The Teacher Dashboard is the view teachers see when a Nearpod is launched. The dashboard is a streamlined process of viewing student responses and modeling for students if you are sharing your teacher screen from the front.
With the Teacher Dashboard, teachers can:
- Quickly toggle between the students’ view and their responses to questions
- Model what you’d like students to do and toggle instantly to check student understanding
- Use Nearpod without student devices by presenting in student view and complete interactive lessons as a class
- Monitor student reactions and raised hand responses from the participant list
In this article, you will learn about
- Top bar buttons
- Bottom bar buttons
- Navigating slides while teaching
- Tools to adjust learning in the moment
- Managing lesson participants
- Moving between two different lesson modes
Top bar buttons
1. The Nearpod icon will prompt you that you are leaving the lesson. Choose yes to be able to resume the lesson later. Choose no if you do not want to leave the lesson. If you leave the lesson, the code will remain valid for up to 14 days from the initial launch of that code.
2. The menu button gives you additional options for your lesson:
- Email Report: Nearpod will send you an email with your report from the session. You can still always access this from your reports tab in your Nearpod account if you don't email them to yourself.
- Presentation View: This gives you the option to show the student view of the entire lesson on a different screen.
- Add Activity: Forgot to add a question or need to shift gears? Use this option to add an activity on the fly based on data you received or if you wanted to add something additional.
- End Session: This will end the session and the code. You will not be able to resume the same code again but can always launch a new code. This will also remove all students from the lesson at this time. If using the Notes feature and students have connected to the notes option, ending the lesson will ensure students receive the full set of notes.
3. The auto generated code is displayed at the top of the screen. Clicking the arrow next to the code will open the option to prominently display and share the code with participants either on the screen or by using Google Classroom, Remind, or Microsoft Teams. You can turn student reactions and raised hands on and off at the launch of a lesson in the options section of the launch modal. Turning these features off will move the features to disabled states for the lesson.
*With a Nearpod Premium Plus license you will see the option to enable and share a co-teacher link.
4. Click student to view interactive-activities as a student sees them. When a lesson is launched, you will automatically be in student view and will need to toggle to teacher view to see student responses on the interactive activities that are in your lesson.
This is a "preview," so some of the options available to students will not be available for you to use as a teacher in the view: specifically, recording an audio response on an Open-Ended Question or uploading an image from Google in the Draw It activity.
5. This tab allows you to view the student responses of the selected interactive activity. When viewing a content slide or feature like VR or PhET, where there are no student responses expected, the toggle button will not be seen on your screen.
Bottom bar buttons
The bottom bar on the Teacher Dashboard is divided into three sections.
Section 1: Navigating slides while teaching
In the far left corner are your tools to navigate the lesson resources in real time. You can always know where you are in the lesson sequence and move to any point within the lesson with a scrub bar.
Section 2: Tools to adjust learning in the moment
In the center of the bottom bar is where you will find your Live teacher tools in one location. Find Activities, your option for a whiteboard and your *live annotation tool.
Section 3: Managing lesson participants
In the far right corner are the tools needed to view and manage participants and hide and show names and toggle between *Live and Student-Paced lesson mode.
*Available with Premium Plus license.
Navigating slides while teaching
For content slides
- Slides are numbered for easy reference when moving from slide to slide.
- Scroll left and right with small blue arrows and move three slides at a time for quick movement through the lesson.
- Click one time to select a slide.
- Click Share to send the slide to the student screens immediately.
- Click expand button to preview a larger thumb nail.
- Click Share to send to students or X return to preview bar.
For Activity Slides
- Click one time to select a slide.
- Click Share to send the slide to the student screens immediately.
- Click expand button to preview of the instructions being provided to students on that Activity.
- Click Share to send to students or X return to preview bar.
Tools to adjust learning in the moment
- Add Brain Breaks to a LIVE lesson: Use this exclusive feature to the *21st Century Readiness Program that allows teachers to add energizing or calming videos.
- Add Activity: Forgot to add a question or need to shift gears? Use this option to add an activity on the fly based on data you received or if you wanted to add something additional.
- Whiteboard: Launch a Whiteboard at any time during the lesson.
- Use live annotation: Draw special attention to items on the screen with **Live Annotation Highlight, draw, type in real time on any content slide on every students' screen in real time. (not available on Activities or media content like Nearpod 3D or Virtual Reality Field Trips).
*Brain Break available with 21st Century Program license
**Available with Premium Plus license.
Managing lesson participants
- Participant list: The group icon will show a list of all the participants who have joined your lesson. The green dot next to a name indicates they are actively in the lesson and a red dot indicates that they have left the lesson. If a student selects a reaction, it will replace the activity dot on the slide it was selected. A “New Reaction” notification will appear in the bottom bar. When you move to the next slide, the reactions will clear, and the activity dot will reappear. You can remove a student or make them a co-teacher by clicking the dropdown that appears when hovering of a student name.
- Raised hands section: Students who have selected a raised hand reaction will be duplicated and appear in the raised hands section at the top of the participant list. You can lower or resolve raised hands from the dropdown in this section.
- Manage student reactions and hand raising: You can turn student reactions and raised hands on and off during a lesson at the bottom of the participant list. Turning these features off will move the features to disabled states.
- Show and hide names: The eye icon is a toggle to hide and show names connected to student response on the teacher view during the lesson. This function is most often used when you are sharing your teacher screen on a large screen to the whole class. Student names will always be visible in the post session report.
Moving between two different lesson modes
*Student-Paced mode is available during a Live lesson to manage various learning needs and speeds for the group.
- Select the slides students can access during Student-Paced work.
- Turn on for students to begin working.
- Turn off to return to Live lesson mode.
In Student-Paced mode, slides in the slide carousel are highlighted in orange to indicate those that are available for students. Students cannot access slides prior to or after these selected slides.
*Available with Premium Plus license.
FAQ
1. Can I go back to the old Teacher Dashboard?
Nearpod is always enhancing our product for the best classroom experience for you and your students! Based on teacher feedback, we launched the new Teacher Dashboard to all users with improvements to toggle back and forth between what your students see and their responses to you. You’ll find all the same tools you know and love are there but streamlined to make your classroom experience even easier.
2. My students can't see what I'm doing when I model on student view. What am I missing?
The ability to model on Student view can be useful when presenting your screen or demonstrating a concept in front of the class. Anything you do on Student view will not display to individual students’ devices. You can still push data or an example response to students from the Responses view.