing on, or clicking on the presentation. As students are answering the questions, they can only see their own screen. The teacher, on the other hand, can view all of the students' responses in real-time. Teachers can then anonymously share the responses that they like with the class.

I really enjoy using Pear Deck and anonymously share some of my students' responses because so many of my students saw how others answered similarly, which really helped them build their confidence.