Drag & Drop is an interactive activity allowing students to sort or order images and text sequentially or in thematic groups. Teachers add a background of their choice to draggable items or upload a diagram or graphic organizer of their own for students to annotate. Teachers can share student responses anonymously with the class or have a student model their thought process in real-time. Teachers are also able to manually add grades to completed Drag & Drop activities. You can create a Drag & Drop activity of your own, or use a pre-made standards-aligned activity from the Nearpod Library.
Check for student understanding and practice critical thinking skills with Drag & Drop activities. With Drag & Drop teachers can:
- Sort into categories & charts
- Order events along a timeline
- Sequence sentences or paragraphs
- Label diagrams
- Point out parts of an image
In this article, you will find:
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How to teach with Drag & Drop
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How to add a Drag & Drop activity into your Nearpod lesson
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Feature specifications
Note: This feature is available for Gold, Platinum, School and District licenses
How to teach with Drag & Drop
Teaching a Nearpod lesson with a Drag & Drop activity provides teachers and students with even more ways to collect real-time formative assessment data, address misconceptions, differentiate, and help students show what they know in ways that meet their needs in the classroom. In this section, we will look at how educators can teach with the Drag & Drop activities.
When students reach a Drag & Drop activity in a Nearpod lesson, they will see a set of instructions at the top, a list of draggable objects on the left, and a workspace on the right.
Students can drag the objects on the left and drop them anywhere on the workspace to demonstrate their understanding during the activity.
When objects are brought onto the workspace, students can select any object by clicking on it and a trashcan will appear. Click on the trashcan to delete the object from the workspace.
Students can also use the drawing tools to annotate, draw, or type to demonstrate further understanding.
The student can click on the trashcan at the bottom right of the screen to clear the entire workspace and start over. When the task is complete, the student will click Submit.
As the teacher, you can view progress in real-time for the entire class:
- A black banner will appear until students have started the activity.
- A yellow banner will appear to show students that are in progress.
- A green banner will appear once students submit the assignment as complete.
The teacher can click on the thumbnail for any student to view their work in more detail. The blue arrows on the sides of the preview can be used to navigate through to see the work of the rest of the class.
The teacher can anonymously share student work out to the class while a student is in progress or when submitted to allow students to model their thought process in real-time for their peers or discuss submitted answers.
For Student-Paced lessons, the teacher can use the View Progress option to see student work on a Drag & Drop activity. This will be the same view a teacher would see for a Drag & Drop activity in a Live lesson.
Drag & Drop responses can be found in Nearpod post-session reports.
How to add a Drag & Drop activity into your Nearpod lesson
In this section, we will look at how you can add a Drag & Drop activity to your Nearpod lesson by:
Create the Slide and Instructions
1. While editing your lesson, select "Add Content and Activities."
2. Choose Drag & Drop from the Activities tab.
3. Use the rich text options to create a prompt for students or provide instructions for the task. You can use the formatting tools to adjust the size and appearance of the text. Click on the three dots on the far right to access additional mathematics formatting tools and the Math Formula editor.
Adding Reference Media
You can add reference media to a Drag & Drop activity by clicking on "Add image, audio, or other media" to the right of the instructions. Select the type of media you would like to add from the list: Image, Audio, PDF Viewer, Audio Recorder, Web Content, and Video. Learn more about adding reference media.
Adding a Background
1. Click Add background in the bottom right to select from some premade backgrounds or upload your own. Use the arrows on the sides of the panel to navigate through the premade backgrounds and click on any background to add it to the slide.
2. Click Upload image to add your own background image. You can upload an image from a Google search, your local computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive.
3. Once you select a background, you will see a set of icons that can be used to rotate or flip the image, adjust the size, or select a new background.
4. You can add to the background of your Drag & Drop activity by using the arrow, pen, text, and eraser tool on the bottom of the screen. This will allow the teacher to place pre-made text or annotations on the background of the slide.
5. You can use the arrows on the bottom right of the screen to undo and redo actions or use the trash can to erase everything on the slide, including the background.
Adding Draggable Objects
1. To add draggable objects to the activity that you want students to place onto the slide, click on Images or Text on the left side of the activity. You can choose to have image or text objects for the students to drag and drop during the activity.
2. If you choose to add images, click on the +Add Image button. You will be able to add images via a Google Search or by uploading from your computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive.
3. Once you select your image, it will appear on the workspace. You can choose a size using the dropdown or delete the object with the trashcan. Click Done to add it to the activity.
4. If you select Text objects, you will have a space to type in your text. Type your first text object and click OK. The text object will appear in your workspace, where you can choose the size similar to what you can do with the image objects.
5. Once an item has been added, it will appear in the Drag & Drop Items section on the right side of the screen. Repeat this process to add all draggable objects into the activity.
6. Click on the object if you would like to edit, duplicate, or delete it from the activity.
7. You can also toggle on or off "Unlimited copies". When this is on, students will be able to use the image or text draggable items as many times as they'd like. When it's off, the image or text will disappear after the student has used it once.
8. Once you have added all the draggable objects, and added a workspace background and instructions if needed, click on Save to add the activity to your lesson.
Feature specifications
- Maximum image upload size for draggable images is 20MB
- No limit set on the number of draggable images or text in a single activity
- Character limit for text draggable: 110 characters.